What Is Reading Comprehension?
Reading comprehension is the ability to understand, interpret, and think about what you read. It is not just saying the words correctly — it is making meaning from them.
A child who can read every word on a page but cannot tell you what the passage was about has a comprehension gap. Decoding gets you the words; comprehension gets you the meaning.
What comprehension involves
Comprehension is not a single skill. It is a collection of thinking processes that work together:
- Understanding vocabulary: knowing what the words mean
- Following the text: tracking events, ideas, or arguments as they unfold
- Making inferences: reading between the lines for meaning the author implies but does not state directly
- Identifying main ideas: recognizing what a passage is mostly about
- Monitoring understanding: noticing when something does not make sense and rereading
The two building blocks
Researchers often describe comprehension with a simple formula:
Decoding + Language Comprehension = Reading Comprehension
- Decoding (phonics, fluency) — turning printed words into spoken words
- Language comprehension — understanding spoken language, vocabulary, background knowledge, and reasoning
A child needs both. Strong decoders with weak vocabulary will struggle to comprehend. Children with rich oral language but poor decoding will also struggle — for a different reason.
Key comprehension strategies
Good readers use strategies like:
- Predicting: guessing what might happen next
- Questioning: asking "Why did the character do that?"
- Visualizing: forming mental pictures of the scene
- Summarizing: restating the key points in their own words
- Connecting: linking what they read to their own experience or other texts
These are skills that can be taught and practiced — they are not something a child either has or does not.
When comprehension is developing well
A child with growing comprehension can:
- Retell a story in their own words
- Answer questions about what they read
- Make predictions based on what has happened so far
- Explain why a character made a certain choice
Related concepts
- What Is an Inference in Reading?: reading between the lines
- What Is Main Idea?: finding the central point
- What Is Author's Purpose?: understanding why a text was written
- What Is Text Structure?: how organization supports understanding
- What Is Reading Fluency?: the bridge between decoding and comprehension