Basic Reading Comprehension Skills

Mastering the basic reading skills will help you understand and remember the events and information you read. All of the basic skills work together. For example, it is difficult to find the main idea if you do not also find details or use context clues. Although the basic skills are presented one at a time for clarity, they all work together.

The Main Idea

One of the main goals for reading is to discover the main idea. Main ideas sometimes are called the theme, thesis, or moral. The main idea is the writer’s message. Sometimes the main idea is clearly stated, as in expository writing. Other times the main idea is not clearly stated.

How do I find main ideas?

You can find main ideas by:

• reading the first and last sentence of a paragraph
• reading the first and last paragraph carefully
• looking for repeated words, phrases, or ideas
• making inferences based on the facts presented
• determining the sequence or organization of facts and events
• determining how facts are related