Basic Reading Comprehension Skills

Mastering several basic reading skills helps you understand and remember the events and information you read. Each of the following will be explained in this section: finding the main idea, finding facts and details, finding sequences and patterns, using context clues, making inferences, making logical conclusions, and sorting facts from opinions. 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 or thesis. For narrative writing the main idea is often called the theme or moral of the story. For expository (information) forms of writing, the main idea is often referred to as the thesis.

What are main ideas?

The main idea, theme, thesis, or moral of the story is the writer’s message. Sometimes the main idea is clearly and directly stated. This is particularly true for expository writing. Other times the main idea is not clearly stated. For both situations, using all of the basic reading skills will be useful.