How do you answer comprehension questions?
The majority of students find WAEC, NECO, and NABTEB comprehension passages difficult to comprehend; consequently, they give wrong answers to the comprehension questions, which adversely affects their overall score in English. This is why you nee to learn the basics of answering comprehension questions. You need to discover how to unlock the comprehension passage, and how to write the correct answers with the aid of some tried, tested, and proven techniques.
Most students give wrong answers to comprehension questions because they fail to follow the right procedure for reading and answering comprehension questions. 1. They rush to answer a question they’ve not actually understood. 2. They try to give answers based on sentiment and personal experience outside the facts in the passage. Your answer must be based on the evidence in the passage. 3. They get confused by focusing their attention on certain unfamiliar words in the passage. The right approach is to use the contextualization method. To contextualize is to consider something together with the situation, events or Information related to it rather than considering it alone. When considering the context of a word, we’re considering the words that come before and after it, which help us to understand what means.
There are several reading techniques you can adopt for answering comprehension questions. However, different comprehension passages require different approaches. The approach you use for WAEC and NECO comprehension passages may not work for JAMB passages.
1. Read through the questions first: This will give you prior information about what you’re going to look for in the passage.
2. Read the passage: You must read the passage with concentration; read for meaning; read with a purpose, and read for discovery.
3. Read the questions again: This time you’re ready to answer the questions one by one.
4. Scan for the evidence in the passage before picking the option for each question. While looking for the answer to each question, you must know the type of comprehension question it is, because different types of comprehension questions require different ways of answering them.
For a more detailed discussion on how to answer different types of comprehension questions, watch the following video lectures:
- HOW TO ANSWER COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS IN WASSCE, NECO/SSCE
- HOW TO ANSWER JAMB COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS
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