Tips for enhancing preunderstanding in the reading process

To create the best conditions for a good and rewarding reading experience, activating our preunderstanding is essential. At FrontRead, activating preunderstanding is one of the guiding principles of our reading training. You can activate students’ preunderstanding in a variety of ways. For example, by examining:

• Cover
• Title
• Table of contents
• Headings
• Illustrations, captions and graphs
• Summaries and questions related to the text
• Words and concepts that are unfamiliar to students

Skimming the text helps with preunderstanding

Another highly effective reading strategy that help support students’ preunderstanding of non-fiction texts is skim reading the text. Skimming the text creates an overview of the text. This way, students are even better prepared for what they will encounter when reading. When their preunderstanding is activated, students have a completely different and improved starting point for reading the text and achieving increased reading comprehension.

You can read more about preunderstanding here.

Happy reading!