Understanding what you read
You already know that reading helps your writing. However in order for you to enjoy and appreciate what you are reading you first have to understand it. When you did reading comprehension in school, you usually had a series of questions to guide your understanding of the material. But when you are reading an article or a book you have to ask yourself your own questions and you have to search for the writer’s meaning.
Writers give direct information
Sometimes the writer will give you information directly. It will be plain to see and understand. Look at this example:
After leaving the cinema James hurried down the street to get back to his job on time.
You get direct information that James has a job. You also know that he went to the cinema and that he was in a hurry. You learn that he was at his job before going to the cinema. You are given quite a lot of direct information in that one sentence.
Here is another example:
A male bullfinch flies into the kitchen everyday. He hops on the counter pecking at crumbs.
You learn directly that the bird is male. You are told that it comes into the kitchen. You can learn from the writer how often the bird comes. You also know where he goes when he is in the kitchen and what he does when he is there. It tells you that there were crumbs on the counter. Now you see how much direct information you can extract from these two short sentences.
Reading between the lines
But writers can give you information indirectly too. Sometimes you have to search for the information and read between the lines to understand what the writer is saying. We say you have to make inferences from the information you are given. You combine what the writer says with what you know, your knowledge in general and arrive at a conclusion. Here is an example. If we return to James above and add a few words to that first sentence we get the following:.
After leaving the cinema James hurried down the street to get back to his job on time. He couldn’t face Mr. Cody’s scowling face again.
You can infer that Mr Cody is James’ boss. Well how did you arrive at that?
- Firstly he refers to him as Mr. Cody. This is a rather formal way to refer to someone so James is not referring to a friend. You think it is someone in authority.
- Secondly Mr. Cody had been scowling at him. Why would he do that? Mr Cody was annoyed or unhappy about something James had done? That certainly is something a boss would do.
We can infer that James had come to work late before.
How can we conclude that? Let’s read between the lines.
- James is hurrying because he does not want to be late. From our own knowledge we are aware that bosses do not like lateness in their employees.
We also read that Mr. Cody had scowled at James before through the writer’s use of the word “again”.
We can assume from all these clues that James had been late before and Mr. Cody his boss had shown his displeasure.
There you see that even when we are not given direct information we can extract information by making inferences or reading between the lines.