Juan Said:

Do speed reading courses improve comprehension?

We Answered:

We had to take speed reading when I was in 9th grade. I graduated high school in 1973 and still read faster than anyone I work with. I believe it did help me with speed and comprehension. It does help with work productivity.

Howard Said:

How to improve Reading Comprehension?

We Answered:

I'm a student too. For me, I read slowly and cannot comprehend well in the past. Since reading occupies quite a lot of my time everyday, I decided to look for some course to improve it. Now I can comprehend much better and it really helps my study. So it is better to look for some course to improve your reading, it really helps and you can benefit a lot after that.

I used an online course at that time; I've mentioned it in another answer here if you're interested:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?…

Hope it helps :)

Darlene Said:

How to improve reading comprehension in 4-5 years?

We Answered:

Are you a high school person?

You're right that 7 volumes of that book will NOT improve your reading comprehension for a test like the MCAT. Because if you think about it, when you read books for entertainment you're not analyzing it for the subtle clues that author provides in the reading. The MCAT is just rife with reading passages that you must quickly understand under time pressure and then be able to answer questions about that. And those questions are NOT straight forward rote memorization. Instead their higher level thinking, and higher level standard questions that require understanding the relationships between the concepts that are tested.

The Passages are sometimes a passage from a scientific article that you have to then understand how the basic sciences are involved in a seemingly complicated mechanism.

In order to improve your reading. It'll take a lot of work. First build a vocabulary. You don't want to be scratching your head on test day for words. So the same vocab words for SAT/ACT will be good enough for the MCAT (especially the verbal section). Now they don't test meanings of words but when you read abstract passages you definitely want to have a high level of vocab. And you may already have that.

Also I would read plenty of journals. I would find like journals that publish abstract author passages by English majors and stuff. And I would ask myself questions that are typical for the verbal reasoning section. Also I would read scientifically oriented articles and try to become fluent in scientific language. And I would try to understand how to quickly analyze graphs and figures and be able to reach paragraphs efficiently to get the "GIST" of the paragraph.

What's important about the MCAT test is an understanding. The test writers don't expect you to memorize details in a passage in 7 minutes and spew out those details in a question. Instead they are testing your ability to reason with science.

I would just constantly find articles in journals like Nature or Science, and read from the Time Magazine, the NY Times for (just reading comprehension) and as myself questions. This is a very time consuming process however if you have 4-5 years and you feel like your reading is not up-to-par I would recommend this.

What I also recommend is too practice the MCAT with this really great book called MCAT Verbal Reasoning & Mathmetical technique by ExamKrackers. and 101 Passages MCAT Verbal Reasoning, also ExamKrackers. And I would in addition get my hands on whatever practice I can find. If you are proficient with torrents filesharing, plenty of material.

For scientific reading, ExamKrackers has a book called 1001 Questions in MCAT Biology. Great book to help improve your scientific comprehsnion and as you can see 1001 questions. Over 4-5 years as you learn the science necessary for the test I would use this book.

I think its important to note one thing. You don't have the knowledge for the MCAT test. So right now it'll be tough to work on scientific reasoning. However you can easily work on the verbal reasoning because its requires NO outside knowledge whatsoever

Irma Said:

How to improve reading comprehension in a few day? ?

We Answered:

Take a speed reading course. But very difficult to find, enroll and master in a few days.