Developing your comprehension skills
Natasha Thomas-Francis, Contributor

Hello, class! Today I wish to focus on developing your comprehension skills. In the syllabus, this topic appears under the heading 'Understanding'. You will need to develop your skill at analysing poetry and short prose passages.

Questions on prose passages can be grouped under the headings: What?, How? and Why?

What: This refers to the facts of the passage. What has happened? To whom? By whom was it done? Where did it happen? This is the first level of meaning.

How: This is concerned with the writer's technique. These questions encourage us to look at how the writer uses words to cause us to respond in a specific way to what is happening. Questions like: How does the writer contrast (a) and (b)? fall into this category. This is the second level of meaning.

Why: When the examiners ask What effect does the writer wish to convey when ...?, they are trying to get you to express why the author writes as he/she does. Such questions invite us to examine how effective the writer has been at conveying what he wishes. This is the third level of meaning.

Poetry analysis gives some students a warm time in the examination. Do you fall in that category of students? Well, this needs not be the case if you spend time developing your skills in understanding poetry. There are three skills which you need to develop in order to perform well. These are to:

1. Understand the different meanings (and levels of meaning)

2. Understand the techniques which the poet uses to convey those meanings

3. Express what you think, clearly and briefly.

The basic elements which you will need to look for in poems in order to improve your skills are:

• The literal meaning
• The creation of images
• The use of figurative language
• The rhythm
• The use of rhyme
• The tone of the poem and the mood that is created in the poem.

Let us now look at some practice exercises so that you can put these skills to the test.

The first exercise is a prose passage. Read the passage below and answer the questions that follow. Remember to ask yourself the what, how and why questions.

Gradually, every parent becomes aware that his or her child has adult concerns, wants acres of privacy and no longer trusts the goodwill of parents in the same old way. These are the biggest of all changes in child-parent relations, and are almost always in place by age 13. This shift occurs not because of bad influences and media, but because your child's brain has matured and is capable of more independent judgement. Please remember, however that the change is not locked in place. A young adolescent can bounce back and forth between ages eight and 13 (and sometimes 15) in a matter of seconds, scorning your values yet, at times, still wanting to sit on your lap.

For girls, the central action is their social lives and the intensity of their feelings. No matter how much a girl and her friends are torturing one another with gossip in school or instant messages from home computers, she is convinced that if you knew what she was saying, you would disapprove or, even worse, try to interfere and make a bad situation uglier.

What is she talking about with her friends? Social power: Who's popular, who's feminine, and who's really weird. Parents: their faults and inability to understand 13 year olds.

Girls are talking about their powerful feelings; they have complex and sometimes overwhelming insights into life. Their joy can be great and is visible, but their despair is hidden in solitary late-night crying, journal entries, weight obsession.

Boys are preoccupied by their power and opinion of other boys, their anxiety about whether they live up to the test of masculinity, a new, deeper range of feelings that they may be unable to put into words. In the kitchen, a boy looks down into his mother's eyes and thinks, why is this woman giving me orders? I love her but I am bigger than she is. That perplexes him because he still needs her so much. Boys, like girls, are having a lot of dark nights of the soul in which they see how disappointing adults can be and how unjust society is, they may not be able to put their fears into words, or they do not want to because it makes them feel weak.

a) What meaning is conveyed by the word 'acres' in line 1?

b) Identify TWO of the 'biggest of all changes in child-parent relations', according to the writer.

c) What does the phrase 'not locked in place' mean?

d) What, according to the passage, are causes of the shifts in child-parent relations?

e) To whom does the word 'you' in paragraph 2 refer?

f) What, according to the passage, is the preoccupation of (i) girls and (ii) boys?

g) Why, according to the writer, are boys perplexed?

In next week's lesson, we will discuss the answers to these questions, as well as explore a poetry exercise. All the best!

Natasha Thomas-Francis teaches at Glenmuir High School. Send questions and comments to kerry-ann.hepburn@gleanerjm.com