Comprehension and Retention: Enhancing Learning Skills

This report explores the role of comprehension and retention in improving the quality of learning for students. It discusses various techniques to enhance comprehension and retention skills, as well as obstacles that students may face. The report concludes with the importance of overcoming these obstacles to achieve academic and professional goals.

The concept of
comprehension and retention

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
It is very important for the students to develop their comprehension and retention skills as
it helps the individuals to develop academically and professionally. Present report has included
the role of comprehension and retention in improving quality of learning in the students and also
different techniques. Report has also identifies different obstacles that comes between while
students are building their comprehension and retention skills. Present study will help the
students to identify the measures that they can take to develop these skills by overcoming the
obstacles that may arise in between.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Role of building comprehension and retention to improve quality of learning and for academic
achievements of students.............................................................................................................1
Obstacles pertaining to building comprehension and retention..................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................4
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5

INTRODUCTION
Comprehension is the way to read the material and understand the respective facts and
figures in an effective manner(Hung and Chen, 2018). On the other hand, retention is the way
students retain the information for short as well as for long period. Report will include role of
building comprehension and retention in the students and the different techniques that can be
used in order to give quality of learning to the students in order to make their academic and
professional goals achievable. Report will also include different obstacles that arise while
building comprehension and retention in the students.
MAIN BODY
Role of building comprehension and retention to improve quality of learning and for academic
achievements of students
Building comprehension and retention plays a crucial part to have quality of learning in
students so that they can work effectively for their academic achievements. By having an
effective reading comprehension skills, students read the articles and topics with effectiveness
and that helps them do have growth in academics and they also grow professionally. It is very
important for the students to build comprehension skills, as it helps them to develop
intellectually, socially and professionally(Diakidoy And et.al., 2016). Reading Comprehension
skills generally improves the pleasure and effectiveness of reading. It generally requires long
term strategy where different areas of reading skills like phonics, fluency and vocabulary
generally leads of academic and professional success of the students. As competition is high and
market is becoming result oriented, students are required to work on their retention skills in order
to have higher grades and achieve their academic and professional goals. With the help of
retention skills, students are able to prepare themselves in a better way and can have lifelong
learning.
There are techniques that students can adopt in order to enhance comprehension skills
and these techniques are as following:-
 Read:- Students are required to read frequently and interpret different meaning out of
their reading helps in enhancing their comprehension skills. It is very important to build
an ample by looking thoroughly on unfamiliar word from dictionary and noting the same
in order to learn them(Allen, Snow and McNamara, 2015).
1

 Make Links to the text:- Students can relate and compare the things that they read with
their own personal life so that they can recall the same whenever requirement is there.
 Visualise:- Another technique is to visualize by forming some vivid pictures in their
mind with respect to the text that they are going with.
 Always ask question:- It is important to ask questions if the reading text is not clear or
some terms are tough to understand.
 Keep track of the meaning:- Sometime it is better for the students to have slow reading
and for difficult passages students are required to re-read. This helps them to keep track
of meaning what they are reading(Pan, 2017).
There are different techniques that students can adopt in order to build their retention
skills as it helps them to get achievements academic as well as professionally. These techniques
are as following:-
 Focus your attention:- Students are required to be focused enough and in order to retain
the memory for long period, they have to actively attend to this information.
 Avoid Cramming:- Another technique is to avoid cramming and study on regular bases
as it is been analysed that the students who study on daily bases are more likely to retain
information than compared with those who only study in one marathon session.
 Structure and Organised:- Another way is to have a structured and organised form of
materials in hand that students are required to study.
 Utilize Mnemonic Device:- There is another technique that students can use to remember
the information for long period. This method of retaining information is to associate
different terms with a common item that the student is quite familiar with(Ogle and Tkac,
2018).
 Elaborate and Rehearse:- Another technique is to encode what they are studying into a
long term memory and the best option among them is to use elaborative rehearsal
technique.
 Visualise concept:- Students are required to visualise the information that they are
reading in form of a chart, graph etc. so that when they memorise the same, they have
clues in hand. With this concept students are able to retain the information for long
period(Callahan, 2016).
2

 Vary your student Routine:- Students can change their study routine occasionally as it
helps them to increase their recall.
Obstacles pertaining to building comprehension and retention
There are different obstacles that are coming while building comprehension and these
obstacles are as following:-
 Issue with decoding:- There are different obstacles that are coming and one of them is
the issue with decoding. If the students struggle on continuous bases, then there are
chances that they are facing some specific learning difficulty that may also include any
physical impairment. This may be preventing the student to read and understand the
written letters or to hear what exactly the different words sound(Harvey and Goudvis,
2017).
 Poor comprehension:- During the beginning stage of the reader, it is quite difficult for
them to decode. It becomes tough for the students to make some meaning out of the
comprehension and that leads to cognitive challenges and students get frustrate in reading
the tasks. Poor comprehension is the result of struggle that students face in decoding and
also when they have limited vocabulary. They are not able to read the texts that are of
high level.
 Speed:- Many students face problem with respect to the speed of reading, as it leads to
slow processing and they are not able to encounter some unfamiliar terms. If slow
processing is there, students face problem as they get exhausted while holding so much
information altogether. For such students, extra time is required so that they can complete
the tasks on time with the help of extensive reading(List, 2018).
There are different obstacles that are coming while building retention in the employees
and these obstacles are as following:-
 Problems with encoding information in short term memory:- There are many
students that are having deficit with respect to the attention and that results in different
problem with respect to the memory process. They usually fail in elaborating incoming
information and as a result they do not activate prior knowledge and that results in deficit
with respect to the long term memory storage and retrieval.
 Problems with working memory:- Many students face problem with respect to the
working memory and that results in different obstacles. Students are not able to have
3

higher order thinking and are not able recall the things in order to solve problem and
contrast the ideas(Sithole and et.al., 2017).
 Losing focus:- Many times students lose their focus and do not recall the information.
This wastes time and energy in order to retain the information back. It is quite difficult to
memorize each and every part and that do not help the students to recall the main ideas
again.
 Balancing diverse learning needs:- When there are diverse things that students need to
learn at the same time, it becomes difficult for them to retain the all information and it is
quite challenging for them. It is very important for the students to have diversified
learning in order to empower their experience with respect to their professional
development(Simpson, 2018).
 Changing educational trends:- As the educational trends are changing, students take
time to adopt these technologies in their studies as these trends usually change every
year. Students face challenge in retaining the information that they understand from these
technologies and may also leads to frustration(Gordon, 2016).
 Lack of proper funding:- Another obstacle is lack of funding in order to purchase new
sources of information. If students will not read effectively from different sources, it will
not help out in any way to gain knowledge and retain the same for long period.
 Revising but not practising:- It is very important for the students to practise the things
on daily bases and there are many students who just revise and do not understand the
practical applications of the subjects.
CONCLUSION
From the above study it is been concluded that the comprehension and retentions skills
are very important for the students in order to achieve their academic and professional goals.
Report also concluded that there are different techniques that students can adopt in order to
enhance their comprehension skills as it helps the students to gain reading skills. Report also
concluded that there are techniques that students can adopt in order to sharp their memory as it
helps them to memorize different information for long period. Report finally concluded that there
are different obstacles that are coming while students works to build comprehension and
retention and it is very important for them to overcome these problems in order to achieve their
goals academically and professionally.
4

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Allen, L.K., Snow, E.L. and McNamara, D.S., 2015, March. Are you reading my mind?:
modeling students' reading comprehension skills with natural language processing
techniques. In Proceedings of the fifth international conference on learning analytics and
knowledge (pp. 246-254). ACM.
Callahan, J., 2016. Encouraging retention of new teachers through mentoring strategies. Delta
Kappa Gamma Bulletin. 83(1). p.6.
Diakidoy, I.A.N. And et.al., 2016. Comprehension processes and outcomes with refutation and
expository texts and their contribution to learning. Learning and Instruction. 41. pp.60-69.
Gordon, N.A., 2016. Issues in retention and attainment in Computer Science. York: Higher
Education Academy.
Harvey, S. and Goudvis, A., 2017. Strategies that Work: Teaching Comprehension for
Understanding, Engagement, and Building Knowledge, Grades K-8. Stenhouse publishers.
Hung, I.C. and Chen, N.S., 2018. Embodied interactive video lectures for improving learning
comprehension and retention. Computers & Education. 117. pp.116-131.
List, A., 2018. Strategies for comprehending and integrating texts and videos. Learning and
Instruction. 57. pp.34-46.
Ogle, D.M. and Tkac, V., International Business Machines Corp, 2018. Utilizing a mnemonic for
communicating sensitive data. U.S. Patent Application 15/400,421.
Pan, Y.C., 2017. Teaching vocabulary to improve reading comprehension. Studies in Literature
and Language. 15(4). pp.38-40.
Simpson, O., 2018. Supporting students in online, open and distance learning. Routledge.
Sithole, A. and et.al., 2017. Student Attraction, Persistence and Retention in STEM Programs:
Successes and Continuing Challenges. Higher Education Studies. 7(1). pp.46-59.
5