by Anish Passi
How to evaluate how well you have understood the passage?
By answering: How briefly can you summarize it?
Let me explain using a movie’s example.
Have you watched The Titanic?
What’s it about?
In 2 words: It’s a ‘love story’.
1 line summary: It is a love story based aboard the Titanic, the ill-fated ship.
A bit longer: It is a love story based aboard the Titanic. The protagonists belong to different economic classes, yet the fall in love. The movie also covers the ordeal of what happens when the ship hits the iceberg and eventually sinks.
We can keep adding characters and sub-plots.
We can make the summary as brief and as extended as we’d like because we understood the movie well.
I find we can only summarize a story briefly if we have understood it well. While working on RC passages with students, when asked to summarize the passage, I often find that if students repeat the passage almost line by line that indicates they did not understand the passage clearly.
Reading Comprehension is exactly about what the name states: comprehending what you read.
Thus, I repeat:
How can you evaluate how well you have understood the passage?
By answering: How briefly can you summarize it?
