One of the greatest tools for reading comprehension is reading a small piece of text, and then creating a summation or synopsis of that text.
Here’s an example:
“Famous colleges are part of the labeling and ranking system, but have virtually nothing to do with the education imparted or the long-term impact of the education received. If you need the label to accomplish your goals, go get the label. Either way, we ought to hold colleges to a much higher standard when it comes to transformative education.”
Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams
He said a lot in that paragraph. So boiling down what he said could look something like this:
“A college’s level of fame doesn’t indicate the quality of the education”
By creating that need to explain the core message of the text, it heavily engages your brain and causes it to be much more “stuck” to the text. It also allows you to compile a summary of the book or piece that you can share or explain more easily.
I recommend combining this with Retention so that you not only comprehend but also retain what you read. Which makes it much more effective since “Learning is a change in behavior” and “No change in behavior, means no learning has occurred”. Read more about that here.