Reading Competencies 

The reading competencies expected of a college student may be divided into two categories: literal comprehension and critical comprehension. In this instructional program, the generally accepted skills of reading comprehension are listed along with examples to better describe them. You are likely to improve your score on any reading test by working through this section before you take the exam.

Reading competencies are usually divided into two broad categories:

Literal Comprehension
Critical Comprehension

The literal comprehension skills are directed at the actual words written by the author. They are:

• Selecting the topic sentence of a paragraph
• Identifying the main idea of a passage
• Identifying the supporting detail of a passage
• Determining the meaning of words by context