I’ll try again. This will probably sound like I’m a weaseling flip flopper, but, hey, I’m not running for president!
The OP asked about reading, and I took that literally. In other words, there is a difference between “reading” and “comprehending.” Wanderlust seems to have no trouble with comprehension, and when I said Wanderlust is a good reader, I meant that Wanderlust has good reading skills.
Of course, comprehension is the main goal in reading. What researchers have discovered is that people who comprehend well have certain reading skills. Here are some of the basics.
First, you must have sufficient background knowledge of the subject. The fancy word for this is “schema.” Your schema is made up of everything you have ever read, everything you have ever experienced, and so on. The more you know about a particular topic, the easier it will be to read. Here is a great example. Read the following paragraph:
The procedure is actually quite simple. First you arrange things into different groups. Of course, one pile may be sufficient depending on how much there is to do. If you have to go somewhere else due to lack of facilities, that is the next step, otherwise you are pretty well set. It is important not to overdo things. That is, it is better to do too few things rather than too many. In the short run this may not seem important but complications can easily arise. A mistake can be expensive as well. At first the whole procedure will seem complicated. Soon, however, it will become just another facet of life. It is difficult to foresee any end to the necessity for this task in the immediate future, but then one can never tell. After the procedure is completed one arranges the materials in groups again. Then they can be put into their appropriate places. Eventually they will be used once more and the whole cycle will have to be repeated. However, this is part of life.
If you are like most people, you “read” it but you didn’t “comprehend” it. Now, read what’s in the spoiler box and go back and re-read it.
This time when you read it, think about doing laundry.
Now that you have the correct “schema,” you can comprehend it as if it were a Dr. Seuss book.
What are some of the other skills good readers use? They ask questions. They can be on the literal level: What does that mean? Or they can be questions that you will find the answers to if you keep reading, or they might be questions that are not answered directly by the text. Good readers constantly ask questions, and make predictions (based on their schemas). The really important part of this strategy is that you are an engaged reader. This will help that lovely phenomenon of reading an entire page of text…only to discover you were thinking about something else and you have no idea what you just read. But you did read it.
Good readers make inferences. Not everything is spelled out by the author, and you have to figure out what things mean. I think this can be one of the trickiest things. One thing that helps you infer is by having a picture in your head. This is one way I test comprehension for my students. Not every 10-year-old can explain to me their level of comprehension, especially learning disabled students. But quite often they can draw what happened, and that helps me understand their perception (or misconception) of what was read.
Another good skill is to synthesize the information. In other words, take the information from what was read, add it to your schema, then come up with a new insight about…well, anything.
There’s more, but it’s a snow day and I don’t have to teach today! Woot!
This happens more with dense writers like Tolkien and Jordan.