Improving My reading Comprehension

It's become painfully obvious to me that my reading comprehension is lacking. I don't absorb anything I read and often have to read out loud or reread a section multiple times to start being able to grasp whats being said. I lose the line I'm reading every now and then and have to pause to search for it again. I don't know what half the words I read mean or what they're reffering to. If someone starts talking or some sort of interruption happens I'll have to painstakingly restart the whole section because I got distracted. My mind often starts to drift mid reading and I end up not processing what I just read.

Outside of class its fine because I can read as loud as I want to and have all the time in the world to process and understand, but its become a huge problem in class for me precisely because I don't have those luxuries.

Today was especially bad. I was given a 5 page short reading and asked to identify the authors definition of a term and 3 key points of the paper and discuss with a group after. I didn't finish reading by the time group discussions had begun and felt that I was being left behind in the discussion. Through out the reading I didn't understand what the author was saying half the time, either because the way ideas were expressed/phrased was to complex for me or because there were multiple words that I didn't know the meaning of. I felt mentally lethargic and unfocused the whole time.

I didn't really get a full nights rest before class so most of my struggle today may be attributed to that, but I still feel that I'm not at the level my class requires me to be at.

What do you guys recommend I do? I really want to do something about it but I'm honestly at a lost right now. I obviously need to read more, but I don't know where to start, what to read, or how to organize my thoughts.

I can provide excerpts and examples from the paper that I simply didn't understand in the comments if any of you want.

Submitted February 16, 2024 at 03:40AM by everythingistaken18 https://ift.tt/Cx03DOg