Reading Comprehension: What are the requisite basic skills?

When you read a passage, what do you do in order to comprehend the passage?

•       Do you use your prior knowledge?
•       Do you look for clues to read in between the lines?
•       Do you note down the key words in the questions?
•       Do you pay particular attention to the grammar?
•       Do you look for what is missing, or what has been left unsaid?

Sometimes, some or all of these techniques will come in useful when trying to understand a passage. Let me give you an example to demonstrate what I mean. The following passage is an extract from Jerome K. Jerome's autobiography, Three Men in a Boat (Chapter 1).

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each." So I went straight up and saw him, and he said: "Well, what's the matter with you?"

I said: "I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it.

I said: "You are a chemist?"

He said: "I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative store and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with 
1 pt. bitter beer 
every 6 hours. 
1 ten-mile walk every morning. 
1 bed at 11 sharp every night. 
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

I followed the directions, with the happy result - speaking for myself - that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

(Extract from Chapter 1 of Jerome K. Jerome's ~Three men in a boat")

Questions:

1)      What do you think is the doctor's opinion of the author?

2)      How does the author think he will be doing his friend `a good turn' by going to him for consultation?

3)      What are the five advices found in the prescription and how are these useful in ensuring that the author lives a healthy life?

Qn No.	Key Words in:	Answer
1	Question: Refer to question for key words in blue Passage: (highlighted in turquoise) Refer to passage for key words in red.	(A `what' question calls for a specific answer, and here we are looking for the doctor's opinion.) The doctor thinks that the author is imagining his illness / In the doctor's opinion, the author is a hypochondriac. (When the doctor does the usual superficial examination, he doesn't seem concerned at all since he is talking of the weather.)
2	Question: Refer to question for key words in blue Passage: (highlighted in yellow) Refer to passage for key words in red.	(A `how' question calls for a look at the process, at the way in which the author will be helping his friend.) The doctor will have a better opportunity to work on finding ways to heal various diseases from treating him since he has so many more diseases than an ordinary patient who would have just one or two.
3	Question: Refer to question for key words in blue Passage: (highlighted in grey) Refer to passage for key words in red.	The five advices are: 1.   Eat a hearty meal; 2.   Drink liquor; 3.   Exercise daily; 4.   Sleep at the right time; and 5.   Don't pretend to be knowledgeable in areas that are beyond one's expertise. Each helps the author to lead a healthy life by: 1.   Giving him the proper nourishment; 2.   Making him carefree and forget his worries; 3.   Keeping his body fit; 4.   Enabling his body to get ample rest; and 5.   Ensuring that he doesn't get unduly anxious by unsubstantiated thoughts.

Now consider the following questions, and at the end of the week, we will offer our suggested answers.

Questions:

1. Why did the author decide not to tell the doctor what is `the matter' with him?
2. What does the `it' refer to when the author mentioned that he `came to discover it all'?
3. Explain what the author means when he said that the doctor `opened me and looked down me'?
4. From the doctor's actions when examining the author, state what the doctor's opinion of the author may be?
5. Why would being `only a chemist' make it difficult for the chemist to fulfil the prescription?