A learner can read an entire passage aloud, pronounce most of the words correctly, and even finish before everyone else, yet still struggle to explain what the passage means. This raises an important question about reading in our classrooms: Are some learners reading too quickly to understand what they are reading?

Reading is not simply the ability to move from one word to another. It is an active process that requires attention, interpretation, connection and reflection. While reading fluently and at an appropriate pace is an important skill, speed on its own should not be mistaken for comprehension. The ultimate purpose of reading is to construct meaning.

In some classrooms, however, reading can become a race. Learners may rush through passages, skip unfamiliar words, overlook punctuation, move quickly through long sentences and continue reading even when they have lost the meaning of what they are reading. When comprehension questions follow, some may return to the passage simply to search for words that look similar to those in the questions, rather than thinking carefully about what the text communicates.

This pattern deserves greater attention. I refer to it as hasty reading—not simply reading quickly, but reading hurriedly without giving sufficient attention to meaning.

The distinction is important. Fast reading is not necessarily a problem. A confident reader may move quickly through familiar or straightforward material while maintaining understanding. The concern arises when learners fail to adjust their reading behaviour when a text becomes difficult. Effective readers should be able to recognise when they need to pause, reread, examine a word more carefully or think about the relationship between ideas.

When the text becomes complex

The challenge becomes more visible when learners encounter complex texts. As children progress through school, they are expected to read passages containing unfamiliar vocabulary, longer sentences, abstract ideas and information that may need to be connected across several sentences or paragraphs. A learner who has developed the habit of rushing through simpler texts may find it difficult to change pace when the demands of the text increase.

Complexity does not necessarily mean that a text is “too difficult” for learners. Rather, it may mean that the text requires more deliberate processing. A long sentence, for example, may contain several ideas that need to be unpacked before the learner can understand the whole statement. Similarly, an unfamiliar word may only become meaningful when the learner considers the surrounding sentence and the wider context.

This is why learners need to be taught how to approach complexity, rather than simply being told to read a passage again.

Chunking could make complex texts more manageable

One strategy that deserves greater attention in teacher professional development is chunking. When learners are presented with a large amount of information at once, they may become overwhelmed and lose the connections between ideas. Chunking allows teachers to divide content into smaller, meaningful sections that learners can process before bringing the information together again.

For reading, this could mean breaking a lengthy passage into meaningful sections and allowing learners to pause after each section to identify the central idea, clarify unfamiliar vocabulary and connect the information with what they have already read. A long and complicated sentence can also be unpacked into smaller parts so that learners understand each component before reconstructing the meaning of the whole sentence.

This approach should not be used to remove the challenge from complex texts. Instead, it can help learners develop the skills needed to engage with challenging material without becoming overwhelmed.

For this reason, content-overload chunking methods should be incorporated into continuing professional development (CPD) for teachers. Teachers need practical opportunities to learn how to recognise when learners are likely to experience information overload and how to organise content in ways that support deeper processing.

Teachers also need training in complex-text chunking

There is a difference between simply dividing content into smaller pieces and teaching learners how to navigate a complex text. Teachers need specific strategies for identifying the features of a text that may create difficulty and for guiding learners through them.

A teacher working with a complex passage might stop at a demanding sentence and ask: What is this sentence saying? Which part is difficult? What does the previous sentence tell us? Can we break this sentence into smaller meaningful parts? What can we infer from the information around it?

Such questions encourage learners to become active participants in the reading process. They begin to see that understanding a difficult text may require effort, rereading and reflection.

Complex-text chunking should therefore form part of teacher CPD, particularly in the teaching of reading comprehension across the curriculum. The goal should not be to simplify every challenging text for learners, but to equip teachers with methods that help learners access, process and understand complexity.

Vocabulary should not always be handed to learners

Vocabulary is another important part of this conversation. When learners encounter an unfamiliar word, teachers sometimes provide the meaning immediately. While direct explanation is necessary in some situations, learners should also be given opportunities to work out meaning from context.

A learner can be taught to examine the words surrounding an unfamiliar term, look for clues within the sentence, consider what has already been discussed and make a reasonable inference about its meaning. This is an important reading skill because it helps learners become less dependent on the teacher or dictionary for every unfamiliar word they encounter.

Teaching vocabulary inference also keeps learners engaged with the text. Instead of stopping whenever they encounter an unfamiliar word, they learn to ask themselves: “What might this word mean here?”

Of course, inference should not replace direct vocabulary instruction. Some words require explicit teaching, particularly when their meanings cannot reasonably be inferred from context. The goal is to help learners develop a range of strategies rather than relying on only one approach.

Reading should not become a race

Perhaps the most important lesson is that learners need to understand that good reading does not always happen at one fixed speed. A straightforward paragraph may be read relatively quickly. A difficult sentence may require a pause. A confusing section may require rereading. An unfamiliar word may require the reader to look for contextual clues.

In other words, good readers adjust their reading behaviour according to the demands of the text.

This is a skill that can be explicitly taught and practised. Teachers can model their own thinking while reading, showing learners what happens when a reader encounters a difficult sentence: pause, identify the difficulty, examine the context, reread, make a connection and continue.

Such modelling can help learners understand that struggling with a difficult section is not necessarily a sign that they are poor readers. Sometimes, stopping and thinking is exactly what a successful reader does.

A conversation worth having in Ghanaian schools

The concern about reading comprehension should therefore extend beyond asking whether learners can read words accurately. We should also ask how they behave when reading becomes demanding.

Do they pause when meaning is unclear? Do they reread? Do they use context to infer vocabulary? Can they break a complex sentence into meaningful parts? Can they recognise when they have stopped understanding?

These questions could provide a useful direction for research and classroom practice in Ghanaian basic schools.

If we want learners to become confident readers, we cannot only teach them to move through texts. We must also teach them how to think through texts.

The goal should not be for a learner to say, “I have finished the passage.” The more important achievement is for the learner to say, “I understand what I have read.”

Perhaps, then, the question we need to ask is not simply “How fast can our learners read?” but “How well do they understand when the reading becomes difficult?”

That is a conversation worth having.

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Author: Faith Aku Dzakpasu (Ghana's Most Outstanding Teacher, 2023), Top 50 finalist for the Global Teacher Prize.