Understanding Reading Comprehension Levels

Reading comprehension refers to the ability to process written text, understand its meaning, and connect it to prior knowledge. It encompasses various skills, allowing readers to engage with text at different levels.

Examining Comprehension Strategies

The question describes a specific reading strategy: "reading a piece of text closely or intensely for the purpose of extracting specific information from the text." Let's look at how the options relate to this definition:

• Global Comprehension: This focuses on understanding the main idea or the overall message of the text. It's about grasping the big picture, not necessarily digging for specific details.
• Local Comprehension: This skill involves carefully reading sections of the text to locate and understand specific pieces of information. Examples include finding names, dates, definitions, statistics, or answers to specific questions. This perfectly matches the description given in the question.
• Inferential Comprehension: This requires readers to go beyond the explicit text, understanding implied meanings, drawing conclusions, and making predictions based on the information provided.
• Evaluative Comprehension: This involves critically assessing the text, forming opinions about its content, style, or purpose, and judging its credibility or effectiveness.

Determining the Skill for Specific Information Extraction

The core task described in the question is identifying and extracting specific information. This detailed focus is the hallmark of Local Comprehension. While other comprehension skills are vital for a full understanding of a text, the act of closely reading to pull out particular facts or data points is defined as local comprehension.