The 1992 National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS) found that 40 to 44 million Americans, or approximately one quarter of the US population, are functionally illiterate, and another 50 million have marginal literacy skills. This means that almost half of the US adult population has deficiencies in reading. Of these, 5% have learning disabilities and 15% were born outside the United States. However, the vast majority of adults with poor literacy are white, native-born Americans.

Effective reading comprehension is the culmination of mastering vocabulary, phonics, fluency, and text comprehension skills. Reading comprehension can be improved by: improving your ability to self assess comprehension, actively testing comprehension using questionnaires, and by improving metacognition ("thinking about what you are reading").

Reading comprehension skills separate the "passive" unskilled reader from the "active" readers. Skilled readers don't just read, they interact with the text. Skilled readers, for instance:

• Predict what will happen next in a story using clues presented in the text
• Create questions about the main idea, message, or plot of the text
• Monitor understanding of the sequence, context, or characters
• Clarify parts of the text which have confused them
• Connect the events in the text to prior knowledge or experience