Because of the jump in the difficulty of reading material between high school and college, many students may struggle with the vocabulary with which they suddenly must understand. In high school, textbooks are written for a high school audience. English required reading may not jump substantially in terms of difficulty in college, but the textbooks in technical subjects can suddenly require a much larger vocabulary. Remedial courses will address increasing general and technical vocabularies.
Remedial reading in college is designed to make sure that students can retain what they read to such a degree that they can make use of the knowledge. Summarizing written material seems to be a good measure of this, so some remedial reading classes practice reading and summarizing a given text. This can overlap with writing classes which may be combined or separated from a remedial reading course, as summarizing can be a useful tool in either context.
There is a large difference between remedial reading classes and speed reading classes. Despite this, there is an element of speed that becomes important in remedial reading classes. If a student reads very slowly, they may have difficulty finding the time to read all the material that is assigned to them during a normal college course load. Remedial reading classes may teach ways to scan material faster while still retaining information so that students are able to keep up with the work load that they will face in for-credit classes.
Ultimately, the goal of any reading class has to be to make sure that when a student is finished reading he can use the information he has read when required to apply it or answer a question about it. A structured comprehension method such as SQR3 may be used to teach students a methodical approach to comprehension. SQR3 stands for Survey, Question, Read, Recite and Review, and is a method of improving both speed and comprehension when reading that has been useful to many readers.