One of the first steps in improving reading comprehension skills is to add some breadth and depth to a person's reading materials. If she is typically a fiction reader and having a difficult time comprehending different stories, ask her to begin reading newspapers, nonfiction biographies and other materials that might be different from what she is used to. The more reading a person does, and the more varied those reading materials are, the better she will understand any given topic.
Encourage a person struggling with reading comprehension to predict what he feels will happen throughout the course of a story or book. If he finds out in the end that he is right, it shows his reading comprehension is improving. If his prediction is wrong in the end, it will help him in the future to better understand how books are formatted, therefore improving overall reading comprehension.
Reading aloud is also an easy technique that will help improve reading comprehension. Sometimes when a person is reading to herself, she might read too fast and begin to skip over the main ideas. Reading aloud helps her to slow down and really process what she is reading. In addition, this technique might help a child who is struggling, because it will help her to hear the words at the same time that she is reading them.
Another technique that helps to improve individual reading comprehension skills is for a person to reread a book or short story that he has read previously. While rereading the piece, he might find he better understands what is going on, and that there were some aspects of the book that he missed the first time he read it. This will help him to improve comprehension not only of this text, but of future books as well.