Vocabulary and Reading Skills ENG 115 Vocabulary and Reading Skills

Reading Skills Scanning Scanning is another speed-reading skill and reading quickly to find short answers to specific questions. Scanning is useful for finding facts, names, numbers, dates and other such facts.

How to scan You must know what to look for. You look for the key terms in the question being asked. You look for synonyms and related terms. You move your eyes to search the text quickly.

2. Skimming Skimming is reading quickly to find the main idea. You skim if you are in a hurry, have a lot to read or need to review something.

How to skim Read the first and last paragraph (introduction and conclusion) 2. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. 3. Look for the key words and read those parts. **** Don’t try to understand detail, and do not let unfamiliar vocabulary slow you down.

3. Finding the right meaning from context Many English words have more than one meaning. The meanings are usually similar, but not always. Some dictionary do not list every meaning of a word but only the most common definition. A dictionary cannot always help you, but the context often can. You can often find the meaning of the word from the sentence or paragraph where you see the word. .

For example: Missed _____ A. Felt the loss or absence of something. _____ B. Did not het something. _____ C. Was absent from some event. _____ D. Did not observe something.

4. Predicting Before you read, it’s helpful to review what you already know about the topic. This will help you to predict the things you will read about, and will increase your understanding of the reading.