1. Identifying Skill Requirements
Reading Techniques
Identifying Skill Requirements

2. Reading Techniques Skimming - Reading rapidly for the main points
Scanning - Reading rapidly through a text to find a particular piece of information
Intensive - Reading shorter texts for detailed information with an emphasis on precise understanding
Extensive - Reading longer texts, often for pleasure and for an overall understanding

3. Identify the reading skills required in the following reading situations:
The TV guide for Friday evening
An English grammar book
An article in National Geographic magazine about the Roman Empire
A good friend's homepage on the Internet
The opinion page in your local newspaper
The weather report in your local newspaper
A novel
A poem
A bus timetable
A fax at the office
An advertising - so called "spam"
An or letter from your best friend
A recipe
A short story by your favorite author
Note: There is often not a single correct answer; several choices may be possible according to your reading purpose.

4. Reading Techniques Do you read every word in the TV schedule?
Do you understand every word you read when reading a novel?
What kind of clues can the presentation of the material give?
How much time do you spend reading the newspaper? Do you read every single word?
What kind of assumptions do you make when you read the first few lines, or a headline? (i.e. Once upon a time....)
How much time do you spend reading the various types of materials?

5. Reading Techniques
These different types of skills are used quite naturally when reading in a mother tongue.
Unfortunately, when learning a second or foreign language, people tend to employ only "intensive" style reading skills.
It has often been noticed that students insist on understanding every word and find it difficult to the advice of reading for the general idea, or only looking for required information.
Students studying a foreign language often feel that if they don't understand each and every word they are somehow not completing the exercise.
When approaching an English text, students first identify what type of reading skill needs to be applied to the specific text at hand. In this way valuable skills, which students already possess, are easily transferred to their English reading.

6. Reading Techniques Technique Purpose Type of Text Skimming Scanning
To obtain the gist (the overall sense) of a piece of text
Scanning
To locate specific information
Telephone directory, dictionary, and any material which will yield a specific answer
Intensive Reading
A high degree of comprehension and retention over a long period of time

7. How do you skim read? Don't read the whole text word-for-word.
Use as many clues as possible to give you some background information. There might be pictures or images related to the topic, or an eye-catching title.
Let your eyes skim over the surface of the text and, whilst thinking about any clues you have found about the subject, look out for key words.
1. Read the title, subtitles and subheading to find out what the text is about. 2. Look at the illustrations to give you further information about the topic. 3. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph Don't read every word or every sentence. Let you eyes skim over the text, taking in key words. 5. Continue to think about the meaning of the text.

8. What is meant by scanning?
Scanning is a fast reading technique. It's a way of reading to look for specific information in a text.
Scanning can be used to look up a phone number, read through the small ads in a newspaper, or for browsing TV schedules, timetables, lists, catalogues or web pages for information. For these tasks you don't need to read or understand every word.
Scanning is also useful when studying or looking to find specific information from a book or article quickly as there is not always time to read every word.

9. Hints and tips for better scanning.
1. Don't try to read every word. Instead let your eyes move quickly across the page until you find what you are looking for. 2. Use clues on the page, such as headings and titles, to help you. 3. In a dictionary or phone book, use the 'header' words to help you scan. You can find these in bold type at the top of each page. 4. If you are reading for study, start by thinking up or writing down some questions that you want to answer. Doing this can focus your mind and help you find the facts or information that you need more easily. 5. Many texts use A-Z order. These include everyday materials such as the phone book and indexes to books and catalogues. 6. There are many ways to practice scanning skills. Try looking up a favourite recipe in the index of a cookbook, search for a plumber in your local Yellow Pages, or scan web pages on the Internet to find specific information.

10. Text Types General Text Type Text Informational
Newspaper article on unemployment figures
Persuasive
An advertisement for a car
Descriptive
A holiday report in a magazine
Instructional
Article on how to give a good speech
Opinion-based
An editorial
Narrative
A day in the life of ... (Magazine article)
Discursive
Article on corporal punishment

11. Learning Reading Skills
Reading Strategy
• Reading Skill Development
knowing why you are reading and what to look out for
• selecting the right parts of the text to read
• linking questions to specific parts of the text
highlighting / boxing / underlining text and questions
• relating text to questions, especially when referring back to check answers
• excluding irrelevant information
pacing your reading - slowing down for difficult sections
• ensuring that correct answers are not rejected just because they are more hidden in the text
• understanding more difficult syntax / lexis
mixing skimming and scanning
• applying the right strategy to the right task
writing / making notes as you read
• sifting and selecting the right information
silently talking the text back to yourself (at the end of each paragraph, for example)
• summarising / forming overall impressions and understanding of the text as a whole
making a note of and exploring any confusion
• deducing meaning from context
asking questions about the author (e.g. Why has she written this? What does she want me to get out of this? How is she feeling?)
• inferring non-explicit meaning, style and attitude
checking the style of the language (such as use of discourse markers)
• recognising the text type through common patterns
bringing your own world knowledge to your reading
• recognising the text typereading faster
anticipating and predicting
• reading faster, scanning or skimming more efficiently