Reading skills

Reading skills.

Skimming An important reading skill - learners read for the general content of a text. An example of skimming in real life is when we look through an article to get a general idea of what it’s about, before reading in detail.

Example in class:
1. Students are given a newspaper article to read.
2. They have to answer these questions:

Is it a story about a) a crime, b) a rescue, c) an accident?
Is it a story about a) a lot of people, b) a lot of animals, c) one person?
Always give a time limit for skimming exercises, to ensure that the students don’t try to read the passage word by word.

Scanning One of the most important reading skills - learners search a text quickly for specific information.

An example of scanning in real life is looking quickly through the headlines of newspaper for articles of interest.

Example:
A typical scanning exercise in class:

1. Students are given a story about a celebrity.
2. First they read ten questions such as:

What is the name of the celebrity?
Where was he?
Who did he talk to?
3. Then they look quickly at the text to find the answers.

Identifying key words An important reading skill. Students underline the key words in a text, or complete a table with key words from the text.

Example:
Students read a description of a house and complete a table with key words. The completed table might look like this:

Location: near the town, on a hill
Size: big
Rooms: kitchen, sitting room, dining room, study, 4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms
Special features: large garden, swimming pool
General impression: very comfortable, expensive.

Reading for gist An important reading skill. It involves reading a passage to get a general idea of what it’s about, but not worrying about understanding the complete content or every specific idea.