Different Reading Techniques And When To Use Them

by Karl McDonald | Aug 23, 2012 | Articles |

READING STRATEGIES: SCANNING, SKIMMING AND INTENSIVE READING

One of the first things you learn about teaching is that there are different reading
techniques and the students should be aware of which technique is most suited, depending on
the reading task required by the text or by their teacher.
Training students to know their reading techniques and deduce when best to apply them is
indeed important, especially under exam conditions when time constraints come into play and
decisions need to be made depending on time availability and the importance of the task at
hand.

You will probably be aware that you are already skilled in using different reading strategies for
different purposes in your daily life. You may feel less confident about doing this in your
academic studies: maybe you read everything too thoroughly. Or perhaps you have become too
confident and have discovered from the feedback from your tutor or supervisor that you do not
read key texts thoroughly enough. It is important to match your reading strategy to the reading
purpose.

Consider whether you ever read for these purposes and what reading strategy you tend to use:
Reading purpose
Example from daily life
Example from academic work

1. look for specific information when you know how to locate it by following a procedure
· look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary
· look for a particular reference in a reference list of an article
2. search for specific information that may be somewhere a text
· check particular details of an incident reported in a newspaper article
· check what research methods the authors of a research report article used
3. look quickly through a text to see what it is about before deciding to read it
· see whether a magazine article will be worth reading
· see whether an academic article is going to be relevant for your task
4. read quickly through a text to gain an overview of its content
· read through a new recipe
· read a front-line text which is relevant but not central to your task
5. read through an easy text where it is not important to remember all that you’ve read
· read a novel
· read a textbook chapter to revise a subject that you know well
6. read a text thoroughly to understand and remember what you’ve read
· read the instructions for booking and paying for a journey on-line
· read a front-line text whose content is central to your task
You may find it useful to think in terms of three main reading strategies:

The four main types of reading techniques are the following:

Skimming
Skimming is sometimes referred to as gist reading. Skimming may help in order to know what
the text is about at its most basic level. You might typically do this with a magazine or
newspaper and would help you mentally and quickly shortlist those articles which you might
consider for a deeper read. You might typically skim to search for a name in a telephone
directory.
You can reach a speed count of even 700 words per minute if you train yourself well in this
particular method. Comprehension is of course very low and understanding of overall content
very superficial.
· skimming - reading just those parts of a text that are most likely to indicate what the authors
are talking about at different points in order to gain an overview of the content (situations 3
and 4)
Scanning
Picture yourself visiting a historical city, guide book in hand. You would most probably just scan
the guide book to see which site you might want to visit. Scanning involves getting your eyes to
quickly scuttle across sentence and is used to get just a simple piece of information.
Interestingly, research has concluded that reading off a computer screen actually inhibits the
pathways to effective scanning and thus, reading of paper is far more conducive to speedy
comprehension of texts.
Something students sometimes do not give enough importance to is illustrations. These should
be included in your scanning. Special attention to the introduction and the conclusion should
also be paid.
· scanning - looking through a text to find keywords and phrases that are likely to indicate the
specific information that you are seeking, then reading just this piece of the text (situations 1
and 2 above)

Intensive Reading
You need to have your aims clear in mind when undertaking intensive reading. Remember this
is going to be far more time consuming than scanning or skimming. If you need to list the
chronology of events in a long passage, you will need to read it intensively. This type of reading
has indeed beneficial to language learners as it helps them understand vocabulary by deducing
the meaning of words in context. It moreover, helps with retention of information for long
periods of time and knowledge resulting from intensive reading persists in your long term
memory.
· intensive reading - reading through every word of a text from beginning to end (situations 5
and 6)
For many reading purposes in academic work you may have noticed that you use more than
one strategy in sequence. For a particular text that turns out to be centrally important for your
reading purpose, the sequence might be:
· scan the title and abstract to see whether the text is likely to be at all relevant
· scan through parts of the content to see whether particular details in the text confirm that it
will be relevant
· skim the text to gain an overview of its content and confirm how centrally relevant it is
· intensively read the whole text since it clearly is centrally relevant, so as to understand and
evaluate its content in depth
A secret of efficient reading, that will soon become automatic if you consciously do it for
every text, is to check how well the reading strategy you are going to use next fits your
reading purpose.
• Check your reading purpose and then use scanning, skimming or intensive reading -
either on their own or in sequence - as required to achieve this purpose.
This is one reason why reading huge amounts of information just before an exam does not work
very well. When students do this, they undertake neither type of reading process effectively,
especially neglecting intensive reading. They may remember the answers in an exam but will
likely forget everything soon afterwards.

There are many textbooks and websites that offer general guidance on reading strategies.
Some include practical exercises to help you improve your skills. If search with your website
browser using keywords such as ‘skim read’ or ‘scan skim’ will lead you to plenty of sites.
Extensive reading
Extensive Reading involves reading for pleasure. Because there is an element of enjoyment in
extensive reading it is unlikely that students will undertake extensive reading of a text they do
not like. It also requires a fluid decoding and assimilation of the text and content in front of you.
If the text is difficult and you stop every few minutes to figure out what is being said or to look
up new words in the dictionary, you are breaking your concentration and diverting your
thoughts.

Is the ability to learn and assimilate information genetic?

It is not uncommon for people to associate intelligent or bright kids with their equally
intelligent parents. Often children of parents exercising a profession appear to be more
intelligent. However, it is important to note first and foremost, that academic intelligence is
only one form of intelligence and even a university professor who scores high on academic
intelligence, might be the most impractical person, finding it difficult to pragmatically solve
problems to simple everyday tasks. The notion of intelligence is an extremely complex and
diverse one and to pin it into just a single word means whipping out the multitude of
connotations and meanings that it actually embodies.

Scientists have found no plausible relationship between our genes and our ability to learn or
our intelligence. There is no genetic DNA test that can predict intelligence because intelligence
is due to your environment. It is likely that children with parents who exercise a profession
appear more intelligent because their parents directly or directly encourage it. Likely, it is also
evident that parents who neglect their children and do not enforce their schooling
commitments (doing their homework, study periods etc) will perform less well in school and
appear “less intelligent”. Again, it is evident why children who have had no opportunity for
schooling might be considered anything but “intelligent”.