READING STRATEGIES

What are the key comprehension strategies to read effectively?

 Activating and Using Background Knowledge.
 Predicting. ...
 Focus on the key words/key concepts/ (gist)
 Summarizing. ...
 Visualizing. ...
 General Comprehension.
 Reading for details

Reading is so much more than starting with the first

word on the page and moving along each line till you
get to the end.
Reading is an essential skill for academic success, and we all know how important it is.
We wouldn’t spend the time we do teaching it if we didn’t value reading. Even though
reading is so essential, we often overlook the fundamental reading skills that our
students need. Reading isn’t just about going from the beginning to the end of a written
passage. There are different reading strategies to use for different informational
outcomes.

Reading may sometimes seem as easy as a, b, c, but in fact

there are strategic ways to make students’ reading more
useful and productive. By teaching skimming, scanning and
key words searching, in addition to reading for detail,
students will get the strategies they need to be successful
learners.
 Here are three strategies students should learn to get full
academic success : skimming, scanning, and in-depth
reading. Each is used for a specific purpose.

Three Quintessential Reading Strategies

1.
Scanning
Scanning is used when looking for a specific piece of
information in a given text. When a student scans, he looks
over the selection quickly to locate the particular piece of
information he needs and reads only that information, but
carefully. Once he finds this information, he stops reading. The
reading passage could be a selection on a test with reading
comprehension questions, but it may also simply be reading a
schedule to see when a particular movie is playing or checking
a weather map in a newspaper. Scanning is a fast form of
reading that does not pay attention to every detail given in the
text. Before students can scan for the answer to their
questions, they should think about what form the answers will
take. Will they be a time? Will they be a location? Knowing this
 beforehand will assist students in locating the information
quickly.

2.
Skimming
Skimming, like scanning, is a quick type of reading. Unlike
scanning, though, the goal of skimming is to learn the main
points in a larger selection of writing rather than answer one
specific question. When you skim milk, you take the richest part
off the top. Likewise, when your students skim a reading
passage, they should be pulling all the most essential
information out of a piece. The most straightforward way to
skim a given passage is to read the entire first paragraph,
the entire last paragraph and read the first sentence of
each additional paragraph in between. In so doing, your
students should be able to identify the major themes throughout
the passage. Students should also pay attention to italicized or
bold words, headings and subheadings. After skimming a
passage, students can then decide whether to go back and
read the entire selection or to scan for particular information.
Skimming can be a difficult activity for ESL students as they
often get bogged down by new vocabulary and
confusing grammar. Reassure your students that when they
skim a passage, they only need to get the author’s primary
points. Encourage them to guess at any new vocabulary they
come across and not to worry about the details.
3.
Reading for Detail
Careful reading or reading for detail is probably the most
commonly used reading strategy. This is a slower reading
process that starts at the beginning of a passage and
proceeds to the end. When reading for detail, students should
read every sentence, but they should not try to know the exact
meaning of each word. Even native speakers infer the
meaning of unknown words as they read. Reassure your
students that even when reading for information, they do not
need to know every word on the page but should try and guess
its meaning from the context, a valuable skill in and of itself. If
students put too much pressure on themselves when it comes
to new vocabulary, the dictionary may become more of a
burden than a blessing. When reading for detail, students
should aim to understand about eighty percent of the
information they read. If they need an answer to a particular
question that they may have missed, they can always go back
and scan for it.

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 The four main types of reading techniques are the
following:
 Skimming
 Scanning
 Intensive
 Extensive

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 Saves You Time
Skimming will certainly save you a lot of time.
But as stated above, it is not the best way to read because you’re
comprehension will be lowered.
However, skimming is useful when your goal is to preview the text to get a better
idea of what it’s about. It will help prepare you for deeper learning.
As learning expert and author Pat Wyman says in her book, Instant Learning
for Amazing Grades, skimming is a terrific idea to get an overview and mental
picture in your mind.
This strategy makes it much easier to recall what you’re about to read.

1. Take a look at the table of contents first.

2. Review the subheadings in each chapter
3. Quicky read the first paragrph in that section
4. Check out anything in your text that is in bold or italics
5. If there is a chapter summary, now is a good time read it over.

This completely prepares your brain to have an overview of what this chapter is
about.
You can then go on to use scanning to find specific important ideas.
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. Pay special attention to the
introduction and the conclusion.
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.
This is one reason why reading huge amounts of information just before an exam
does not work very well.
Students tend to do this, and 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.
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.

Finding keywords in a reading passage

While you are reading the passage, you can identify important keywords in the paragraphs that
will also help you to understand the given information better. Some keywords that can be
underlined are names, dates, locations, facts, figures etc. e definition of a keyword is a
significant word, or a word used to find information when reading.

Signal words/ Key words are words or phrases that cue the reader about an organizational pattern in
the text

• Scan the familiar passage to identify highlighted words and phrases.

• Group and sort words.

• Categorize words and identify possible headings for the categories.

• Use the signal words to predict the text structure and organizational pattern.

Why key words?

Working with key words is vital in comprehending a text. Readers need strategies to identify
which words are key – that is to say, which words will unlock meaning. Skimming and scanning
are such strategies. They all involve self-monitoring.

Words might be key for a variety of reasons:

  unfamiliar
 unusual
 interesting
 critical to meaning.

We explored the text below. Let's revisit - have a scan; which key words emerge for you?

Illya Prigogine has demonstrated that when an ‘open system’, one which exchanges matter
and / or energy with its environment, has reached a state of maximum entropy, its molecules
are in a state of equilibrium. Spontaneously small fluctuations can increase in amplitude,
bringing the system into a ‘far from equilibrium’ state. Perhaps it is the instability of sub-
atomic particles (events) on the microscopic level that causes fluctuations on the macroscopic
level of molecules.

The word entropy and the phrase 'open systems' are likely to stick out as key words to many of
us. If, as strong readers, we don’t fully understand them, we recognize their importance to the
comprehension of this text.

Notice the strategy you apply when you encounter the above words. Chances are you make a
‘mental note’ that the words are both unknown (or not fully understood) and important. If you
were serious about understanding the above, you’d likely plan to revisit those words and make
sure they are understood.

How to teach key words in the classroom

There are lots of ways to do this, but here is a simple model. Select a text similar to the example
above. If you are working with your whole class, selecting a text that is likely to have unknown
vocabulary, even among the stronger readers (including yourself?), is essential.

Display the text on a board for all the class to see, distribute a copy to each learner, or have
them work in pairs. Then go through the following steps:

 Ask students to read the text once through, pens down.

 Ask students to re-read the text, circling one word that is a 'key word'.
 Elicit key words from your class, write them up on the board.
 Discuss what makes these words 'key words' - how did they select them? (Unfamiliar?
Interesting? Critical to meaning? Unusual?).
 Discuss appropriate next steps (dictionary work? ask someone? use context clues?).
USEFUL LINKS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Sn7f7pkXI Key word searching

https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/studentsuccess/thinkliteracy/files/
Reading.pdf__;!!LkSTlj0I!REjE_mGFBiZdpXLOAy25L8pvYKLvlAbipNOCsbAgE9JjI1epdb4qgVL8lYjh2A$

Reading Strategy