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Study Skills

study skills

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28 views6 pages

Study Skills

study skills

Uploaded by

edwardlungu440
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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STUDY SKILLS

READING
There are different styles of reading for different situations. The technique you choose will
depend on the purpose for reading. For example, you might be reading for enjoyment,
information or to complete a task.
If you’re exploring or revising, you might skim a document. If you’re searching for information,
you might scan for a particular word.
To get detailed information, you need to adjust your reading speed and technique depending
on your purpose. Therefore, before you start to read any text, you must ask yourself why you
are consulting a book.
TYPES OF READING
a) SKIMMING
Skimming is the skill that one would use if one was looking for an isolated fact, or used to quickly
identify the main ideas of a text. Skimming is done at a speed 3 – 4 times faster than normal
reading. The skill of skimming involves running one’s eyes over a piece of text to look for a fact
or two and not wanting to have a detailed understanding of the passage as a whole. You may
skim when looking for an entry in the dictionary to find the meaning of a word, when looking for
a date or an article in a newspaper, when you want the date of someone’s birth, the meaning of
a word etc.
For all these examples, skimming is relevant because reading the whole passage would be a
waste of time. Skimming is also used in the following situations:
a) When you are searching the index of a book to see where a certain topic is dealt with.
b) When you need to know what word class a certain word belongs to. Is it a noun, a verb,
an adjective?
c) When you need to find out the date of a certain historic event or the capital of a certain
country or the take-off-time of an airplane for some destination.
In all the above examples, you’re just looking for a single fact. The major point about skimming
is the speed. you’re not interested in any of the detail that goes with the fact that you’re after:
you want the word class of a particular word and so are not interested in the pronunciation,
meaning and the usage of it: you’re searching for that one fact.
You turn to the relevant page and let your eyes run over the information until you reach the
fact that you’re looking for: you read it, take note of it and put away the book.
How to Skim
1. -read the title
2. -read the introduction or the first paragraph
3. -read the first sentence of every other paragraph
4. -read any heading and subheadings
5. -note any pictures, charts or graphs
6. -notice any italicized or bold face words or phrases
7. -read the summary of last paragraph

b) STUDY READING

Also called reading in depth or search reading, it is the opposite of skimming. The purpose here
is to know the general trend of the argument from a whole book.
It is possible to read the whole book at a rather slow pace in order to understand the points
that build up the author’s argument. Here, one is looking at the whole text to understand the
argument on a certain topic.
By so doing one would need to follow the natural way of reading which is reading line by line.
One needs time to journey through the whole book.
With this skill, we’re not looking for a specific fact, but the whole text and beginning to
understand the arguments which the author is putting forward.
Comprehension by ‘reading in depth’, however must be used in a text when the lecturer has
asked for an essay on some topic. It is this style of reading that you do when you are taking notes
on a topic for use in an essay. When you are taking notes from a text, make sure that you write
down the full reference of the book that you’re taking notes from that when you are writing the
essay you are aware of the source which you are using and can mention it in a shortreference in
the main body of the essay and in your bibliography.

c) SCANNING

The third reading skill involves scanning.


This is a combination of skimming and reading in depth. It is used when we want to find
information that is fairly detailed, for example, when taking into consideration an essay entitled
“the tuberculosis disease” you find a book entitled “Disease in Africa.” This book might be
relevant to your research and essay. You turn to the index; skim through in order to find if there
is anything about tuberculosis. If there is none, you quickly put away the book and find another
e.g. “Major Killer Diseases”. You turn to the index and skimming through you find that there’s
some information about the disease and it’s about “tuberculosis in adult patients”. You turn to
those pages and only those pages and read in depth, ignoring the rest of the book.
This is what you should be doing; reading only what is relevant for your essay and reading in
depth where you find that information. Reading in depth is in fact reading for meaning, study
reading and critical reading. It means reading everything of concern or interest to you, in order
to gain a broad impression of what the author has to say on a subject.
This skill therefore means reading, and rereading a text with care and attention necessary to
absorb the author’s meaning so completely that you can reproduce it in your own word. You
make summary notes as you go on in an effort to make your own version of ideas and
information that fixes them in your memory.
How to Scan
1) State the specific information you are looking for.
2) Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what clues you might use to locate the
answer. For example, if you are looking for a certain date, you would quickly read through
the paragraph looking only for numbers.
3) Use headings and any other aids that will help you identity which sections might contain
the information you are looking for.
4) Selectively read and skip through the section of the passage.

COMMON FAULTS IN READING


(a) Pointing to words as you read – this is a bad reading habit as it slows your pace, when
you point to words, you read words rather than in chunks as you are expected to be
doing.
(b) Head movements – do not move your head as you read this slows you down. When you
read you should only move your eyes.
(c) Vocalization – this involves whispering or saying words aloud as you read. This affects
your reading comprehension.
(d) Sub vocalization – this involves pronouncing words in your mind. This is a very difficult
habit to eradicate because most victims of it are not even aware of it.
(e) Regression – refers to glancing back and re-reading words, phrases
and sentences thatone has already read. This habit usually results
from lack of concentration.
(f) Short span of recognizing words – a good reader has a longer and
larger word recognition span, poor readers have a short span i.e.
they can only capture or recognize one or two words at every
fixation.
(g) Inconsistent (or non-rhythmic) eye movements – the eye move in a
manner that enables the reader to capture the words and group of
words without much interruption,this is rhythmic movement.

SOME PUNCHY PRINCIPLES TO EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION


Communication whether oral or written is all about understanding.
Effective communicationcan be achieved by having thorough knowledge
about the communication cycle and being aware of barriers which exist
and by considering the following vital factors.
(I) what is the objective of the communication?
Is it intended to give information, to persuade, to request, to inform?
(ii) Who will receive the communication?
What is the relationship between the sender and the receiver,
what is the receiver’sbackground knowledge and experience?
(iii)Under what circumstance is the communication taking place? Why is the
communicationhappening, is it urgent, serious, dangerous, emotive or
informative?
(iv) How will the receiver react to the communication?
How will the message affect the receiver? Is it important? Will the
receiver be offended orangered? Will it achieve be the descried aims?
(v) The variables of the communication process
(a) sender/encoder/speaker (the initiator of the message)
(b) Message (information or idea coded into words)
(c) Medium (means or channels through which message are delivered
(d) receiver/decoder/listener (receiver or decoder of the message)
(e) Feedback (reaction by the receiver to the message)
(f) Perception (interpretation of the message by the receiver)

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