Scanning to locate specifically required information.

Efficient reading skills

Reading involves the use of the eyes and the brain. In order to read fast, you need to use more of your brain. Reading fast means reading efficiently. This means not wasting time and using your eyes and brain together well. To do this, you need to read purposefully and interactively.

Purposeful

Reading is purposeful. The way you read something will depend on your purpose. You read different texts in different ways. In everyday life, you usually know why you are reading, you have a question and you read to find the answer. You usually know your way around your favourite newspaper, so if you want to know the sports results, you go straight to the correct page, or if you want to know what is on television tonight, you go straight to the television page. You do not start on the first page. When you read a novel, it is different. You start at the beginning and slowly move towards the end. In academic reading, you need to be flexible when you read - you may need to read quickly to find relevant sections, then read carefully when you have found what you want. General efficient reading strategies such as scanning to find the book or chapter, skimming to get the gist and careful reading of important passages are necessary as well as learning about how texts are structured in your subject.

Interactive

Reading is an interactive process - it is a two-way process. As a reader you are not passive but active. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper, which you use as necessary. You construct the meaning using your knowledge of the language, your subject and the world, continually predicting and assessing. MacLachlan & Reid (1994, pp. 3-4) talk about interpretive framing, which is essential in order to understand what you are reading. They discuss four types of framing:

• Extratextual framing - using information outside the text, your background knowledge and experience, to understand texts.
• Intratextual framing - making use of cues from the text, such as headings and sub-headings and referential words such as "this" and "that" to understand texts.
• Intertextual framing - making connections with other texts you are reading to help to understand your text.
• Circumtextual framing - using information from the cover of the book, title, abstract, references etc. to understand the text.

 

You need to be active all the time when you are reading and use all the information that is available. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you know, and do not know, about the subject and as you are reading to formulate questions based on the information you have. All the information given above can be used to help you formulate question to keep you interacting.

Useful skills are:

• Scanning to locate specifically required information.
• Surveying a text.
• Using the title. Sometimes you have to make quick decisions based on the title.
• Skimming a text to get an overall impression. Skimming is useful when you want to survey a text to get a general idea of what it is about.

Scanning to locate specifically required information.

When you look for a telephone number or a name in an index, your eyes move quickly over the words until you find the particular information you are looking for. You ignore everything except the specific information you want. Scanning is directed and purposeful and should be extremely fast.

Surveying the text

Most of the time you will be reading serious academic texts books, journal articles and other academic texts. And often you will need to read your texts closely and carefully in order to understand specific information. However, you cannot read every word in every book in the library. It is useful therefore to learn reading techniques to help you quickly assess new material, decide if it is useful and which parts need to be read more carefully. It is also much easier to read the texts in detail when you have a rough idea of what a text is about - roughly what the author's purpose is, what is at the beginning of the text and what is at the end.

Surveying the text

Whatever you need to read, it is useful to have a quick look at it all first to get an idea of the layout of the text and what is included.

So first, skim through the text to see what is included and how it is organized. Your text might not contain all the following parts, but you can expect to find many of them. Look especially at the following parts.

Details about the author.

It can be helpful to know about the author, what the author's academic position is, what experience the author has had, etc.

Abstract.

An abstract is usually a single paragraph at the beginning of the text. It normally summarises the different sections of the text and draws attention to the main conclusions. Reading the abstract will help you to decide whether or not the text is relevant for your purpose.

Table of Contents.

The contents will give you an overall view of the material in the book. Looking at this is a quick and easy way to survey the book to see if it includes the information you need.

Text.

The layout of the text can help you. Text books are organised into chapter and chapters have titles and section headings.Very often each chapter will start with an introduction of what is in the chapter and a summary at the end.

Index.

One of the most important sections of any textbook is the index at the end. This is a fairly detailed alphabetical listing of all the major people, places, ideas, facts, or topics that the book contains, with page references. The index can give you information about the topics covered in the book and the amount of attention paid to them.

Blurb.

The blurb is the publisher's description of what the book is about, usually on the back cover. But remember that the main purpose is to sell the book.

Reviewers' comments.

These are usually on the back cover, but remember they are chosen by the publisher and therefore will probably be good.

Using the title

Reading is an interactive process - it is two-way. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper. You need to be active all the time when you are reading. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you know, and do not know, about the subject and then formulate questions based on the information you have. You can then read to answer these questions.

Title, sub-titles and section heading can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting.

The title is a summary of the text. Sometimes we have to make quick decisions based on only the title. Therefore it is useful to try to understand it well. This may mean looking up unfamiliar words in a dictionary.

It is a good idea to ask yourself the following questions, based on the title.

1. Is this text relevant to your needs? Is it related to the subject you are studying?

2. What do you expect to learn from the text? Ask yourself some questions that you expect the text to answer.

Understanding texts

Useful skills are:

· Understanding text structure/organisation. Understanding the text organisation will help you understand the writer's purpose and where to find other information.

· Understanding conceptual meaning, e.g. comparison, purpose, cause, effect

· Understanding reference in the text, e.g. it, he, this, that, these those

· Dealing with difficult words and sentences.

· Critical reading. Reading critically - evaluating arguments, weighing evidence, recognising implications, and assumptions, the author's point of view.

 

Difficult words.

It is unlikely that you will know every word in a text and even if you think you have seen every word before, it is unlikely that you will have seen a particular word in its present context. It is therefore necessary to work out the meaning of unfamiliar words in context and, perhaps, familiar words in new contexts. This is necessary even if you have a dictionary as your dictionary does not know the exact context in which the word is being used.

If you think your vocabulary level is too low for academic work there are three solutions: read, read and read.

A. Is it necessary to know the exact meaning of a particular word? Often a rough meaning is enough (does the word have a positive or negative meaning?). Remember that the purpose of reading an academic text is to get information and it is possible to understand the text without knowing the meaning of every word. It is not necessary to be able to explain, or translate, the meaning of a word.

B. Look for definitions. The author may know a particular word may be new so explains. The author may also be using the word in a new, or unusual way so will need to explain how it is being used. This will be done by using a definition, an explanation, an example or by using a synonym (a word with the same meaning). The phrases "called", "known as", "is the name applied to", "in other words", "that is", "is said to be" are often used.

C. Work out the meaning of the word or phrase.

There are two main approaches to doing this. It may not tell you the exact meaning of the word, but it may help you to narrow down the possibilities so the text makes sense:

1. You can analyse the word itself. You can look inside the word. You can use your knowledge of similar words and look at how the word is constructed. Using this information you can find information about (a) the meaning of the word as well as (b) grammatical information.

a. Affixes can help you work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word. For example, if you do not know the meaning of the word "incomprehensible", you can work it out if you are familiar with "comprehend" meaning understand, "in" meaning not, and "ible" meaning can. Therefore "an incomprehensible sentence" refers to a sentence that you cannot understand.

In the Jabberwocky text above, we know "outgrabe" is a verb because "out-" is a common verb prefix ("outwit", "outdo")

See Vocabulary building: Affixes and roots for more examples

b. It is not usually difficult to work out the grammatical category: noun, verb, adjective, adverb etc. If the word ends in "-ing" or "-ed" it could be a verb; if the word ends in "-ly", it may be an adverb; if the word ends in "-tion", it is possibly a noun. If the word ends in "-ise", it is probably a verb. If you see a sentence like "The spid claned lanly", you can work out that "claned" is the past tense of the verb "clane", and "lanly" is an adverb.

2. You can use the context. You can make use of the other words, phrases, sentences and information around the problematic word. Using this information you can find information about the meaning of the word as well as grammatical information. (a) Grammatical information can be obtained from the place of the word in the sentence. (b) Information about the meaning of the word can come from the meanings of the other words in the context.

a. By using your knowledge of typical English clause and phrase structure, you can often work out the grammatical function of a particular word. Typical clause structures are SPO, SPA, SPOC.

b. Information about the meaning of the word can come from the meanings of the other words in the context. Using your knowledge of the world and your subject can help. You can, for example, make use of your knowledge of the relationship between object and purpose, "He took the... and drank", "She sat on the..." or cause and effect, "The heavy... caused the river to rise". Words and phrases connected with "and", "moreover" or "in addition" will have related meanings and clauses connected with "while" or "although" will have opposite meanings.

You will need to use context even with simple words like "like", "too", "light", " fly", as they have different meanings and grammatical forms. You will need to use the context to determine which is being used in a particular situation.

Noun combinations

Combinations of nouns are common in academic texts. A "steel box" is a box made of steel and a "computer programmer" is someone who programmes computers. The problem is to understand the relationship between the nouns. A "hand towel" is a towel for drying your hands but a "bath towel" is not a towel for drying the bath. A "paper bag" is a bag made out of paper, but a "hand bag" is not a bag made out of hands and a "shopping bag" is not a bag made out of shopping. In order to understand these combinations, it is first necessary to identify the headword and work backwards.

Difficult sentences

When a sentence cannot be understood even though all the vocabulary is known, it is often because it is long and syntactically complex. There are a number of causes of difficulty:

1. complex nominal groups
2. nominalisation
3. co-ordination
4. subordination

A. A nominal group is a head noun modified by adjectives, nouns, or other words which may come before or after it. It is often the words that come after the head noun that cause most difficulty.

B. Nominalisation is common in academic texts. This is the formation of a noun from a verb. In the examples above, "unwillingness" is a noun from the verb "willing", and "recommendations" is a noun from the verb "recommend". As if often the case with complex sentences, it is useful to change the noun back to a verb and work out which nouns, functioning as subject and object, are associated with it. In example 1 above, the subject of unwilling is "biologists".

C. Co-ordination is joining sentences together with words like "and" or "but". It is sometimes difficult to decide exactly what is joined together.

D. Subordinate noun-clauses are often difficult to understand as they make it difficult for the reader to understand which nouns function as subject or object of the verb. It is useful in such a situation to identify the basic structure of the sentence by identifying the main verb and then asking various questions like "Who does what?"

 

Efficient reading skills

Reading involves the use of the eyes and the brain. In order to read fast, you need to use more of your brain. Reading fast means reading efficiently. This means not wasting time and using your eyes and brain together well. To do this, you need to read purposefully and interactively.

Purposeful

Reading is purposeful. The way you read something will depend on your purpose. You read different texts in different ways. In everyday life, you usually know why you are reading, you have a question and you read to find the answer. You usually know your way around your favourite newspaper, so if you want to know the sports results, you go straight to the correct page, or if you want to know what is on television tonight, you go straight to the television page. You do not start on the first page. When you read a novel, it is different. You start at the beginning and slowly move towards the end. In academic reading, you need to be flexible when you read - you may need to read quickly to find relevant sections, then read carefully when you have found what you want. General efficient reading strategies such as scanning to find the book or chapter, skimming to get the gist and careful reading of important passages are necessary as well as learning about how texts are structured in your subject.

Interactive

Reading is an interactive process - it is a two-way process. As a reader you are not passive but active. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper, which you use as necessary. You construct the meaning using your knowledge of the language, your subject and the world, continually predicting and assessing. MacLachlan & Reid (1994, pp. 3-4) talk about interpretive framing, which is essential in order to understand what you are reading. They discuss four types of framing:

• Extratextual framing - using information outside the text, your background knowledge and experience, to understand texts.
• Intratextual framing - making use of cues from the text, such as headings and sub-headings and referential words such as "this" and "that" to understand texts.
• Intertextual framing - making connections with other texts you are reading to help to understand your text.
• Circumtextual framing - using information from the cover of the book, title, abstract, references etc. to understand the text.

 

You need to be active all the time when you are reading and use all the information that is available. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you know, and do not know, about the subject and as you are reading to formulate questions based on the information you have. All the information given above can be used to help you formulate question to keep you interacting.

Useful skills are:

• Scanning to locate specifically required information.
• Surveying a text.
• Using the title. Sometimes you have to make quick decisions based on the title.
• Skimming a text to get an overall impression. Skimming is useful when you want to survey a text to get a general idea of what it is about.

Scanning to locate specifically required information.

When you look for a telephone number or a name in an index, your eyes move quickly over the words until you find the particular information you are looking for. You ignore everything except the specific information you want. Scanning is directed and purposeful and should be extremely fast.

Surveying the text

Most of the time you will be reading serious academic texts books, journal articles and other academic texts. And often you will need to read your texts closely and carefully in order to understand specific information. However, you cannot read every word in every book in the library. It is useful therefore to learn reading techniques to help you quickly assess new material, decide if it is useful and which parts need to be read more carefully. It is also much easier to read the texts in detail when you have a rough idea of what a text is about - roughly what the author's purpose is, what is at the beginning of the text and what is at the end.

Surveying the text

Whatever you need to read, it is useful to have a quick look at it all first to get an idea of the layout of the text and what is included.

So first, skim through the text to see what is included and how it is organized. Your text might not contain all the following parts, but you can expect to find many of them. Look especially at the following parts.