Skimming to get an overall impression.

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.

Title (plus maybe a sub-title).

Sometimes, perhaps when you are in the library or when you are searching through a catalogue, you need to make quick decisions on the basis of the title, maybe including a sub-title, alone. You need to ask yourself whether the text is relevant for your purpose and what sort of information you expect to get from it.

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.

Date of publication and edition.

This helps you to decide whether or not the book is up to date. It is worth checking whether or not there is a more recent edition.

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.

Preface, Foreword or Introduction.

In the preface, the author explains the purpose, organisation, method of presentation, and whatever particular features of the book you should especially notice. Read it carefully. The author is explaining how to get the most out of the book.

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.

References list or Bibliography.

An alphabetical list of books and articles which have been referred to is included either at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book or article. Looking through the list of rereferences will give you some idea of the author's background.

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.

Skimming 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. In skimming you ignore the details and look for the main ideas. Main ideas are usually found in the first sentences of each paragraph and in the first and last paragraphs. It is also useful to pay attention to the organisation of the text.

As reading is an interactive process, you have to work at constructing the meaning of the text from the marks on the paper. You need to be active all the time when you are reading. It is useful, therefore, if you need to read the text in detail, before you start reading to activate the knowledge you have about the topic of the text and to formulate questions based on this information. Skimming a text for gist can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting with the text.