Skimming a text using first lines of paragraphs.

In most academic writing, the paragraph is a coherent unit, about one topic, connected to the previous and next paragraphs. Paragraphs are organised internally and the first sentence of each paragraph is often a summary of, or an introduction to, the paragraph. You can therefore get a good idea of the overall content of a text by reading the first sentence of each paragraph. This should help you get a feeling for the structure of the text. In many cases that will be enough, but if it isn't, you will now have a good idea of the structure of the text and you will find it easier to read in detail. Familiar texts are easier to read.

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 using first lines of paragraphs can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting with the text.

Skimming a text using first and last paragraphs.

In most academic writing, the text is organised clearly with an introduction and a conclusion. The introduction gives you an idea of what the text is going to be about and the conclusion shows that this is what it has been about. You can therefore get a good idea of the overall content of a text by reading the first and last paragraphs of a text. This should help you get a feeling for the content of the text. In many cases that will be enough, but if it isn't, you will now have a good idea of the content of the text and you will find it easier to read in detail. Familiar texts are easier to read.

Skimming a text, using section headings.

In some academic writing, the text is organised through the use of headings and sub-headings. You can therefore get a good idea of the overall content of a text by reading the headings and sub-headings first. This should help you get a feeling for the content and organisation of the text. In many cases that will be enough, but if it isn't, you will now have a good idea of the content of the text and you will find it easier to read in detail. Familiar texts are easier to read.

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, before you start reading to activate the knowledge you have about the topic of the text and to formulate questions based on this information. The title, sub-titles and section headings can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting with the text.

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.

Understanding text structure/organisation.

Every text has a structure. It is not just a random collection of sentences. The parts that make up the text are related in a meaningful way to each other. Recognising the way in which a text has been organised will help you to understand it better. The writer may, for example, be explaining two opposing points of view, or describing why something happens. Undestanding the text organisation will help you understand what the writer is trying to do.

Understanding conceptual meaning.

You will be able to increase both your speed of reading and your comprehension if you can recognise some of the rhetorical functions that the writer is using. Writers use language, for example, to analyse, to describe, to report, to define, to instruct, to classify, to compare, to give examples, to explain, to give reasons, to argue and discuss and to draw conclusions. To understand the text it is necessary to understand what the writer's purpose is.

Identifying reference in the text.

Every text has a structure. It is not just a random collection of sentences. The parts that make up the text are related in a meaningful way to each other. Recognising the way in which a text has been organised will help you to understand it better. In order to understand the text, it is necessary to understand how the sentences are related. Certain items of language in English have the property of reference. That is, they do not have meaning themselves, but they refer to something else for their meaning.

Words like "it", "this", "that", "here", "there" etc. refer to other parts of the text. You need to understand these connections or links. There are four main types of links used in academic texts: reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).

Dealing with difficult words and sentences.

Academic texts are often difficult: they have difficult ideas expressed in difficult language. From a language point of view, there are several features that make the text difficult. They include difficult words, difficult combinations of nouns and difficult sentences.

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?"