Reading Skills

INTRODUCTION

1. Understanding what we read is the most demanding aspect of reading.

2. To comprehend what we read, we need to acquire reading techniques.

3. Reading becomes more meaningful and enjoyable after implementing reading techniques

Improving Comprehension Skills

1. Don’t limit yourself to textbooks only, rather read a variety of materials like journals, articles, magazines and newspaper.

2. Circle unfamiliar words you read and refer dictionary for meanings

3. After reading, recall as much as of the information as possible.

4. Answer the questions about the material after reading.

Techniques for Good Comprehension

Skimming and Scanning

  1. Skimming: Reading a text quickly to get a general idea of meaning.
  2. Example, Reading the topic of an essay and its outlines.
  3. Scanning: reading the text in more detail and looking for specific information that you are interested in.
  4. Example, you are reading the essay in detail to grab some specific information on the topic.

Non-verbal signals

Fonts, bold prints, underlining, italics, headings, title, subheadings, photographs, captions, figures, graphs, bars, charts, etc.

Structure of the text

  1. A text generally starts with a title, sometimes a subtitle.
  2.  then comes introduction, the body and conclusion.
  3. The important aspect of reading is prediction, the better you can predict what you are going to read, the faster you can read and comprehend.
  4. Body of the text consists of several paragraphs, and they are linked in a logical way, each paragraph deals with one aspect of the subject matter.

Structure of paragraphs

  1. A paragraph consists of 3 parts
  2. The 1st part is the topic sentence
  3. The 2nd part of the paragraph develops support for the topic sentence
  4. The 3rd part is a summary of the paragraph, conclusion.

Punctuation

  1. Based on grammar
  2. Understanding the meaning and usage of punctuation marks, makes easier to understand the grammatical structures of the text.

Author’s viewpoint

  1. You can find the author’s position in the text, while reading it.
  2. If the author adds words like fortunately or unfortunately, /she shows her or his approval or disapproval respectively.
  3. The author can also use words of surprise, regret, emotions and levels of certainty in the text. Words like, surprisingly, desirable, naturally, always, often, probably, hardly, etc.
  4. The author can also use words to add   value to his or her viewpoint; ex, if something is very big s/he can write huge or gigantic.

Reader’s anticipation

  1. The reader should have a wide and flexible range of vocabulary to understand the author’s viewpoint.
  2. For example, determine the word; noun, verb, adverb, etc
  3. Determine its function in the sentences.
  4. Analyse the contextual clues, whether the word bears a positive or negative meaning.
  5. Try and derive the eventual meaning of the word.

Summarizing

  1. It’s very difficult to recall the contents of a long text. To recall it easily, the reader should point down some outlines or notes of the particular text.
  2. The length of the summary depends upon the size of the text.
  3. Naturally, the summary of a text should be the one third (1/3) size of the text.
  4. If the text is too lengthy then the size of the summary may become longer.

Typical reading comprehension questions

  1. After reading the passage one should become familiar with the questions asked in the standardized tests. It would help the reader to be attentive while reading the passages.
  2. What’s the passage trying to tell you?
  3. What is the tone/attitude of the author?
  4. What title would you give to the passage?
  5. What’s implied by a section in the passage?

SQ3R Reading Techniques

SURVEY

  1. We need to get an over-view of the text before finding out answers for the given questions.
  2.  We can get an overview of the text by reading the title, contents, headings, subheadings, chapters, summaries, reading the introduction and conclusion, etc.
  3. Surveying a text is more or less equal to scanning the text.

Question

  1. Many a time we put several questions to ourselves to clarify something/idea.
  2. Such questions enable us to get a detailed idea of everything.
  3. Similarly, while/before reading a text, we should ask questions on its contents.

READ & RECALL

  1. Reading and reciting steps enable us to retain most of the information in the text.
  2. After surveying and questioning, we need to rad the text by focusing the main points. We may have to slow down our reading pace in case of complicated text whereas we may read fast the simple texts.
  3. After reading we need to recall the main points and supporting details.

REVIEW

  1. Last step of SQ3R
  2. You need to test yourself by covering the key points whether we remember them.
  3. If we are successful at this attempt, we can check the correctness by referring to the text.
  4. Otherwise, we can reread or expand our notes or discuss with our friends the main points.
  5. These steps will enable us to review the text.
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