READING SKILLS: GENERAL GUIDELINES

5 minute self test

What do you find difficult about reading at university? Tick the boxes below:
 Finding enough time and energy
 Maintaining concentration
 Improving speed
 Managing vocabulary
 Selecting what to focus on in texts
 Understanding new, theoretical or detailed information
 Identifying main points and arguments
 Evaluating evidence
 Identifying similarities and differences between texts
 Reading texts that assume background knowledge & experience
 Reading different types of text (case studies, reports, literature reviews
etc.)
Introduction :
Reading is a process of the brain where you look at symbols on a page, and your
mind sees the patterns of characters and understands the meaning in them. Many
people have trouble with reading. Reading is hard for some people and it can take
time. For this, one should prepare oneself for reading. Pick books depending on your
reading level, no matter what your age. Reading is about enjoying the experience.
Read the page carefully. Don’t rush but take your time. Most people think that
skimming the page is a way of fast reading, but this is definitely not true. If you don’t
understand what you are reading, read over the sentence again. If you still don’t
understand something, ask a good reader nearby to explain the sentence. Try to
read as much as you can on your free time. Reading will help you in lots of ways;
your vocabulary will become larger and more sophisticated.
The reading demands of university study are not easy. Unfortunately, however, it is
all too common for students to pay little attention to their own approaches to reading,
that is, how they read, and how they can improve the effectiveness and speed of
their reading.
Effective reading: general advice
The following advice may seem obvious, but is important.
 • Consider where you read. Always read in a well-lit and quiet place that is free of
distractions, and don’t get into the habit of reading uni materials in bed! (unless you
want to go to sleep).
• Don’t vocalise as you read. This will slow you down, it won’t help concentration, and
it will lead to bad reading approaches.
• Read at times when you can concentrate, and maintain concentration by taking
regular short breaks, perhaps every 30 or 45 minutes.
• Set yourself reading tasks (10 pages, 1 chapter, 1 section of a chapter etc).
• Remember that reading often takes longer than you expect and you often need to
go beyond set texts. Give yourself enough time!
What you read at university
You may be expected to read a wide range of texts that include the course reading pack,
lecture slides, books, journal articles, internet articles, newspapers, research reports, literature
reviews, case studies and strategic plans.
Why you read at University
You may read to: prepare for lectures and tutorials, review information addressed in lectures
and tutorials, conduct research for assignments, or revise for exams.
What reading abilities you need
Beyond being able to simply understand texts, you will need to critique them, evaluate them,
compare and contrast them, and apply the information you find useful from them.
Effective reading: general advice
The following advice may seem obvious, but is important.
• Consider where you read. Always read in a well-lit and quiet place that is free of
distractions, and don’t get into the habit of reading uni materials in bed! (unless you
want to go to sleep).
• Don’t vocalise as you read. This will slow you down, it won’t help concentration, and
it will lead to bad reading approaches.
• Read at times when you can concentrate, and maintain concentration by taking
regular short breaks, perhaps every 30 or 45 minutes.
• Set yourself reading tasks (10 pages, 1 chapter, 1 section of a chapter etc).
• Remember that reading often takes longer than you expect and you often need to
go beyond set texts. Give yourself enough time!
1·2 Reading Techniques :
One of the first things you learn about reading is that there are different reading
techniques and the student should be aware of which techniques is most suited,
depending on the reading task required by the text or by their teacher.
Training students to know their reading techniques and deduce when to apply them
is indeed important, especially under exam conditions when time constraints come
into play and decisions need to be made depending on time availability and the
importance of the task at hand.
Activity: Read the two sentences below, focusing only on the highlighted
words
Today it is more important that ever to be able to read fluently. For example, if you
are a car-driver you have to be able to read a great many road signs.
What are the two sentences mainly about?  reading  writing  travelling
Which word completes the first sentence? …to read …  slowly  fast fluently
Which example of writing is mentioned in the second sentence?  application forms 
road signs  advertisements
Nouns and verbs are the key words you need to focus on
1·3 Approach to Reading Techniques :
There is a five-step approach to reading techniques. They are :
1. Step One : Orientation
Goal : Prereading Preparation
Look carefully at anything that can give you information on the reading : table of
contents, the introduction to the story, the title subheadings within the story, glossary
etc.
Try to find some of this type of information : (a) What kind of text it is; (fairy tale,
report) (b) Whether it is mainly action or dialogue;
(c) Whether it is mainly internal thinking or external interaction among characters; (d)
Whether it is in chronological order; etc.
Next, you should think about what you might associate with any of the results of your
orientation. For example, if you have decided that the text is a drama, think about
what you expect from a drama.
2. Step Two : Skimming
Goal : To get the general meaning (gist) of the story without trying to decode exactly
what each word means.
Read the whole text through silently twice. Do not use a dictionary
Your first reading will help orient you further to the content and make you comfortable
with what you don’t understand in it.
Focus on what does make sense (cognates, compound words, logical relationships
between word and whole phrase, and skip what you don’t understand and, trying to
go with the flow.
Your second reading will give you a much better feeling for the content. You will
notice that some passages were unclear during your first reading are starting to clear
up, since what comes to the end often helps you to understand the beginning.
After completing these two readings, stop and make a mental summary of what you
have understood. Now invest a sentence summarizing what you think the story is
about. You may write something like : This story deals with x and b and (love for
instance).
3. Step Three : Scanning
Goal : To extract specific pieces of information.
In ‘real life’, you might scan a train schedule for one kind of information, a travel
brochure for different information, and a theatre program for a third type. You can
extract certain basic facts only by scanning a text.
Read through the text again very quickly, scanning for the things to focus your
attention more clearly on. Now pull things together. Write just enough to indicate the
progress of the literary text.
4. Step Four : Decoding
Goal : Thorough comprehension
After you have skimmed and scanned, there will still be stretches of text that offer
vocabulary or grammatical difficulties you can’t overcome easily. In those cases,
detailed word-by word decoding is necessary. Read the text again, this time slowing
down and decoding these sections. Remember to think about structure as well as
vocabulary. Establish logical, relationships by finding connectors, locate important
words in the phrase or sentence.
Now you should be able to paraphrase the author, but not necessarily evaluate the
ideas or tell the ‘why’ about the text. When you are finished reading, try to retell
events in your mind and make notes.
5. Step Five : Global Understanding :
Goal : To understand and critically evaluate the ‘why’ of the text
After all the reading and re-reading, ask yourself some questions.
(a) Why did the author put this remark or description?
(b) What is the meaning of a fact alone in relation to other facts in the text
Usually these questions are discussed, but try to figure some of them out by yourself
and make notes to contribute to the discussion.

1·4 Strategies for Developing Reading Skills :

A strategy is a plan developed by a reader to assist in comprehending and thinking
about texts, when reading the words alone does not give the reader a sense of the
meaning of a text. Most researchers and practitioners agree about a core of seven
strategies :
1. Activating background knowledge to make connections between new and
known information :
2. Questioning the text : Proficient readers are always asking questions when they
read.
3. Drawing inferences : Proficient readers use their prior knowledge about a topic
and the information they have gleaned in the text, thus far to make predictions about
what might happen next.
4. Determining importance : In the sea of words, readers must continually sort
through and prioritize information.
5. Creating mental images : Readers are constantly creating mind pictures as they
read, visualizing action, characters or themes.
6. Repairing understanding when meaning breaks down : Proficient readers don’t
just plow ahead through text when it doesn’t make sense–they stop and use “fix-up”
strategies to restore their understanding. One of the most important fix-up tools is
rereading.
7. Synthesizing information : Synthesis is the most sophisticated of the
comprehension strategies, combining elements of connecting, questioning and
infering.
1·5 Reading to Learn :
Reading is an essential part of language instruction at every level because it
supports learning in multiple ways.
(i) Reading to Learn the Language : Reading material is language input. By giving
students a variety of materials to read, instructors provide multiple opportunities for
students to absorb vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure and discourse structure
as they occur in authentic contexts. Students thus gain a more complete picture of
the ways in which the elements of the language work together to convey meaning.
(ii) Reading for Content Information : Students’ purpose for reading in their native
language is often to obtain information about a subject they are studying and this
purpose can be useful in the language learning classroom as well. Reading for
content information in the language classroom gives students both authentic reading
material and an authentic purpose for reading.
(iii) Reading for Cultural Knowledge and Awareness : Reading everyday
materials that are designed for native speakers can give students insight into the
lifestyles and worldview of the people whose language they are studying. When
students have access to newspapers, magazines and websites, they are exposed to
culture in all its variety and monolithic cultural stereotypes begin to breakdown.
When reading to learn, you should follow four basic steps :
(a) Figure out the purpose for reading. Activate background knowledge of the topic in
order to predict or anticipate content and identify appropriate reading strategies.
(b) Attend to the parts of the text that are relevant to the identified purpose and
ignore the rest. This selectivity enables students to focus on specific items in the
input and reduces the amount of information they have to hold in short-term memory.
(c) Select strategies that are appropriate to the reading task and use them flexibly
and interactively. Students comprehension improves and their confidence increases
when they use top-down and bottom-up skills simultaneously to construct meaning.
(d) Check comprehension while reading and when the reading task is completed.
Monitoring comprehension helps students detect inconsistences and comprehension
failure, helping them learn to use alternate strategies.

Activity: Quickly “surface read” the two paragraphs below, paying attention
only to the nouns and verbs. Can you get the basic meaning of the paragraphs
just from this quick read?
Solar energy is released by atomic reactions in the sun. Solar cells can capture
sunlight and convert it to electrical energy. One of the latest ideas is to send huge
collecting panels into orbit around the earth. There, in perpetual sunlight, they could
capture light energy, and convey it to antennae on the earth’s surface. It could then
be converted into electricity.
One of man’s oldest source of power, water, has the additional advantages of being
reusable and clean. The energy of water as it rushes downhill in pipes, gives
hydroelectric schemes the power to turn their turnings and produce electricity. Wave
power is another method for using the energy of water to drive generators for
producing electricity. Tidal energy makes use of the ebb and flow of tides in partially
enclosed basins, such as the Bay of Fundy, in Canada, which has a tidal range of 16
metres!