Reading Efficiency Active Reading

Ways of reading readingQuick readingskimming Scanning and searching Careful reading Structure Organisation Critical reading

Titles Predicting: study the title: Using the title: The titles of books or articles can be very helpful to you. Usually the the titles of academic books or article are factual and informative: they almost act as very brief summaries of the contents of the text. When you are studying a bibliography, you have to make a decision, on the basis of the title alone, whether a book or an article is going to be helpful to you.

Anticipation Questions Use the title of an article or of a book to anticipate content: Help yourself focus your reading by asking yourself questions like: 1.What sort of questions do I expect this text to answer?; 2.What sort of information do I expect this text to contain?

Anticipating content: using titles Look at the following titles can you anticipate their content? ‘Unconstrained Growth: the development of a Spanish tourist resort’ ( By John Pollard and Rafael Dominguez Rodrigues, Geography, vol 80 (i), Jan 1995, pp 33-44) ‘Age concern? The geography of greying Europe.’ (By Stephen Jackson. Geography, vol.85 (4), Jan 1995, pp 45-57)

Skimming, scanning and searching Skimming: when we skim through a text, we read it quickly to get an overall impression of the text (overview) Scanning and searching: when we scan and search, we are looking for specific information which we have been asked to find, or which we know, or suspect, is there.

skimming Useful techniques: 1.Quickly skim through any titles/subtitles in the text. 2.Read text selectively. Pay particular attention to the way the paragraphs begin and end. 3.There is the saying ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’: look out for helpful illustration, photographs or diagrams that summarise what the writer is saying.

Skimming exercise The title of the article is ‘Negotiating by ’. From the title, what sort of topics do you think the reader will be dealing with? Are there any diagrams or illustrations that help you form an overview of the article and it’s content? Skim through the article. Then answer this question. What are the main points the writer is making about using in business negotiation. Does the writer warn or advise readers, or both? Can you divide the content into either warnings or advice?

Scanning and searching Scanning and searching are other aspects of quick reading. they involve: 1.Scanning - looking for a particular word or phrase in the text; (key words are sometimes in bold) 2.Searching - looking for specific information