1. Reading Skills Prof. Miguel A. Arce Ramos English 213
Pontifical Catholic University of Puerto Rico

2. The Four Reading Skills
There are four basic reading skills in every language.
Scanning
Extensive Reading
Intensive Reading
Skimming

3. Skimming
Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information, or ‘gist’ of what you are trying to read.
How to skim?
Run your eyes over the text, noting important information.

4. Skimming
When to skim?
Use skimming to quickly get up to speed on a current business situation.
It's not essential to understand each word when skimming.

5. Skimming
Skimming is one of the tools you can use to read more in less time.
Skimming refers to looking only for the general or main ideas, and works best with non-fiction (or factual) material.
Examples of Skimming:
The Newspaper (quickly to get the general news of the day)
Magazines (quickly to discover which articles you would like to read in more detail)
Business and Travel Brochures (quickly to get informed)

6. Skimming
With skimming, your overall understanding is reduced because you don’t read everything.
You read only what is important to your purpose.
Skimming takes place while reading and allows you to look for details in addition to the main ideas.

7. Scanning Scanning is used to find a particular piece of information.
How to scan?
Run your eyes over the text looking for the specific piece of information you need.

8. Scanning
When to scan?
Use scanning on schedules, meeting plans, etc. in order to find the specific details you require.
If you see words or phrases that you don't understand, don't worry when scanning.

9. Scanning
For scanning to be successful, you need to understand how your material is structured as well as comprehend what you read so you can locate the specific information you need.
Scanning also allows you to find details and other information in a hurry.

10. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills.
Extensive reading, can also be defined as reading a large quantity of text, where reading confidence and reading fluency are prioritized.

11. Extensive Reading When to use extensive reading?
Use extensive reading skills to improve your general knowledge of procedures.
Do not worry if you understand each word.

12. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading involves learners reading texts for enjoyment and to develop general reading skills.
A teacher reads a short story with learners, but does not set them any tasks except to read and listen.

13. Extensive Reading
Extensive reading is often overlooked, especially as a classroom activity.
Teachers often feel it is not an effective use of class time or are just uncomfortable with the extended silence.

14. Extensive Reading
Learners can be encouraged to read extensively by setting up a class library, encouraging review writing, and incorporating reading of books into the syllabus, and dedicating some class time to quiet reading.
Examples of Extensive Reading
The latest marketing strategy book
A novel you read before going to bed
Magazine articles that interest you

15. Extensive Reading Extensive reading is used to:
to increase student confidence in their English reading ability
to increase student motivation in their English reading
to increase student reading fluency, specifically
to decrease dependence on word by word comprehension
to increase reading speed (number of pages read per hour)
to increase student narrative interpreting ability, specifically so that students

16. Extensive Reading Extensive reading is used to:
write and discuss in English their own ideas and opinions about what has been read, and their own reading progress
to foster a clear, strong and constant sense of personal success in reading English

17. Extensive Reading
Typical extensive reading questions when used in a classroom setting:
What book(s) did you read this week?
What did you find particularly interesting?
How many pages did you read?
How much time did you spend reading?
What are your reading goals this week?

18. Intensive Reading
Intensive reading may be described as the practice of particular reading skills and the close linguistic study of text.
With intensive reading, you will be reading something with a great deal of vocabulary and/or grammar that is beyond your current reading ability.

19. Intensive Reading
If your instructor is kind, maybe the vocabulary and grammar that is new to you will be glossed page by page.
If not, you’ll be spending more time looking up a dictionary than reading.
However, even they will probably be reading word by word rather than taking in the language a phrase at a time as they would reading in their native languages.

20. Intensive Reading Intensive reading has two key advantages:
For low level readers, intensive reading is possibly the fastest way to build vocabulary.
Additionally, reading difficult material forces a learner to develop strategies for for dealing with texts that are too hard to read comfortably.

21. Intensive Reading
Intensive reading is used on shorter texts in order to extract specific information.
The biggest drawback, by far, is the large amount of time spent reading a small amount of text
It includes very close accurate reading for detail.

22. Intensive Reading
Use intensive reading skills to grasp the details of a specific situation.
In this case, it is important that you understand each word, number or fact.
The advantage of IR is that it focuses the learner on certain aspects of the language.
However, IR is usually done with difficult texts with many unknown words that require the learner to use a dictionary.

23. Intensive Reading
This means the reading is slow and that there are few opportunities for the learner to learn to read smoothly, because the reader has to stop every few seconds to work on something she can't understand. 
This slows or prevents the development of fluent eye movements that are so necessary to improve one's reading skill.

24. Intensive Reading
Cantar del Mio Cid
The Raven