READING

READING SKILLS

These are the typical reading subskills and strategies we use when dealing with texts:

1. prediction: Looking at headlines, pictures, typeface and layout to guess what you think a text will be about. 

 

2. skim reading:Reading to get a general but not detailed understanding of the text. 

 

3. gist reading: Also reading to get an overall but not detailed understanding of the text. 

 

4. scan reading:Reading a text to locate a specific piece of information such as a word or a

number or a time. It is not necessary to understandthe whole text in order to do this.

 

5. intensive reading: Reading to get detailed information from the text.

 

6. inferring meaning:Either guessing the meaning of new vocabulary in a text or understanding meaning or a message in the text that is not immediately obvious. 

 

7. extensive reading: Reading longer texts frequently over a period of time. This is usually doneindependently and not in the classroom.

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Strategies to answer the TRUE/FALSE questions:

• The questions may or may not follow the order of the text. 

 

• Read the question carefully to make sure you fully understand what it is saying.

 

• Scan the text to find where the answer is using key words from the question

 

• When you find where the answer is, read the text carefully to identify if you think it is T or F.

 

• The questions will probably use synonyms rather than the words in the text.

 

• Look out for controlling words such as “only”, “all’, “never” etc. For example, if the fact in the question says 'some' and the fact in the text says 'all', then it is F.

 

Example

Look at this statment:

Chiles originate in South America and have been eaten for at least 9,500 years.

Here are some example statements with answers:

1. Chiles come from South America - T
2. People began eating Chiles in the last few centuries - F

Number one is clearly true. Notice the use of the synonym 'come from' used instead of 'originates'. It is common to use different words. 

 

Two is clearly false as it was 9,500 years ago, not a few 100 years ago.

 

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Strategies to answer the FIND THE SYNONYM questions:

• decide what part of speech the word given is (a noun, an adverb, a gerund, a comparative adjective, ...)

 

• find in the text the words that are the same part of speech as the word given; 

 

• when you have decided the word, check it by replacing it in the text to see if the sentence makes sense.

TIP: the ending of the word will sometimes help you: -ly for adverbs, -er or –est for comparatives and superlatives, -ing and so on. 

BUT this may not always work because in the following sentences:

- he drove fast , tying to keep the ambulance in sight           "fast" is a synonym of "quickly"

- Actually, the film was quite boring                                        "actually" is a synonym of "in fact"

and as you can see, the endings are different.