Reading skills for academic study

When you start a university course you will have the same problem as every other student: how to get through the vast amount of reading given for each course. There is not enough time to read everything line by line. You need to be able to read efficiently. The way you read something will depend on your purpose. You need to read quickly to find relevant sections, then read carefully when you have found what you want. General efficient reading strategies such as scanning to find the book or chapter, skimming to get the gist and careful reading of important passages (Wallace, 1980, pp. 9-51) are necessary as well as vocabulary building exercises in your own area. Learning about how texts are structured can also help you to read more efficiently.

When you pick up a book for the first time, use the index, the preface, the blurb (publisher's comments on the cover), the table of contents and glance through it rapidly in order to identify the relevant sections. Look at the chapter titles. If the chapter seems useful, look at the headings and sub-headings. Quickly survey any useful chapters by reading the first few lines of each paragraph or by reading the first and last paragraphs.

When you think you have identified relevant sections, skim through them, read the conclusion perhaps, to be sure they are relevant.

Many students still rely on painstakingly slow word by word reading. It soon becomes clear to them, however, that they cannot read every word in the library.

You will need to practice:

Understanding meaning: deducing the meaning of unfamiliar words and word groups; relations within the sentence/complex sentences; implications - information not explicitly stated, conceptual meaning, e.g. comparison, purpose, cause, effect.

Understanding relationships in the text: - text structure; the communicative value of sentences; relations between the parts of a text through lexical and grammatical cohesion devices and indicators in discourse.

Understanding important points; distinguishing the main ideas from supporting detail; recognizing unsupported claims and claims supported by evidence - fact from opinion; extracting salient points to summarise; following an argument; reading critically/evaluating the text.

Reading efficiently: surveying the text, chapter/article, paragraphs, skimming for gist/general impression; scanning to locate specifically required information; reading quickly.

Efficient reading skills

Most of the time you will be reading serious academic texts books, journal articles and other academic texts. And often you will need to read your texts closely and carefully in order to understand specific information. However, you cannot read every word in every book in the library. It is useful therefore to learn reading techniques to help you quickly assess new material, decide if it is useful and which parts need to be read more carefully. It is also much easier to read the texts in detail when you have a rough idea of what a text is about - roughly what the author's purpose is, what is at the beginning of the text and what is at the end.

Surveying the text

Whatever you need to read, it is useful to have a quick look at it all first to get an idea of the layout of the text and what is included.

So first, skim through the text to see what is included and how it is organized. Your text might not contain all the following parts, but you can expect to find many of them. Look especially at the following parts.

Title (plus maybe a sub-title)

Sometimes, perhaps when you are in the library or when you are searching through a catalogue, you need to make quick decisions on the basis of the title, maybe including a sub-title, alone. You need to ask yourself whether the text is relevant for your purpose and what sort of information you expect to get from it.

Details about the author

It can be helpful to know about the author, what the author's academic position is, what experience the author has had, etc.

Date of publication and edition

This helps you to decide whether or not the book is up to date. It is worth checking whether or not there is a more recent edition.

Abstract

An abstract is usually a single paragraph at the beginning of the text. It normally summarizes the different sections of the text and draws attention to the main conclusions. Reading the abstract will help you to decide whether or not the text is relevant for your purpose.

Preface, Foreword or Introduction

In the preface, the author explains the purpose, organization, method of presentation, and whatever particular features of the book you should especially notice. Read it carefully. The author is explaining how to get the most out of the book.

Table of Contents

The contents will give you an overall view of the material in the book. Looking at this is a quick and easy way to survey the book to see if it includes the information you need.

Text

The layout of the text can help you. Textbooks are organized into chapter and chapters have titles and section headings. Very often each chapter will start with an introduction of what is in the chapter and a summary at the end.

References list or Bibliography

An alphabetical list of books and articles which have been referred to is included either at the end of each chapter or at the end of the book or article. Looking through the list of references will give you some idea of the author's background.

Index

One of the most important sections of any textbook is the index at the end. This is a fairly detailed alphabetical listing of all the major people, places, ideas, facts, or topics that the book contains, with page references. The index can give you information about the topics covered in the book and the amount of attention paid to them.

Blurb

The blurb is the publisher's description of what the book is about, usually on the back cover. But remember that the main purpose is to sell the book.

Reviewers' comments

These are usually on the back cover, but remember they are chosen by the publisher and therefore will probably be good.

(http://www.uefap.com/reading/readfram.htm)

Task 4. Use the information from the text to define the terms

Abstract acknowledgments

Appendices author

Blurb date of publication

details about author edition

foreword index

ISBN list of contents

list of references place of publication

preface publisher

reviewers' comments sub-title

title

Task 5. Take any text and see which of the following are included: title, sub-title, list of references, date of publication, place of publication, publisher, index, list of contents, edition, preface, foreword, appendices, blurb on the back cover, author, ISBN, abstract, details about author, acknowledgments, reviewers' comments.

Task 6. For questions 1 – 10, read the text below and decide which word A, B, C or D best fits each space There is an example at the beginning (0)