Students' readiness

This might be interesting for you if you have to read a lot. Here, we introduce you to reading techniques. Please note, that not every technique is useful for everybody or every type of text. 

Scanning

This technique is automatically being used by everyone who has tried to find a person in a telephone book. You simply browse through the book, looking for a specific piece of information. It's helpful to have several signal words written down, e.g. snow, sledge, Coca-Cola.

Skimming

Have you ever read an article in a newspaper or magazine? Well, if you didn't notice, you are just skimming the text. Smaller details are being disregarded and you simply focus on the main words, which is enough to get the meaning of the article. This technique is great for obtaining a first impression of an article to see if it is actually relevant to you or not.

Active Reading

When you truly want to understand the text, then you have to actively read it. There is simply no way around it. Scanning and Skimming can only do so much but to obtain an in-depth perception you have to read actively.

Detailed Reading

This technique is actually a combination of Skimming and Active Reading. You skim a text first and then you go through it in detail. Paying attention to every single word and extracting important information from the text.

Speed Reading

Here, you simply try to improve your reading speed without losing any understanding of the text. It's quite difficult and requires a lot of practice. The main aspects of Speed Reading are:

• Identifying words without focusing on each letter
  
• Not to sounding-out all words
  
• Not sub-vocalizing some phrases
  
• Spending less time on some phrases than others
  
• Skimming small sections
  

Structure-Proposition-Evaluation

This technique is only applicable to non-fiction writing. You simply have to stick to those three steps:

• Review the table of contents, paragraphs of the article or layout of the text
  
• Study the statements of the text and put them in logical order or relation to each other
  
• Evaluate the final arguments and conclusions of the text
  

Reading Techniques: Survey-Question-Read-Recite-Review

This is the most detailed approach to read a text. Afterwards, the reader should be able to teach the content of the text.

• Survey: Getting a quick idea of the text, e.g. reading the abstract and the summary.
  
• Question: The reader should note down questions before he starts reading. While reading he should find the answer to those questions.
  
• Read: Attentive reading.
  
• Recite: The previously developed questions should be answered by the reader in his own words and only using keywords of the text.
  
• Review: Once the reader is done with answering the questions, he should review the whole product.