Improving your

READING
SKILLS
ENGLISH RESOURCES
2009 OET-IELTS.com
OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre.
For ofcial OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org)
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English for Health Professionals

Improving your
Reading Skills

ENGLISH RESOURCES
2009 OET-IELTS.com

OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre.
For official OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org)
IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is the property of IELTS
For official IELTS information and documentation, please see: (http://www.ielts.org)

Regardless of whether you are currently studying, you should continue to engage in reading
every day for both professional development and personal enjoyment.
There are a number of ways you can practice and improve your reading skills.
READING SKILLS
Read the title, subtitles and subheading to find out what the text is about.
Look at the illustrations to give you further information about the topic.
Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph.
Don't read every word or every sentence. Let you eyes skim over the text,
taking in key words.
Continue to think about the meaning of the text.
Skim several times
When reading a large amount of material, you can first skim over the chapter
and section titles to give you an idea of what the material is about. Then quickly
scan through the material again to get a better idea of the topic. Finally, you
read the assignment, but still reading rapidly.
Read first sentence
Since often the first sentence of each paragraph states the main idea of that
paragraph, while the other sentences elaborate on that idea, you can skim read
by just reading the first sentences. In some cases, you can get enough
information by only reading the first sentence from each paragraph.
Look at groups of words
One of the primary tricks in speed-reading is to look at phrases and groups of
words instead of individual words. Instead of reading word-by-word, you read in
chunks of information. You don't have to say the word to understand what it
means.
Complex reading
With some complex readinglike Mathematics--you should still skim over the
material, quickly looking at section titles and the equations and formulae. After
you get an idea of what the material is about and where it is going, you can read
it more carefully. Since you often may have to work out problems with a pencil,
obviously your reading speed will not be as high as other type of reading.

Improving your
Reading Skills

ENGLISH RESOURCES
2009 OET-IELTS.com

OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre.
For official OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org)
IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is the property of IELTS
For official IELTS information and documentation, please see: (http://www.ielts.org)

Practice with newspaper
Try reading several words, a phrase, or even a sentence at a time. A good way
to practice this is to read newspaper articles by scanning down the column,
digesting all the words across, instead of reading each word at a time. A
newspaper column usually has 4 or 5 words per line, and you should be able to
process all of them at once.
This method is one of the best for getting used to reading phrases instead of
words. Just practicing reading this way should noticeably increase your speed.
Summary
If you think about reading faster, you will make an effort to pick up the pace.
Reading speed is something you must work on and concentrate on until it
becomes a habit.
Being able to read and comprehend the material at high speed is a skill that is
worthwhile for students and people in business. Most methods involve reading
chunks of information so that you are skimming or scanning the book or
document.