DUE10012 COMMUNICATIVE ENGLISH 1

SKIMMING & SCANNING

WARMING UP ACTIVITY

• John Walker was a British chemist and inventor. What does the passage
Walker mixed some chemicals with a stick then he mainly tell about?
scraped the stick on the floor to remove the chemicals.
As he scraped the stick, it burst into flames. This gave
Walker the idea of making matches.Walker’s matches
were first sold in 1827.
WHAT IS SKIMMING ?
Preread-
• Reading selectively to get a general idea of what an skimming
article is about & to become familiar with the most
important ideas in it
Skim-
• Comprehension level is about 50-70%
• Speed should be about twice as fast as the average
reading
reading speed or even faster
• Readers do not know what the material is about Review
beforehand skimming
As we skim, we... Read the title

Read the summary or

Read the introduction
last paragraph

Think about
Think about what we
the topic already know
about the topic HOW TO
SKIM ?
Glance at the
Read any headings &
remainder of the
Start to paragraph
subheadings
guess/anticipate the
details we are going to
read about

Notice any
Read the first sentence
pictures/charts/graphs
of each paragraph
included
WHEN YOU DO SKIMMING...

• Concentrate on the main idea & keep high speed

• Do not read every word of the material
• Pay attention to the key words & signal words
• Catch or summarize the topic sentences
 Magazines : to
Newspaper : to quickly discover
quickly get the which articles
general news of you would like
the day to read in more
detail
EXAMPLES OF
SKIMMING TV Programme :
Travel Brochures to quickly
: to quickly get choose which
informed channel you
want to watch
WHAT IS SCANNING ?

• Quickly looking through reading material to locate a A

particular piece of information A date
name
• To sort out the exact information we need
• You should be 100% correct about the information you
need
• Readers already have some idea about the content of
A statistic
the material beforehand
 Check the
organization
HOW TO SCAN ?
Confirm your Remember
answer your purpose

Move
Search for
quickly over
key words
the page

Use a
Anticipate
Less reading & systematic
more searching clue words
pattern

Identify likely
answer
locations
 To determine the
organization of
writing To get the
important part
To know the
that we need a
opinions of people
whole & no
reading

Objectives &
Identify topics Benefits of To refresh what
for reading Scanning & we’ve read
Skimming
SKIMMING & SCANNING
When you have a specific question to answer or information to collect, you need to be able
to skim a page quickly to find the section you need. You can do this by scanning a text
for a keyword.

Scan : to look quickly & not

Keyword : a word of Skim : to read something
very thoroughly through a
quickly so that you only note
importance text in order to identify
the important points
relevant information
CONCLUSION :
Skimming & Scanning is used when reading all types of documents

We skim to get the idea of what a document is about

We typically skim all documents before we actually begin to read

We scan for specific information

We work quickly when we skim & scan