READING SKILLS AND TECHNIQUE

Reading has been defined as making sense of the printed

word. We read in order to get something from the text, whether it is a
dictionary or a novel. Traditionally reading has been divided into intensive and
extensive reading. Both approaches are essential and they share many of the
same strategies.

1. Intensive reading
Intensive reading is reading carefully for an exact
understanding of text. In practical life, acquired intensive reading skills are
used for comprehension of contracts, business letters, memorandums,
application forms and legal documents. Intensive reading occurs when learner
is focused on the language (grammar and vocabulary) rather than the text e.g.
the learner may be answering comprehension questions, learning new
vocabulary, studding the grammar and expressions in the text, translating the
passage.

The advantage of intensive reading is that it focuses the

learner on certain aspects of language. However, intensive reading is usually
done with difficult text and with many unknown words. It also encourages the
habit of reading English very slowly, and students who become accustomed to
reading in his way often never learn to read any faster. Finally intensive
reading tends to be relatively boring, so students who fall into the habit of
reading intensively often come to dislike reading in English.

2. Extensive reading
Extensive reading is reading a lot for pleasure at a fairly
easy level with emphasis on general understanding so that whatever is read is
comprehended without the use of a dictionary. Extensive reading courses
increase language proficiency, especially reading level and speed.

Basic characteristics
1. Students read as much as possible, usually out of the classroom.
2. The purposes of reading are usually related to pleasure and interest.

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3. Students decide on what to read and have the liberty to discontinue

reading if the material is not interesting.
4. Many materials on a wide range of topics are available.
5. Reading is outside class, individual, silent, at the student’s own pace,
conducted when and where the student chooses.
6. Students can choose abridged books; therefore, reading materials are
within the linguistics competence of the students.
7. Dictionaries are hardly ever used while reading because the constant
stopping to look up words and phrases makes fluent reading difficult and
frustrating.
8. Reading speed is usually fast as students read the materials they find
easily understandable and interesting; they become involved in reading.
9. Teachers guide and motivate their students: they explain the objectives
and methodology and keep track of what each student reads.
10.There are few or no follow-up-activities after reading.

Objectives
1. Self-section of extensive reading of text.
2. Using various strategies for comprehension and vocabulary recognition.
3. Summarizing weekly reading.
4. Establishing personally relevant reading goals.
5. Understanding author’s purpose.
6. Comparing a variety of question types and narrations.
7. Guessing and predicting content.

While intensive reading skills are basically developed

in class, extensive reading skills are basically developed outside the
classroom. Extensive reading students usually select fiction, section
fiction or whatever they are interested in. extensive reading is
constructed with intensive reading, which is slow, careful reading of a
small amount of difficult text- it is when one is “focused on the language
rather than the text”. Extensive and intensive readings are two
approaches to language learning and instruction, and may be used
concurrently; intensive reading is however the more common approach,

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and often the only one used. In short, intensive reading is accurate
reading for detailed understanding. Extensive reading is used for
pleasure and general understanding.
Reading activities improve the students’ ability to
interact with, and understand texts. Most students are accustomed to
using only “intensive” reading skills and they feel that if they don’t read
and understand every word they will not understand the text.
“Skimming and scanning” practice activities are good ways to help
students realize that intensive reading is not always necessary, and that
they can save time by: scanning if they are looking for specific
information or, skimming if they want to get a general idea of what the
text is about.
3. Skimming
Skimming requires a higher level of reading skills and
involves reading a text quickly to find the main facts or idea in it, to get a
general idea of the content. Skimming is an extremely useful skill when
students are deciding which sections of a book will be the most useful
for their research. Also, when they are about to begin reading a new
book, they can get a quick idea of the content by skimming the book
first. Examples of activities to practice skimming include:
Match the title of newspaper articles with
The stories. As the students ability
Improves, limit the time allowed to do the
Activity. This could be used as part of a
Media unit. Or perhaps when they are learning to write recounts.
Simply, skimming is quickly reading a book to
gain an overall impression of the contents. When skimming through a
text you should be looking at;
 Titles and subtitles
 The beginning and end sentences of chapters
 The beginning and end sentences of paragraphs
 Pictures and diagrams which summarise what the writer is saying

4.scanning

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Scanning involves reading something

quickly to find a particular piece of information, and ignoring everything
else. It can be done with low level students because they don’t need to
understand all of a text to extract specific information from it. The
students are accustomed to doing scanning activities like this in their
own language, so it should be an easy skill for them to develop in
English. Examples of activities to practice scanning include: give the
students a train timetable and ask them to find out what time the train
leaves a particular station. They only need to scan the timetable to find
the information they want- the rest of the timetable is not relevant.
Alternatively, they could search the internet, for timetable and hotel
information, to plan a trip.

Simply scanning is quickly searching a text for specific

information. When scanning through a text, you usually look for:

 Particular words or phrases which you expect to find in the text.

 Key words, which may be in italics or bold type.
 Specific informationwhich you have found from the contents or index
pages but cannot be located by a single word or phrase
 The structure or organization of the text as this can make it easier to
identify main idea.
Skimming & scanning
 Skimming and scanning enable you to select material (s) which should be
used and /or discarded.
 What to use
 To determine main idea.
 To locate facts quickly.
 To answer test items.
 To answer chapter questions
 Fix intent for reading (or facts sought) clearly in your mind.
 Scan table of continent, chapter headings and subheadings.
 Quickly move eyes over reading material, focusing upon page headings
and subheadings, discarding information that is obviously not related to
reading intent.

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 Skimming should be twice as fast as average reading speed.

 Selectively omit portions of reading material.
 Locate as quickly as possible the key or topic sentence of each paragraph
(usually, but not always, the first sentence).
 Practice skimming and scanning to locate information. Repeated practice
carefully for summary information.
 Carefully review tables, charts and side boxes.

5.SQ3R
The study system is named as SQ3R so that it will be easily
remembered. The system consists of 5-steps process namely survey,
question, read, recite and review.

1. Survey
This involves quickly skimming through the reading
material, taking note of titles, subheadings, pictures or charts and
other key words such as words in bold-face. This step is very
important because it gives an overview of the reading material,
without which it is easy to lose one’s direction when reading. There
are two types of survey.
I. Surveying a book
All books and books articles are written to some kind of
plan. A quick survey can give you a very good idea of what this plan
is, and will therefore help you read with better understanding
a) Title page
Start your survey with the titke page.
b) Preface
Whether it goes by the name of preface, foreword, authors’
remarks, introduction, etc- in which the author talks about his
book and why he wrote. Like the title page, this information
can help you decide whether the book is worth your reading.
c) Table of contents

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This again a page of information that you should never ignore

when making your preliminary survey. The contents lidt tells
you what topics the author is dealing with and very often gives
you some ideas of how. He has organized them-main points,
sub-topics, and so on.
d) Index
You can see from the table of contents whether or not the
book is likely to hold anything useful. Then you can turn
straight to the back of book, where you should be able to look
up your topic in the alphabetical list telling which topic occur
on which pages: this list is called an index. Robert lynd once
said “Ihate reading a book without an index; it makes me read
the whole book’.

surveying a chapter.

Before you begin each new chapter you should survey more
carefully: first and the last paragraphs, summaries, headings.

2. Question
Titles and sub-headings can be turned into simple questions using the
basic question words 5’ W’ s of ‘who’ ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘when’, ‘where’,
and I ‘H’ of ‘how’. The purpose of this steps is to make the reading
exercise more active. That is you will be actively looking for the
answers to the question formulated. If you read actively, the benefits
from reading will be greater. In other words, this step helps you to
concentrate on your reading material.
3. Read
When reading the section of the material, do so carefully so as to
alicit the answers to your questions. In this way, you should cover all
the sections of your reading material.
4. Rcall
After you have completed a section, you should spend some time
trying to recall the main pints of that section. If necessary, you should
re-read that section until you can recite all the main points. It might

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be a good idea to write down all the questions formulated and

answers to them on a piece of paper or card. This will facilitate the
next step, which is review. The importance of reciting can be seen in
the results of number of experiments. These experiments indicated
that students who spend more time reciting can remember more
than those who just read and read. On the other hand, you can also
teach or share with your friends or classmates about what you have
read. This will also help in retention of the things learnt.
5. Review
Now that you have completed your reading material, you should
attempt to recall all the main points in it. This exercise will assist you
in linking up all the various section, which will enhance understanding
of the material.

Conclution
The purpose of reading is to gather information and gain
knowledge. The more you know about a piece of material, the faster you
master what is in it. By applying the SQ3R method of active reading will enable
you to know about the material you are reading within limited amount of time.
As the saying goes “practise makes perfect”, you need to practise it in order to
master the skill. The more you do, you will be able to focus on your reading
and get better result.

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