The oil industry

Skimming
What is skim reading?

Skim reading, or skimming, is the activity of looking quickly at a text to get a general impression
of what it is about. If you first have a general understanding of the text, it is easier to make sense
of the details in a text when you read it more carefully.

For students, skimming is also important because it helps decide if a text is relevant or useful for
their studies. Skim reading can answer questions such as:

• What is the text about?

• How is the text organized?
• What are the main ideas, opinion or conclusion of the writer?

How to skim

Read the text quickly. When you skim a text, you read it very quickly. Don't pay attention to
details, and skip large parts of the text.

Give yourself a time limit. To help you skim, it's a good idea to give yourself a time limit. For
example, you could aim to skim a 600-word text in one minute.

What to read

Here are some examples of the parts of a text you should read when you skim.
1. Titles and headings: These give you the main ideas and organization of the text. For
example:

The oil economy

The title gives us two key words: "oil" and "economy".

2. First and last paragraphs: Usually the first paragraph introduces the main idea, and the last
gives a conclusion; it is often a good idea to read these more carefully than the rest of the text.
For example:

… their discovery would lead to a complete transformation of the world's economies.

This excerpt from the introduction tells us that the text is about oil causing a big change to the
world economy.

3. The first sentence of each paragraph: The first sentence is often the topic sentence. It gives
the main idea of the paragraph. For example:

Like all markets the price of oil fluctuates based on the laws of supply and demand.

This sentence tells us that the paragraph will talk about the "laws of supply and demand".

4. Key words about the topic: As you skim through the text, notice key words about the topic.
This can help find important information about the text. For example:

…goods produced, new markets, supply and demand for oil, lower cost

These phrases refer to important concepts about the topic of Economics.