Reading Strategies
Read aloud. Often by saying a word out loud, you can guess its meaning better than by merely looking at it.
Decide what is important and what is unimportant. During your first reading focus on nouns and verbs rather than on descriptions. Try to determine the main idea of a section first. There will be time later to ga back to details.
Anticipate. Try to guess the upcoming events and the responses and actions of characters. This can help you become more involved with the reading.
Summarize. After reading a paragraph, summarize it in one line, and write down your summary. You will then have a general outline of an article after you have read it. You could also write a question about the paragraph to answer at a later time.
There are three levels of reading behavior: scanning, skimming, and actual reading.
Scanning is used to locate specific information or a fact. It involves looking for details of interest and/ or specific words that contribute to comprehension of a reading. It focuses on relevant information and discards facts that might become more important after a second or third reading. An example for scanning is when looking up a number in the telephone directory or looking up a word in the dictionary. In all likelihood, you just ran your eyes down the page until you found the particular bit of information you were seeking.
Obviously, before you start reading, you must know what information you are looking for (for example the answers to a set of comprehension questions in a textbook).
Skimming is used to gain an overview or general idea of what the material you're reading is about. It is used to read material in a hurry. When you skim, you do not read every word; you may leave out parts of paragraphs or whole paragraphs. You are just looking for the main ideas. When skimming a chapter in a text, you should look at headings and subheadings and read introductory paragraphs, topic sentences, and summary paragraphs. Just look for important ideas (words, phrases). Then read in full the last two or three paragraphs because they usually summarize.
Scanning differs from skimming in that skimming a piece rapidly is done to determine the gist of the reading, whereas scanning a piece is done to look for specific information.
Actual reading is used to analyze the author's ideas and words.
(Sources: Sharon J. Crawley/ Lee Mountain, Strategies for guiding content reading. Second edition. Simon & Schuster Company, Needham Heights, 1995. & Jackie Jarest/ Marsha Robinson, Ahora, leamos. Second edition. Heinle & Heinle Publishers, Boston 1990)