Sh. Rashidova,
student, NamSU
Abstract: Many EFL
students fail to be effective readers as they lack knowledge of appropriate
reading strategies. Teaching proper reading strategies provide to how to tackle
the problems in efficient ways and allow them to build a path to comprehension.
The aim of this article to define the confusions about teaching the key points
of basic reading strategies: skimming, scanning and intensive reading.
Key words: reading strategy, skimming, scanning, intensive reading
Efficient readers use advanced reading strategies to
save time and cover a lot of information. The purpose for reading should be determined
which strategy or strategies to use for handling a reading task most
efficiently and effectively. Nowadays the reading approach suggests a
combination of the so-called top-down reading (when a reader uses his/her own
experience to understand a text) and bottom-up, or interactive reading. Readers
interact with the text, calling upon their knowledge and experience to
interpret the new information. There are different reading strategies that are
related to effective comprehension of texts. Strategies refer to the actions
that readers select to achieve their goals. For example, teachers activate
background knowledge, using titles and illustrations to predict content,
searching for main ideas, practicing various modes of reading, and guiding
lexical guessing. Comprehension exercises include summarizing and interpreting,
and a final task integrates or transfers the information beyond the text. There
are different ways of reading. Extensive reading involves reading long pieces
of text. As learners read, their attention and interest vary – they may read
some parts of the text in detail or they may skim through other parts.
Extensive reading is rapid reading for main ideas of a large amount of text.
Intensive reading is reading for complete understanding of an entire text.
Reasons for reading influence how we read, i.e. which reading skill we use.
Skimming requires the reader to look for the main idea or the general gist of a
passage. Scanning is a quick overview of the text, looking for specific details
or information.
K.Djalilov (2018)
clearly defines different reading strategies which help to work with the text
comprehension:
Skimming is useful when you want to survey a text to get a general idea of what it is about.
In skimming you ignore the details and look for the main ideas.
Ø Do not read everything;
Ø Pay attention to the heading and sub-heading;
Ø Pay attention to the instruction and the conclusion;
Ø Pay attention to the first and last sentences of
paragraphs;
Ø Pay attention to how the text is organized;
Ø Focus on key words;
Ø Notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases;
Ø Notice any visuals (e.g. pictures, charts, graphs,
etc.)
Scanning is used to find a
particular piece of information. You run your eyes over the text
looking for the specific piece of information you need, like names, dates, etc.
- Intensive reading is
used to extract specific information.
It includes very close accurate reading for detail. When scanning:
Ø State the specific information you are looking for (
are you looking for names, dates, numbers, etc.)
Ø Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what
clues you might use to help you locate the answer, e.g. if you are looking for
a certain date, you would quickly read the paragraph looking for only numbers;
Ø Use headings and any other aids that will help you
identify which sections might contain the information you are looking for;
Ø Selectively read and skip through sections of passage;
Reader needs to use and combine different reading strategies,
depending on what kind of text he/she
is working with and what his/her
purpose is. For example, if
he/she is working with a text that analyzes psychological features of
different learners (an expository text), he/she should skim the text to get a
general overview, scan the text to find the sections he/she is interested in
and does intensive reading of parts that he/she needs to understand in details.
The activities in a reading lesson often follow this
pattern:
·
pre-reading
activities; an introduction to the topic of the text and activities focusing on
the language of the text;
·
while-reading
activities: comprehension activities developing reading skills;
·
post-reading
activities: spoken or written activities which require the use of the language
students have met in the text.
Haley and Austin (2003) suggest the following reading
comprehension tasks corresponding to the above-mentioned groups of reading
activities:
1. Skim the text for general ideas. Read the
introduction and conclusion. Do semantic mapping.
2. Predict the main idea of each paragraph. Skip
unknown words; guess meaning from context.
3. Summarize the text. Relate the text to your own
experience
Semantic mapping is the illustration of the key points
of a text using some sort of visual representation. It fosters a fuller
comprehension of the text, as it allows the reader to explore key issues in the
text and focus on what is of personal significance to the reader. A well-known
reading technique in which learners take an active and systematic approach of
reading texts is as follows:
·
skim the text
for content, organization and main ideas, look at the first and last paragraphs
and at the major headings for each section to get a general impression, pay
attention to graphs, charts, glossaries for key information;
·
ask questions
about what one hopes to get from the text, use who, what, when,
where, why and how;
·
read the text
while looking for answers to previous questions;
·
recall the
important points of the text;
Review the importance and relevance of what has been
read.
Questions
like “what is text about?”, “the main idea of the text is…”, “Which of the
following is the best title for the text?” are based on the main idea that you
need to skim the text. Questions based on who, where, when, how many/how much
(e.g. “Who was the first person to land on Moon?”, “Where are the pictures by
Picasso displayed?”, “How long did it take to transfer the collections of the
museum to a new building?”) are based on scanning- you need to search for
names, places, dates and numbers. Some
questions, especially those which you analyze or evaluate some information, are
based on intensive reading-you need to find the sentences on which the question
is based and read this part of the text carefully in order to answer the
question. Suppose in the exam you are reading a text on medicine. You skim the
text and find out the first section of the text talks about the history of a
particular disease (where it came from), the second section talks about
symptoms (how you can identify if a person has this disease), and the third
section contains information on treatment (how you can cure this disease). If
the question you need to answer is: “Which of the following shows that the
person has this disease?”, you refer to the second section. If the question is
“When was the first instance of this disease recorded?”, you will need to scan
the first section. If the question is “True or False: Penicillin can’t be given
to patients with this disease?”, the answer will in the third section.
Summary – remember, when approaching reading at
university you need to make intelligent decisions about what you choose to
read, be flexible in the way you read, and think about what you’re trying to
achieve in undertaking each reading task.
References:
1. Haley M.H. and Austin Th.Y.
Content – Based Second Language Teaching and Learning:
An In-teractive Approach. Boston: Allyn & Bacon, 2003.
2. K. Westerfield (2012) University of Oregon.
3. K.Djalilov (2018) Exam Skills for Teachers and
Learners of English, Tashkent
