The document discusses various aspects of reading comprehension including skills needed for effective comprehension such as finding main ideas and supporting details. It differentiates between skimming, which involves finding the main idea or gist of a passage quickly, and scanning, which is even faster reading to locate specific information. The document outlines guidelines for skimming including keeping your purpose and pace in mind. It also discusses three levels of comprehension from literal to applied and provides examples of material that is suitable for scanning such as lists, catalogs and articles.

1. Instructor:saira Bano
University of Narowal

2. Comprehension
 Reading comprehension is,
“the capacity for understanding fully; the act or action
of grasping with the intellect.”
 It also means that reading is “ to receive or take in the
sense of (as letters or symbols) by scanning: to locate
specific information.

3. Motivation is necessary:
 However, most people, children and adults do not spend
any significant portion of time in reading.
 Without spending time to reading, no one can gain the
reading skills or knowledge they need to succeed in
school, at work or in general life.
 The best way to improve your reading efficiency is to
read a lot.

4. Guidelines for effective skimming
 Always work as fast as you can. Do not let details slow
down your pace.
 Always keep in your mind the reason why you are
skimming.
 Be flexible when you are doing skimming. How much
you skim in a passage depends on purpose.

5. Skills for increasing comprehension
 Finding main ideas and supporting details.
 Making inferences and drawing conclusions.
 Recognizing a text’s patterns of organization.
 Summarizing or paraphrasing.
 Reading for details.

6. Levels of comprehension
 there are three levels of comprehension from least to
most high.
a. Literal – what is actually stated.
b. Interpretive – what is implied or meant rather than
what is actually stated.
c. Applied – taking what was said and then what was
meant by what is said and then extends the concepts
beyond the situation.

7. Skimming
 Skimming is something which involves the reader to
find the main idea of the passage. It is also identifying
as understanding the gist of the topic.
 Textbook chapters, articles, paragraphs , sentences or
passages all have topics and main ideas.

8. Differences in terms.
 Topic is the broad , general theme or message.
 Main Idea is the key concept being expressed.
 Details could be major or minor, support the main
idea by telling how , what , when, why etc questions.

9. How do you skim?
 Read only the words that will help you to get the sense of
the text.
 These are the parts that usually give the author’s ideas or
opinions.
 Read first paragraph quite carefully. The beginning often
contains general information about the rest of the text or
read the last sentence of it .

10. Continue
 Read the last paragraph quite carefully. The author
often summarizes the main idea at the end.
 Skip the paragraphs that are not essential.

12. How do you scan?
 you move your eyes over the page.
 You don’t read all the words.
 you only read the words that help you find the
information.

13. Scanning exercises
 Help you find how to find information faster
 Teach you faster how to move your eyes more quickly
across the page.
 This will help you read faster and with better
comprehension.
 Time saving.

14. Scanning is very fast reading.
 you scan when you want to find information quickly.
 you scan a list, telephone book, an advertisement, a
newspaper article, a web page etc.

15. Important!
 You don’t need to read everything or try to understand
everything.
 You only need to look for the words that help you
understand answer the question.

16. Material for scanning
 The material you scan is typically arranged in the following ways:
alphabetically, chronologically, non-alphabetically, by category, or
textually.
 Alphabetical information is arranged in order from A to Z,
while chronological information is arranged in time or numerical
order.
 Information can be also be arranged in non- alphabetical order,
such as a television listing, or by category, listings of like items
such as an auto parts catalog.
 Sometimes information is located within the written paragraphs of
text, also known as a textual sense, as in an encyclopedia entry.

17. Thanks