Reading is an important skill that is essential for both academic and professional success. There are various techniques that can improve reading skills, including skimming to get the main ideas, scanning to find specific information quickly, and active reading techniques like underlining and taking notes. Poor reading can result from an inability to understand words, sentences, or how information is organized; or from a lack of interest or concentration. Developing good reading skills involves using strategies like surveying, questioning, reading actively while annotating, recalling what was read, and reviewing the material.

1. Reading Skills
Hatesh Kumar
Lecturer in English
SMI University Karachi

2. Outline
 Reading Skills
 Purpose of Reading
 Reason for a poor Reading
 Techniques For Good Reading

3. Reading As An Acronym!

4. Reading Skills
 Reading skill is the ability to understand information presented in a written
form.
 Effective reading skills are always essential in our academic as well as
professional career. They are more necessary these days among the
phenomenal advanced technology globalization , increasing cultural diversity
, and adoption of team-based structures in work places.
 Time spent by professionals on communication activities on receiving
information(listening and reading). Reading is as important as other
communications skills. But most of us ignore importance of acquiring this
communication skill involved in a receiving a broad spectrum of the
messages .

5. Purpose of Reading
 Search For Information
 For General Comprehension
 Learn new Information
 Synthesize and Evaluate Information

6. Reason for a poor Reading
 Inability to understand a word
 Inability to understand a sentence.
 Inability to understand how sentence relate to one another.
 Inability to understand how the information put together in a meaningful way.
 Lack of interest or concentration.

7. Techniques For Good Reading
1. Skimming: Getting the gist of something
 Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important
information. It’s not essential to understand each word when
you are skimming.
 Run your eyes over the text, noting important information. Use
skimming to quickly get up to speed on a current business
situation.

8. How to Skim?
Working quickly…
1. Read the title if there is one.
2. Read the introduction or the first paragraph if there is one.
3. Read the first sentence of every other paragraph.
4. Notice any pictures, charts, or graphs.
5. Notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases.
6. Read the summary or last paragraph if there is one.
7. Read for which audience the text was written.
8. Read a what type of text it is.
9. Read what the purpose of author is and the general content of the text.

9. Examples of Skimming:
 The Newspaper – to quickly get the general news of the day
 Magazines – to quickly discover which articles you would like to read in more
detail
 Business and Travel Brochures – to quickly get informed

10. Scanning:
 To find specific information quickly.
 How to Scan
1. State the specific information you are looking for.
2. Try to anticipate how the answer will appear and what clues you might use to
help you locate the answer. For example, if you were looking for a certain date,
you would quickly read the paragraph looking only for numbers.
3. Use headings and any other aids that will help you identify which sections might
contain the information you are looking for.
4. Selectively read and skip through sections of the passage.

11. Detailed Reading: For extracting information accurately
 Requires serious reading and proper note taking
 Uses the method of reading called SQ3R (Survey,
Question, Reading, Recall, Review)
 This reading works well in research projects and
academic study.

12. Intensive reading;
 Also called word-for-word type of reading
 Requires one to read materials related to
his/her field of specialization
 The object of intensive reading demands a
great deal of content-area reading.

13. Extensive reading
 Also called light-type of reading
 Reading for leisure
 You love what you read.
 longer texts for pleasure and needing
global understanding

14. Active Reading
 Underlining and Highlighting
 Note Key Words
 Questions
 Summaries

15. Active Reading

16. Annotation
 Spend five minutes in groups of three decide and write down how you think best
to annotate.

17. Annotation
1) Underlining- of major points, or important statements.
2) Vertical Lines at the Margin- To emphasize a statement already underlined or to point to
a passage too long to be underlined.
3) Star, ASTERIK - to emphasize important passages in the book
4) NUMBER or LETTERS in the Margin- to indicate a sequence of points made by the
author.
5) NUMBERS of OTHER PAGES- to indicate places where the author made similar
points, or contradictions, to tie up ideas in the book.
6) CIRCLE- key words or phrases
7) WRITING in the MARGIN- to ask questions (?) to indicate a note to yourself.

18. A Tip For Speeding Up Your Active Reading
 SQ3R
 Survey-
 Question
 Read
 Recall
 Review

19. Thank You