25.3 Preview, Skim, and Scan
Overview
One of the greatest challenges students face is adjusting to college reading expectations. Unlike high school, students in college are expected to read more “academic” type of materials in less time and usually recall the information as soon as the next class.
The problem is many students will spend hours reading and have no idea what they just read. Their eyes are moving across the page, but their mind is somewhere else. The end result is wasted time, energy, and frustration . . . and having to read the text again.
Although students are taught how to read at an early age, many are not taught how to actively engage with written text.
Active Reading is applying reading strategies before, during, and after reading a text with the overall objective of increasing comprehension (understanding what was read) and recall (remembering what was read) to save time and effort.
Activity
- What things most commonly distract you when you are reading? What can you do to control these distractions?
- List three specific places on your campus or at home that are appropriate for you to do your reading assignments. Which is best suited? What can you do to improve that reading environment?
How to Preview a Text
What is Previewing?
Examining the content and organization of a text in order to become familiar with it before reading.
When you preview, you look for sign-posts by doing the following things:
- Scan for titles, headings, and subheadings
- Skim the first paragraph or introduction
- Skim the last paragraph or summary
- Scan the first sentence after each heading
- Skim the abstract (if provided)
- Make a note of graphic aids such as figures, tables, charts, graphs, and images
- Make a note of typographical aids such as bold-faced or highlighted words and phrases
- Scan any supplemental material at the beginning or end of the text, such as chapter outlines, chapter objectives, discussion questions, or vocabulary lists
Why should I preview before I read?
Previewing is an excellent way to save time and improve your understanding of a text.
Advantages of Previewing:
- First, it helps you evaluate a text in order to decide if it is relevant for your purposes. This requires you to think about what your purpose is before you read. For instance, if you’re doing research on a topic, previewing can help you evaluate if a text provides information you need.
- Second, it helps you read faster by identifying passages that you must read carefully versus those that you can skim or skip. Generally, you want to slow down and read more carefully when a passage covers a new topic you know very little about; contains complicated or technical material; is filled with essential visual aids like tables, charts, graphs, and images; contains a lot of new or difficult vocabulary; or requires a lot of visualization or interpretation. On the other hand, you may want to skim or skip material when a passage is easy to read, covers material you already know well, or covers material that isn’t relevant to your purpose for reading.
- Finally, it helps you read better by helping you identify questions you may have about the text.
How to Skim a Text
Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information, or “gist.” Run your eyes over the text, noting important information. Use skimming to quickly get up to speed on a current business situation. It’s not essential to understand each word when skimming.
Skimming is covering the chapter to get some of the main ideas and a general overview of the material. It is what you do first when reading a chapter assignment. You don’t read for details at this point.
Here is how you skim a chapter:
- Read the first paragraph of the chapter line by line.
- Next, read all the bold print headings starting at the beginning.
- Read the first sentence of every paragraph.
- Study any pictures, graphs, charts, and maps.
- Finally, read the last paragraph of the chapter.
As you skim, you could write down the main ideas and develop a chapter outline.
How to Scan a Text
The technique of scanning is a useful one to use if you want to get an overview of the text you are reading as a whole – its shape, the focus of each section, the topics or key issues that are dealt with, and so on. In order to scan a piece of text you might look for sub-headings or identify key words and phrases which give you clues about its focus. Another useful method is to read the first sentence or two of each paragraph in order to get the general gist of the discussion and the way that it progresses.
Scanning is used to find a particular piece of information. Run your eyes over the text looking for the specific piece of information you need. If you see words or phrases that you don’t understand, don’t worry when scanning.
Scanning is what you do to find an answer to a specific question. You may run your eyes quickly down the page in a zigzag or winding S pattern. If you are looking for a name, you note capital letters. For a date, you look for numbers. Vocabulary words may be boldfaced or italicized. When you scan for information, you read only what is needed.
Student Example
“Multiple Intelligences” by Fred Mednick
When I was scanning this document, I focused primarily on the headings of the text, the words in bold, the table, and external links.
Just from scanning, it seems like this is going to be a balanced article about the concept of multiple intelligences. It’s got an overview section, which seems to contain history of the subject. The next two sections appear to be a Pro/Con discussion—“The appeal of multiple intelligences” and then “Some issues and problems.” I like the table of the various types of intelligences that appears about mid-way through, and am interested in the external link for exploring what my own intelligences are. It seems like the concept of emotional intelligence might have been added later, since it wasn’t on the table, but does have two extra sections about it at the end of the document. That might be important, since it’s got a lot written about it overall.
Writing Assignment
Assignment
- With your selected text from the reading list in class, scan the document.
- Write a paragraph about this experience. Describe what your process of scanning entails, and what you learn about the document, from this process.
Licenses and Attributions
Active Reading Strategies. Authored by: Heather Syrett. Provided by: Austin Community College. License: CC BY-NC-SA-4.0
Reference Guide. Online Excelsior Writing Lab. Excelsior College. License: CC BY-NC-SA-4.0
Revision and Adaptation. Provided by: Lumen Learning. License: CC BY: Attribution
