Skimming

Skimming is the process of quickly viewing a section of text to get a general

impression of the author's main argument, themes or ideas. There are three
types of skimming: preview, overview, and review.

Preview skimming
Most often followed by a second skimming or a thorough reading, preview
skimming is used
 in selecting a book.
 in surveying a chapter before reading or studying.
 in finding appropriate material for use in research.
 in sorting through correspondence before answering it.
Our preview in an effort to learn about the ideas presented and the structure
of their development.

Method: Read the first paragraph, and the headings and first sentences of
later paragraphs and sections.

Overview skimming
We use overview skimming to sample the reading material more thoroughly
than you do in a preview as we may not intend to read the material at a later
time.

Method: As we do in preview skimming, we would read the first paragraph,

the headings and first sentences of paragraphs and sections, but in addition, as
you alternately read and skim, we alert our self to the structure and content of
the material through an awareness of paragraph patterns, thought transitions,
and clue words.
This awareness will help us to understand the content, to recall more
information, and to see relationships more clearly and quickly.

Review skimming
 Our purpose with review skimming is to re-familiarize yourself with material
you have previously read thoroughly or skimmed.

Method: Prepare our self by trying to remember as many of the ideas and
details clearly. It may be that we already have a good grasp of the main ideas
and will be stopping primarily to note significant details - names, places, terms,
etc. we may be trying to establish in our mind a sequence of events or a
procedure, or you may be attempting to fill in a skeleton outline to clarify the
structure of the whole.
 Checking a title and author.
 Reading the preface and dust cover report on the author.
 Checking the content. Look at the index and examine chapter titles. Look
for a summary.
 Thumbing through the book, stopping occasionally to skim paragraphs.
Pay close attention to the way the paragraphs are put together and notice their
length. Long paragraphs may be elaborating on a key thought, and short
paragraphs may expect the reader to link separate ideas together. Thoroughly
reading a paragraph or two will provide clues as to how the author puts their
thoughts together. Are they analytical and methodical, or do they ramble and
reiterate? Are they accurate and thorough, or is their writing superficial or vague?
At this point make preliminary judgements about the author's purpose. Are they
writing to inform, to prove a point, to share an experience, to describe a
procedure, or something else? Continue to read only topic sentences, dropping
down through the rest of the paragraphs, until you are near the end.
Since the last few paragraphs may contain a conclusion or summary, you should
stop skimming there and read in detail.
Remember that your overall comprehension will be lower than if you read in
detail. If while skimming, you feel you are grasping the main ideas, then you are
skimming correctly.

Skimming significance
Skimming will help us in the following ways:
  locate the information quickly while making sure we use our time wisely.
 It will also increase the amount of usable material we obtain for our
research.
 At the end of each topic sentence, our eyes should drop down through the
rest of the paragraph, looking for important pieces of information, such as
names, dates, or events.
 Suppose we have an exam in a few days. We need to review the material
we learned, but we don’t want to reread everything.
 By skimming, you can quickly locate the information you haven’t mastered
yet and study only that material.
 Understand the main idea or theme of the any passage and understand
what the author might be trying to say.
 Select a text and skim through it to understand the structure and main
points.
 Skimming is of great importance while trying to get the theme of any
passage.

Skimming use

Academic use
Skimming is of great use not only in our academics but it is also used on daily
basis. In our academic it is used when
We have an exam in a few days and need to review the material we learned, but
we don’t have time to read everything.
By skimming, we can quickly locate the information we haven’t studied yet and
study only that material in this way we will save our time and prepare well for
exams. Secondly, we use skimming to get the concept of any chapter and use it
wisely by skimming we can easily locate important points such as date names
events etc. Skimming will help us locate the information quickly while making
sure you use your time wisely. It will also increase the amount of usable material
we obtain for our research when making an assignment skimming will help
gather important information.
Otherwise use
Skimming can be used otherwise too like when reading an article or novel etc.
we can easily understand the main idea of the novel by skimming. Or then
reading a document we can easily collect data. I use skimming while reading
newspaper or magazine or sometimes an article in this way I gather the
important information in less passage of time and understand the main idea or
theme of the thing I am reading without getting bored so it is an effective way of
reading and can be used in many ways.

Purpose reading
People read different kinds of text (e.g., scholarly articles, textbooks, reviews) for
different reasons. Some purposes for reading might be

 to scan for specific information

 to skim to get an overview of the text
 to relate new content to existing knowledge
 to write something (often depends on a prompt)
 to critique an argument
 to learn something
For general comprehension Before reading the text
 Establish your purpose for reading
 Speculate about the author’s purpose for writing
 Review what you already know and want to learn about the topic
 Preview the text to get an overview of its structure, looking at headings,
figures, tables, glossary, etc.
 Predict the contents of the text and pose questions about it. If the authors
have provided discussion questions, read them and write them on a note-
taking sheet.
 Note any discussion questions that have been provided
 Sample pre-reading guides
You can create this purpose if you:
Refer to:
• assessment tasks
 • lecture slides
• tutorial questions
• textbook questions
Create:
 questions based on lectures or tutorials
 questions based on a skim of the text
 (contents, headings, subheadings, diagrams, introductions, etc.)
Consider:
• what you already know
• related knowledge or experiences
Purpose reading significance
Reading without any purpose is useless. Every time we read it’s purposeful, we
want to learn something or know about something.
Set a clear objective for what you want to learn and what you hope to achieve
while reading. Ask yourself why you are reading the material and think about
how it might engage you or introduce new material. Do this by reading the
introduction and chapter headings. These will give you an overall idea of what
the book covers. Determining your purpose gives you structure and helps you
stay focused.
The purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what we already
know. If we don't know anything about a subject, then pouring words of text into
our mind is like pouring water into our hand. When reading a novel, we will likely
always do this in the same way: from beginning to end. The same is not true of
academic reading, as your purpose will affect how you read it. Exactly how you
approach the reading will depend on your specific purpose. 

Reading without any purpose is useless. Every time we read it’s purposeful, we
want to learn something or know about something. Reading with a clear,
meaningful purpose helps us gain more from text. we’re able to monitor our
reading, figure out what information is most important, and be confident that our
reading was successful. In close reading, in particular, setting a purpose also
encourages us to return to the text, which builds understanding.
One way to set a purpose for reading is through questioning. Create a series of
questions that shape our reading so that, as we read, we “see” the text through
different lenses, and peel away layers to reveal deeper meaning each time they
read.

Purpose reading use

Purpose reading is of great use in academic as well as on daily basis routine

Academic use
It is used for assessment tasks. It can also be used to in lecture slides as reading
there is purpose full and for tutorial questions and textbook questions.it creates
questions based on tutorials and lectures. it helps in general understanding of a
topic or issue. Without purpose we cannot the meaning of the text and its
meaning less

Other use
Purpose reading is for everything we read it might be novel magazine or article for
example I once read a cooking recipe so my purpose for it was to understand the
recipe and hence I did the purpose reading for without purpose reading would be
useless as we wont get anything from it. it can also be used for research purpose
and has many other uses. Hence it is of a great importance.