Reading Skills for Academic Study

Efficient reading skills

Using the title

Reading is an interactive process – it is two-way. This means you have to work at constructing the meaning from the marks on the paper. You need to be active all the time when you are reading. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to try to actively remember what you know, and do not know, about the subject and then formulate questions based on the information you have. You can then read to answer these questions.

Title, sub-titles and section heading can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting.

The title is a summary of the text. Sometimes we have to make quick decisions based on only the title. Therefore, it is useful to try to understand it well. This may mean looking up unfamiliar words in a dictionary.

It is a good idea to ask yourself the following questions, based on the title.

1. Is this text relevant to your needs? Is it related to the subject you are studying?
2. What do you expect to learn from the text? Ask yourself some questions that you expect the text to answer.

Exercise

Try these exercises: Exercise 1