Reading Skill

Reading skills are abilities that pertain to a person's capacity to read, comprehend, interpret and
decode written language and texts. Exceptional reading skills can be highly beneficial to
assimilating and responding to written communications like emails, messages, letters and other
written messages. Using reading skills in the workplace can also be important for ensuring
effective written communication, which can result in less miscommunication or
misunderstanding of expectations. Reading skills can also encompass several key aspects that
work together to develop overall literacy skills, including comprehension, fluency, vocabulary
and strategies that help readers interpret and find meaning in texts.

Different Types of Reading

Introduction: Various types of reading lead to different outcomes. Choosing the right one can
be instrumental in furthering your goals. Further, diversifying your reading habits to include
different types of reading will enable you to become a better writer and speaker. Improving
your communication skills will enable you to convey your ideas with precision and clarity. It’s
not always easy to get your point across. But reading gives you the power to understand
multiple perspectives. Building a reading habit can be effective in the short and long run. To
harness the full potential of your reading habit, sign up for Harappa Education’s Reading
Deeply course. Learn how to improve comprehension and read for deeper understanding. Sign
up now and make the most of everything you read.

1. Skimming
Skimming, sometimes referred to as gist reading, means going through the text to grasp the
main idea. Here, the reader doesn’t pronounce each and every word of the text but focuses
their attention on the main theme or the core of the text. Examples of skimming are reading
magazines or newspapers and searching for a name in a telephone directory.
2. Scanning
Here, the reader quickly scuttles across sentences to get to a particular piece of information.
Scanning involves the technique of rejecting or ignoring irrelevant information from the text
to locate a specific piece of information.
3. Intensive Reading
Intensive reading is far more time-consuming than skimming and scanning as it needs the
reader’s attention to detail. It involves close reading that aims at the accuracy of
comprehension. Here, the reader has to understand the meaning of each and every word.
4. Critical Reading
Among the different types of reading strategies, critical reading has a special place. Here, the
facts and information are tested for accuracy. You take a look at the ideas mentioned and
analyse them until you reach a conclusion. You would have to apply your critical faculties
when using this method. Critical reading is often used when reading the news on social media,
watching controversial advertisements, or reading periodicals.

The Reading Process

Reading is a process that involves recognizing words, leading to the development of
comprehension. According to research, reading is a process that negotiates the meaning
between the text and its reader. The reading process involves following stages.
1. Pre-reading
Pre-reading is where students prepare themselves to read. They may decide or be told why
they're going to read a piece of text. They may use their background knowledge to make
predictions of what the text is going to be about. Teachers may have them use a concept map
called a KWL chart where students put down what they know (K), what they want to know
(W), and after they have read what they learned (L) from their reading.
2. Reading
This is where you get down to the actual reading part. The text can be delivered to students in
a variety of ways. Students can engage in individual reading, or they can be read aloud to.
Teachers may use big books or print projected somewhere in order to do a group reading
session.
3. Responding
Responding is where a students reacts to what they have read. Most often this is through
discussion.
4. Exploration
This is where students explore their new information. They may re-read part or all of the text.
They may read more texts to expand their knowledge of the new subject. Students may learn
new vocabulary words that they came up against in the text. Exploration is a very broad stage
that can take many paths.
5. Applying
During the applying stage students take the new knowledge they have learned and do more
with it. Often, they will have projects that measure how much they have learned. They may
read books related to the original text or participate

Tips for Improving Reading Skills:

Reading skills are abilities that pertain to a person's capacity to read, comprehend, interpret and
decode written language and texts. Exceptional reading skills can be highly beneficial to
assimilating and responding to written communications like emails, messages, letters and other
written messages. Using reading skills in the workplace can also be important for ensuring
effective written communication, which can result in less miscommunication or
misunderstanding of expectations.

Reading skills can also encompass several key aspects that work together to develop overall
literacy skills, including comprehension, fluency, vocabulary and strategies that help readers
interpret and find meaning in texts.
1. Set aside time to read each day.
One of the most effective ways to build your skills is to practice. Developing your reading
skills will ultimately take practice, and you can set aside 10 to 15 minutes each day to read.
You can read news articles, fiction, magazine issues or any kind of text, as long as you are
taking the time to practice your reading skills.
2. Set reading goals.
You can set reading goals for yourself to help you develop a wider vocabulary, gain a deeper
understanding of different texts and improve your ability to make connections between things
you read and your own perspectives and ideas.
For example, you might set a goal to learn different vocabulary related to a central topic like
business management, technology or another subject that interests you. Then, you can find
meanings to unfamiliar words that help build your vocabulary as you read. As you build your
vocabulary to higher-level words and phrases, you can increase the difficulty level of the texts
you read.
3. Preview the texts you read.
Previewing and scanning over texts can be another step toward improving your reading skills.
You can apply this strategy by previewing titles, captions, headlines and other text features to
get an idea of what you are reading about. This can help you form central ideas about the text
before you begin reading it.
4. Determine the purpose.
As you read through different texts, practice determining the purpose. Think about why various
texts were written and what meanings or themes can be understood from a text. Additionally,
you might identify the purpose that you are reading for, such as to find information, follow
instructions in a manual or to enjoy a story. Knowing your purpose for reading a text can help
you look for key ideas and details that support your purpose.
5. Take notes while you read.
Another highly effective method for improving your reading skills is to take notes while you
read. For instance, you might take notes while reading a fiction novel to gain a deeper
understanding of the author's choice of language, or you might write down new vocabulary
while reading a science journal. Effective notetaking can prompt you to ask questions about
and make connections to what you read.
Similarly, creating visual representations like charts, tables or diagrams can clarify themes and
ideas and can help you form inferences from your reading. Note-taking can be highly beneficial
for comprehension exercises like summarizing, too.
6. Apply what you read by summarizing.
Summarizing what you read can also improve your reading skills. Summarizing forces you to
remember specific details and central topics about what you read in your own words and
through your own unique perspective. You might try verbally summarizing what you read by
sharing information with a friend or write a short summary to help you retain and comprehend
what you read.
7. Highlight the text while reading.
8. Read in portions.

Reading Comprehension
Reading comprehension has two elements that complete the process. The first element is
vocabulary knowledge. The reader must be able to understand the vocabulary used by the
writer. The second element is text comprehension, where the reader puts together the
vocabulary and different comprehension strategies to develop an understanding of the text.
Comprehension, or the mental process that allows the reader to understand the text, begins
before the reader starts the text and continues even after the reading has finished. There are
some specific strategies that can be used to increase comprehension.

Comprehension strategies
Research studies on reading and comprehension have shown that highly proficient readers
utilize a number of different strategies to comprehend various types of texts, strategies that can
also be used by less proficient readers in order to improve their comprehension.
1. Making Inferences: In everyday terms we refer to this as "reading between the lines".
It involves connecting various parts of texts that are not directly linked in order to form
a sensible conclusion. A form of assumption, the reader speculates what connections
lie within the texts.
2. Planning and Monitoring: This strategy centres around the reader's mental awareness
and their ability to control their comprehension by way of awareness. By previewing
text (via outlines, table of contents, etc.) one can establish a goal for reading: "what do
I need to get out of this"? Readers use context clues and other evaluation strategies to
clarify texts and ideas, and thus monitoring their level of understanding.
3. Asking Questions: To solidify one's understanding of passages of texts readers inquire
and develop their own opinion of the author's writing, character motivations,
relationships, etc. This strategy involves allowing oneself to be completely objective in
order to find various meanings within the text.
 4. Determining Importance: Pinpointing the important ideas and messages within the text.
Readers are taught to identify direct and indirect ideas and to summarize the relevance
of each.
5. Visualizing: With this sensory-driven strategy readers form mental and visual images
of the contents of text. Being able to connect visually allows for a better understanding
with the text through emotional responses.
6. Synthesizing: This method involves marrying multiple ideas from various texts in order
to draw conclusions and make comparisons across different texts; with the reader's goal
being to understand how they all fit together.
7. Making Connections: A cognitive approach also referred to as "reading beyond the
lines", which involves (A) finding a personal connection to reading, such as personal
experience, previously read texts, etc. to help establish a deeper understanding of the
context of the text, or (B) thinking about implications that have no immediate
connection with the theme of the text.

Note Taking and Note Making

What is Note Taking
Note-taking refers to the process of writing down or recording the main key points of
information. This is a significant practice in any research process. For instance, if you are a
student, you might be taking down discussion notes or lecture notes, which might serve you as
a study aid later. Just imagine how useful the process of note-taking is to you if you are an
interviewer who is conducting an interview with a celebrity in order to gather necessary
information for a journal article or a book to be published. In note-taking, it is possible to see
different note-taking practices. Outlining is one of the most frequently used note-taking
methods, where the note taker quickly grabs the main points and creates a piece of content in
bullet points. Guided notes are another note-taking method where the teacher provides the
required templates for the students to take their individual notes. Cornell notes is another
common note-taking method where we divide the page into three main sections: notes, cues,
and summary.
However, compared to note making, the main issue in note-taking is that note-taking usually
happens while we are listening, and the objective is to grab the key points quickly and note
them down as we hear them in order to refer back to them later. We often use the original
author’s language as it’s easier. But this can result in poor comprehension of the notes when
we refer back to them later, and it is possible that we might easily forget the content.
What is Note Making
Note-making involves the process of reviewing, combining, and synthesizing ideas you hear
or read. In contrast to note-taking, note-making is a relatively slow process that involves more
of our own language rather than someone else’s language. Consequently, the content produced
in note-making is easier to comprehend and remember. When we are note-making while
reading, we deliberately structure a personal version of what we read. This allows us to
remember the information better as it is actively created from our own minds. Therefore, taking
time and making enough effort to reword and build the content we are reading allows the
information to be absorbed into our long-term memory. There are three main principles
common to any note-making process: rephrasing the original idea, connecting the ideas, and
building upon ideas. Keep in your mind that while you are making notes, you should actively
engage with them, revisit them, and revise them.