Reading 3: Scanning

So this will be the last of my Reading blogs. Scanning. First, let's recap. Speed reading is mostly for native English speakers and that's when you don't read every word and your native understanding of grammar fills in the rest. It's not really something I recommend for students, but it's good to know what people mean when they say speed reading. Skimming is kind of the non-native adaptation of speed reading and it's when you just read the first sentences of each paragraph because the first sentences are the topic sentences because they give you the topics of each paragraphs and so you can therefore get the overall main idea from them. Both speed reading and skimming are things to be done on a test before you start answering the questions. On a test, or at least one like TOEFL, you should NEVER EVER EVER read the entire passage before you answer the questions. You just don't have enough time.


Now scanning is what you do while you are answering the questions. Scanning is when you scan, or look, for just one or two words to find the place in the passage that talks about the idea that the question is asking about. SCANNING IS NOT READING. Scanning is very visual. If you read while scanning, first it's not scanning, but second it'll take too long and you wont be able to finish the questions. You just use the SHAPE of the word and look for the SHAPE of the word. When I scan, I kind of cross my eyes and purposely don't focus on the page lest I'm tempted to read. So because you're only looking for a shape, there are two general rules to follow.


Rule #1: It can't be a word that has many synonyms or is changed easily. If the question uses the word "superfluous" but the passage uses the word "excessive" or "unnecessary" then you're wasting your time and will never find the word "superfluous." Therefore, rule #1 is probably the most important rule.


Rule #2: It has to be a visually interesting word. For example, "word" is not visually interesting because the shape is exactly the same as "wood" or "neat" or "wind" or "soak". They all have the shape "---l". Does that make sense? They're also pretty short and therefore wont stick out. So "superfluous" is actually a pretty visually interesting word, mostly because it's so long. Unfortunately, we've already seen that it can be easily changed. A visually interesting word that's not very easy to change is "encyclopedia." Also, any proper nouns (because they have capitalized letters, like New York, or CIA) are pretty easy to scan for, especially a capital C or O, like "Captain Cook" or "Oregon". The big round shape is very visually interesting and catches your eye very easily. Numbers are probably the number one easiest thing to scan for, like dates (1962).


Let's look at an example.


So from the following phrase, which word would you pick to scan for?


"Opposed by the U.S. government"


Some of you may say "Opposed" because it's got the capital "O" I was talking about, but it's only capitalized because it's at the beginning of the phrase. It'd probably not be capitalized in the passage. Also, opposed can be changed easily to like "to go/be against." Some might pick "U.S" because of the capital letters but "U.S" can easily change to "American." Therefore, government is the best to scan for. "by" and "the" are way too short and common and you should never scan for words like that.


Picking the right word to scan for can be tricky, but it's easy to get the hang of if you practice.


One final note: scanning needs to be very fast. Even if you pick a word that is difficult to change, they might have found a way to change it or it might not be in the article because it's not the answer. So you have to have a lot of confidence when you scan and know when to stop scanning for one word.


Ok, so that's it. I'm dong talking about reading. I hope it was helpful.

▼▽▼▼【講師】Amberly先生のバックナンバー━━━━━━━━
・【Reading 2: Skimming】2009.11.04 (Wed)