Reading Techniques

One of the first things you learn about teaching is that there are
differentreading techniques and the students should be aware of which
technique is most suited, depending on the reading task required by
the text or by their teacher.

Training students to know their reading techniques and deduce when
best to apply them is indeed important, especially under exam
conditions when time constraints come into play and decisions need to
be made depending on time availability and the importance of the task
at hand.

The four main types of reading techniques are the following:

Skimming
Scanning
Intensive
Extensive

Skimming

Skimming is sometimes referred to as gist reading. Skimming may help
in order to know what the text is about at its most basic level. You
might typically do this with a magazine or newspaper and would help
you mentally and quickly shortlist those articles which you might
consider for a deeper read. You might typically skim to search for a
name in a telephone directory.

You can reach a speed count of even 700 words per minute if you train
yourself well in this particular method. Comprehension is of course
very low and understanding of overall content very superficial.

Scanning

Picture yourself visiting a historical city, guide book in hand. You
would most probably just scan the guide book to see which site you
might want to visit. Scanning involves getting your eyes to quickly
scuttle across sentence and is used to get just a simple piece of
information. Interestingly, research has concluded that reading off a
computer screen actually inhibits the pathways to effective scanning
and thus, reading of paper is far more conducive to speedy
comprehension of texts.

Something students sometimes do not give enough importance to is
illustrations. These should be included in your scanning. Special
attention to the introduction and the conclusion should also be paid.

Intensive Reading

You need to have your aims clear in mind when undertaking intensive
reading. Remember this is going to be far more time consuming than
scanning or skimming. If you need to list the chronology of events in
a long passage, you will need to read it intensively. This type of
reading has indeed beneficial to language learners as it helps them
understand vocabulary by deducing the meaning of words in context. It
moreover, helps with retention of information for long periods of time
and knowledge resulting from intensive reading persists in your long
term memory.

This is one reason why reading huge amounts of information just before
an exam does not work very well. When students do this, they undertake
neither type of reading process effectively, especially neglecting
intensive reading. They may remember the answers in an exam but will
likely forget everything soon afterwards.

Extensive reading

Extensive reading involves reading for pleasure. Because there is an
element of enjoyment in extensive reading it is unlikely that students
will undertake extensive reading of a text they do not like. It also
requires a fluid decoding and assimilation of the text and content in
front of you. If the text is difficult and you stop every few minutes
to figure out what is being said or to look up new words in the
dictionary, you are breaking your concentration and diverting your
thoughts.

Is the ability to learn and assimilate information genetic?

It is not uncommon for people to associate intelligent or bright kids
with their equally intelligent parents. Often children of parents
exercising a profession appear to be more intelligent. However, it is
important to note first and foremost, that academic intelligence is
only one form of intelligence and even a university professor who
scores high on academic intelligence, might be the most impractical
person, finding it difficult to pragmatically solve problems to simple
everyday tasks. The notion of intelligence is an extremely complex and
diverse one and to pin it into just a single word means whipping out
the multitude of connotations and meanings that it actually embodies.

Scientists have found no plausible relationship between our genes and
our ability to learn or our intelligence. There is no genetic DNA test
that can predict intelligence because intelligence is due to your
environment. It is likely that children with parents who exercise a
profession appear more intelligent because their parents directly or
directly encourage it. Likely, it is also evident that parents who
neglect their children and do not enforce their schooling commitments
(doing their homework, study periods etc) will perform less well in
school and appear "less intelligent". Again, it is evident why
children who have had no opportunity for schooling might be considered
anything but "intelligent".