SKIMMING AND SCANNING

Every day in life, we read everything such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, notes and advertisement board. However, the purpose of reading is slightly different in each material. As an examples, when we read Facebook we just scroll everything until we find something that interesting but when we read notes we tends to go through the whole things in order to understand the notes. Why we read text? There are to main purpose of reading which are for academic or to know something. In reading, there are several skills that people should use so that they can easily understand and grasp main ideas. Firstly, recognizing text provided. Then, understand information follow by interpreting meaning and transcoding information. Next, scanning the text to find certain information such as scanning crush’s post on Facebook to know what is his favorite hobby. Besides, skimming by skip any rubbish post or unnecessary information. Last but not least, identifying the main point which this skill usually being use in academic reading.

 Let us focus deeper in scanning and skimming skills by seeing the advantages and how to do scanning and skimming process. Skimming is the process of quickly identify main ideas of a text. The advantages of skimming is 3 to 4 times faster than regular reading thus it is used when there is a lot of material and a short amount of time. There are also steps on how to do skimming which are read the first and last paragraph, read headings, subheadings, titles, subtitles, and illustrations, read the first sentence of every paragraph. Besides, skimming works well with dates, names and places. Then scanning is used to search for key terms. Furthermore, scanning is good to use when determining whether a source will have the answers that we are looking for. There steps for do scanning are by looking at how the author organizes his information, look for bold faces, italics, or different sized fonts and the author may also put key information in the margins of pages.    

Skimming and scanning are very rapid reading methods in which we can glance at a passage to find specific information. These reading methods make it easier for us to grasp large amounts of material, especially when we are previewing. They are also useful when we do not need to know every word. I also can use SQ3R study system which the method is a simple, systematic approach to studying textbook material. It can enhance our comprehension and retention of material that been read. It consists of five steps which are survey, question, read, recite and review. Thus, I think this is really giving advantages for me as a student in order to save time during revision time.