Reading in English: Scanning for information
Do you know how to use different reading techniques?
When reading in English, you might choose to make your way through the text slowly and steadily - making sure you understand everything in it. This makes sense to use in some cases - but it’s not always the right approach.
Finding Specific Information, Quickly
Picture this scenario: you’re cooking dinner in the kitchen, and the oven timer goes off. Your roasted vegetables are about to burn, and you have to quickly check the recipe for the next step.
Should you read through the recipe word-by-word? No! You should scan through the recipe to find the specific information you need. Reading through the entire text wastes valuable time, most of the recipe will be irrelevant to you (at that moment).
How to improve your Scanning Skills?
Scanning for specific information is a useful skill - whether you’re cooking, searching your inbox for a particular email, or looking for your departure gate at an airport. As with other reading skills, you can practise it to get quicker and more efficient.
Active Reading, our online English reading course, develops this skill with exercises in which you retrieve information from a text under time pressure. Just click here to get started with a free trial of our online English courses.
Are you a teacher or do you represent an educational institution? Our online English programs can help you streamline your curriculum and provide high-quality online resources to your students for remote study or blended learning. It can be hard to teach skills such as scanning for information in a classroom setting. Our online programs can help. Contact us for more information and to give your learners the tools they need to succeed.