WEEKLY HANDOUT 2:

PREVIEWING, SKIMMING, AND SCANNING

Learning Objectives
By the end of this unit, the students are able to:
1. Understand basic reading skills, such as, previewing, scanning, and
skimming for different reading goals.
2. Apply relevant basic reading skills for certain types of texts with different
goals of reading
LEAD - IN
Look at the following pictures. Do you think you need to read all sentences in
the excerpts?
Do you read them in the same ways? Why or why not?
2
A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes
By Stephen W. Hawking
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction by Carl Sagan ix
1. Our Picture of the Universe 1
2. Space and Time 15
3. The Expanding Universe 35
4. The Uncertainty Principle 53
5. Elementary Particles and the Forces of Nature 63
6. Black Holes 81
7. Black Holes Arent So Black 99
8. The Origin and Fate of the Universe 115

9. The Arrow of Time 143

10. The Unification of Physics 155
11. Conclusion 171
Albert Einstein 177
Galileo Galilei 179
Isaac Newton 181
Glossary 183
Index 189
Different types of texts need different reading strategies. In this unit, you will
learn three basic
reading skills: previewing, scanning, and skimming, and they can be applied
in different
reading materials. Skimming and scanning are two speed-reading
techniques. It allows you to
get the information that you need very quickly. While, previewing is a rapid
kind of reading
that allows you to get a general sense of what a passage, article, or book is
about and how it is
organized. Your eyes scan quickly over the page looking for answers to
general questions
about the material.
PREVIEWING
Preview this table of contents. Then answer the questions. You should
preview for no more
than thirty seconds.
QUESTIONS
1. Do you think the book is fiction (a story that is not true) or non-fiction
(factual

information)?
2. What do you think this book is about?
3. Did you notice any names? If so, write then here.
4. Would you be interested in reading this book? Why or why not?
3
SKIMMING
Skimming is a method of moving your eyes quickly to get the main ideas and
a general overview of the content of the text. Skimming can help you guess
what the text is generally about and get the points that you will encounter in
later reading.
Skimming a text can be conducted by:
Reading the title and pay attention to any visuals in the text
Reading the introduction and the sub titles
Reading the first paragraph completely
Paying to attention to the sub-headings because they tell the relationships
among them
Reading the first sentence of each remaining paragraph
Trying to understand WH questions, proper nouns, specific words or terms,
enumerations, adjectives, italics, boldface, underlining, etc.
Reading the last paragraph completely
EXERCISE 1
Skim the following passage and answer the questions.
Crystallization of Islamic Thought,
Concepts and Methodology
Line 1
Line 5
Line 10

Line 15
Line 20
The institute (The International Institute of Islamic Thought/IIIT) launched a
special program for university teachers, scholars, and thinkers. This program
provides the necessary support to help them spend their sabbatical leaves at
the Institute in order to devote their time exclusively to research.
Additionally, the Institute is trying to raise funds to support those scholars of
outstanding merit and originality so that they can devote their time to
certain topics. These combined efforts will, in shaa Allah, produce pioneer
academic works that will guide and help others who are working in various
fields toward the Islamization of knowledge.
The work on the crystallization of thought and reform of methodology is of
fundamental importance. It involves a study of the contents of Islamic
thought and methodology, as we know them today, and a need to present
them with their basic issues recast into a perfectly integrated form with a
new ability to relate to twentieth century issues. This will reinvigorate Islamic
thought and methodology and restore to them their lost efficacy, allowing
the Ummah to perceive them as a vibrant ideology and a certain and a
comprehensive methodology.
The crystallization of the basic principles of Islam and its distinct philosophy
with respect to different fields, as well as its integrated academic
methodology, are of prime importance in this first stage of revival and
reformation. The
4
Line 25
Institute intends to realize these aims at the present stage by mobilizing the
rare and scant intellectual energies and skills available.
It is hoped that this overall philosophical and methodological vision will
provide the scholars who are working in different academic fields with
insight. It is hoped that it will enlighten and help them to recast their special
subjects of study in the framework of the beliefs, principles, values, and
ideals of Islam and to advance, in all fields, the cause of what we have
termed the Islamization of knowledge.

(Quoted from: Abu Sulayman, Abdul Hamid (editor), Islamization of

Knowledge, 1989: 60-61)
Questions
1. What is the topic of the passage?
2. What are the main ideas of first and third paragraph?
3. What will the text discuss?
SCANNING
Scanning is a fast reading technique to find specific information in a text
Scanning is useful for finding a specific name, date, statistics, and fact
without reading the whole article
Steps to scan an article:
1. Remember what you want to find.
2. Anticipate in what form the information appear (in number, abbreviation,
etc.)
3. Analyze the organization of the content before reading
4. Let your eyes move rapidly over several lines of print at a time
5. When you find the sentence that has the information you look for, read the
entire sentence.
5
EXERCISE 2
Read the following text quickly and answer the questions.
QUESTIONS
1. Pamela is a Whoopi Goldberg fan. Can she see both of her movies or must
she tape one of them?
2. Randy wants to know how the stock market performed today. What show
should he watch?
3. Which French city is spotlighted on the travel show?

4. How many game shows are playing tonight? Which ones?

5. Which movie gets the best rating this evening?
Sources:
READING SKILLS from Cape Peninsula University of Technology
Student Workbook Reading Comprehension from CAHSEE on Target, UC
Davis