1.

Skimming Text
Skimming refers to the process of reading only main ideas within a passage to get an overall
impression of the content of a reading. When you skim a page, you take the main ideas from the
reading material without reading all the words. You look for and seize upon words that appear
to give the main meaning. Readers skim when time is short or when they need to understand
the general ideas but not the particulars of an article or book. Skimming occurs at three to four
times the normal reading speed. For that reason, your reading comprehension takes a nose dive
when you skim.
Skimming can save you hours of laborious reading. However, it is not always the most
appropriate way to read. It is very useful as a preview to a more detailed reading or when
reviewing a selection heavy in content. But when you skim, you may miss important points or
overlook the finer shadings of meaning, for which rapid reading or perhaps even study reading
may be necessary.
Use skimming to overview your textbook chapters or to review for a test. Use skimming to
decide if you need to read something at all, for example during the preliminary research for a
paper. Skimming can tell you enough about the general idea and tone of the material, as well as
its gross similarity or difference from other sources, to know if you need to read it at all.
To skim, prepare yourself to move rapidly through the pages. You will not read every word;
you will pay special attention to typographical cues-headings, boldface and italic type,
indenting, bulleted and numbered lists. You will be alert for key words and phrases, the names
of people and places, dates, nouns, and unfamiliar words. In general follow these steps:
 Read the table of contents or chapter overview to learn the main divisions of ideas.
 Glance through the main headings in each chapter just to see a word or two. Read the
headings of charts and tables.
 Read the entire introductory paragraph and then the first and last sentence only of each
following paragraph. For each paragraph, read only the first few words of each sentence
or to locate the main idea.
 Stop and quickly read the sentences containing keywords indicated in boldface or italics.
 When you think you have found something significant, stop to read the entire sentence
to make sure. Then go on the same way. Resist the temptation to stop to read details you
don't need.
 Read chapter summaries when provided.
 If you cannot complete all the steps above, compromise: read only the chapter overviews
and summaries, for example, or the summaries and all the boldfaced keywords. When you skim,
you take a calculated risk that you may miss something. For instance, the main ideas of
paragraphs are not always found in the first or last sentences (although in many textbooks they
are). Ideas you miss you may pick up in a chapter overview or summary.
Good skimmers do not skim everything at the same rate or give equal attention to
everything. While skimming is always faster than your normal reading speed, you should slow
down in the following situations:
 When you skim introductory and concluding paragraphs
 When you skim topic sentences
 When you find an unfamiliar word
 When the material is very complicated
Exercise 1 :

Here are two physics texts. Skim through them and underline the sentence or the words that best
sum up the main idea of each paragraph (the key words or sentences).
“Static electricity” is electricity which is static? No!

“Static electricity’” is a collection of different electrical phenomena; phenomena in which

the amounts of positive and negative electric charge within a material are not perfectly equal.
Where voltage is high and current is low.
Where electrical forces (attraction and repulsion) are seen to reach across space. Widely
spaced electrically charged objects may attract or repel each other. Hair might stand on end!
Where electric fields (as opposed to magnetic fields) become very important.
Electrostatics is about “charge”, and about the attract/repel forces which electric charge
creates. The motion or the “staticness” of the charges is irrelevant. After all, the same forces
continue to exist even when the charges start flowing. And charges that are separated or imbalanced
can sometimes flow along, yet the “static” effects are undiminished when the current begins. In
other words, it’s perfectly possible to create flows of so-called “static” electricity.
It’s very misleading to concentrate on the “staticness” of the charges. It derails our
explanations and hides many important concepts such as charge separation, the density of
imbalanced positive/negative charge, and the presence of voltage fields surrounding the imbalanced
charges. Electrostatics is not about “staticness”: instead it’s about charge and forces.
Imagine if water was explained just as badly as “static electricity”. In that case, most people
would believe in two special kinds of water called “static water” and “current water”. We’d wrongly
insist that “hydrostatics” was the study of static water. In that case, only the hydraulics expert would
realize there’s no such thing as “static water”. In a similar way, “static electricity” has nothing to do
with “electricity at rest”.
(Taken from http://amasci.com/emotor/stmiscon.html#one)

What Brings about Changes in Science?

(1) Einstein published three major scientific papers. One of these put forward a new way of
calculating the size of molecules. Another explained Brownian motion — the random dance
performed by specks of dust trapped in a fluid. Einstein suggested that the tiny particles making up
the fluid — its atoms or molecules — were bouncing against the specks of dust and causing the
motion. These papers helped to establish the reality of atoms and molecules. Another of Einstein’s
1905 papers explained the photoelectric effect — the way that metals could emit electrons (tiny
charged particles) from their surface when light was shone on them. Most scientists believed that
light travelled in waves — like sound or water waves. But Einstein suggested that the photoelectric
effect could be explained if light could also behave as a stream of tiny packets of energy.
(2) Einstein’s paper on the photoelectric effect helped give birth to quantum theory, and it was for
this paper that Einstein received the Nobel Prize in 1922. Quantum theory led, in the 1920s and
1930s, to another revolution in physics. Physicists showed that, as well as light waves behaving like
particles, particles could sometimes act as waves. This theory established “objective probability” in
physics. This was the idea that completely unpredictable chance events can take place at the
subatomic level. Einstein never fully accepted the prevalent interpretation of quantum theory. But,
while many of these interpretations involve wild metaphysical flights of fancy, the physical results
are, like those of relativity, very well established.
(3) Marrying together the two pillars of 20th century physics — relativity and quantum theory —
is a central problem for physics even today. Successfully doing this may require a revolution in
science similar to those begun by Newton and Einstein. There are three main interconnected
driving forces for such changes in science. The first is the development of technology. Changes in
technology can make new experiments possible and they also influence the problems that scientists
develop an interest in. Newton was fascinated by the new machines of the 17th century. Similarly,
Einstein was fascinated by electricity and magnetism. This influence also works in a negative way.
The governments and multinationals that control technology are often able to dictate what is
researched.
(4) The second factor driving scientific progress is the way that the dominant ideas in society
change. Ideas from the broader culture can impinge upon science. Newton’s ideas were part of a
revolutionary new attempt at a rational explanation of both nature and society. On the other hand,
the dominant ideas in society can also limit the development of science. This is most obvious in the
social sciences, where delving too deeply into how society is organized might raise difficult
questions for our rulers. Less is at stake in the natural sciences. Indeed, improvements in natural
sciences are vital to our rulers if they want to compete effectively with each other. But the distorted
worldview of capitalism still impacts on science. Extremely narrow and specialized bodies of
knowledge develop—creating problems for scientists trying to bring about the kind of sweeping
revolution heralded by Einstein.
(5) Finally, science moves forward because scientists seek to develop logically consistent theories.
This can push them beyond the dominant or common sense ideas of their time. Einstein’s
breakthrough cannot be reduced simply to changes in technology or wider cultural and ideological
shifts. Science is not simply the gathering and ordering of data about the outside world. It also
requires abstraction—developing theories about the underlying laws of nature that are usually not
immediately apparent. This crucial role of theory is not just a feature of the natural sciences.
(6) Einstein argued that “common sense is the prejudices acquired by age 18”. Marxist theory, which
is a social science topic, challenges “common sense” political ideas. If we, according to this theory,
want to change the world, we need to combine our actions with theory that digs below the surface
appearance of society to understand how the system works.
A. Answer the following comprehension questions.
1. In what ways do the changes in technology affect science? Name three.
a.
b.
c.
2. According to the writer, how do the attitudes of the authority figures differ towards the
developments in social sciences and natural sciences?

3. In the writer’s view, how does capitalism affect science negatively?

4. Why can Einstein’s breakthrough not be “reduced simply to changes in technology or wider
cultural and ideological shifts”?

B. Guessing Vocabulary
1- Find a word or an expression in paragraph 1 which means “to propose”:
2- Find a word or an expression in paragraph 2 which means “dominant”:
3- Find a word or an expression in paragraph 5 which means “attribute”:
C. Reference Words
1. (Par.2) “those” refers to
2. (Par. 3) “doing this” refers to
3. (Par. 5) “this” refers to

Ecercise 2 :
Read the following articles as quickly as you can and decide which title is best suited to each of
them.
Text 1 :
SHERLOCK HOLMES would be proud of and sure enough, the muggzr was siithg in her
Dorothy Perry of Detroit, even though she seat.
tracked down a remarkably dim robber. A lucky meeting
Losing her handbag in a mugging, Ms Petty Violence in Detroit
remembered that her purse held concert A clever policeman
tickets as well as £40. She turned up at the A good detective
show a few days later with a ccp on her arm
Text 2 :
Daily Mail
A WEALTHY business man is giving £
500.000 to help gifted children go to private
schools.
Multi-millionaire Mr John James, 72,
whose father was a miner is sharing the cash
between fivee Bristol schools- 61 years after
he won a scholarship to the city’s Merchant
Venturers School.
The money will provide places for
able children whose parentts cannot afiord
the fees.
Ironically, Mr James’s son David-who
received £1.500.000 from his father in 1972-
went bankrupt three weeks ago.
David, 35, blamed his failure on '' bad
judgment, bad timing, combined with lack of
business acumen."
Business man gives £112 million to pay for
bright children
A help to private schools
An unfortunate son
A gifted businessman

Text 3 :
By Our Science Correspondent The Daily Telegraph.
Hundreds of people made 999 calls to
police stations throughout Uritain early Explosion in New Forest
yesterday to UFO seen over Britain
report a fiery meteor. Many said they had Hundreds call police about meteor
seen a UFO. Catastrophe near the Isle of Wight
P.c. John Forder. who was in a patrol
car in the New Forest reported a glowing
light with a long orange tail. "Atter a second
or two, it seemed to explode or disintigrate.''
It is thought to have fallen in the sea of the
Isle of Wight.
About a million tons of meteoric
rock and dust land on the earth each year.
They are part of the primordial debris from
which the solar system was formed some
5,000 million years ago.
Exercise 3 :
You are skimming through an article in which most of the words are unknown to you. Here are the
ones you can understand, however:
professor
Institute of Biochemistry
hard-working man
results of experiments
published
confession
invention
different results
fraud
regrets it
Can you guess, from these few words, if the article is about
a well-known professor who has just published his confessions
a scientist who has admitted inventing the results of his experiments
a scientist who has killed himself because he couldn't get the same results as everybody else
a scientist who regrets the publication of the results of his experiments