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Comprehensive and Innovative Reading Skills Instruction with

Reading Explorer!

20 strategies covered in Reading Explorer

1. Making predictions and hypotheses

2. Previewing a text using headings and visual support

3. Reading for overall gist

4. Understanding main ideas

5. Making links between main ideas and supporting information

6. Identifying specific details

7. Understanding referencing

8. Guessing meaning of vocabulary from context

9. Differentiating fact and opinion

10.Recognizing word parts, affixes

11.Verifying true/false statements

12.Detecting an author’s purpose

13.Understanding paraphrases

14. Inferring information, opinion or intention

15.Reorganizing ideas from a text

16.Classifying concepts in a text

17.Sequencing information in a process or timeline

18.Matching textual information with a map or diagram

19.Recognizing relationships such as cause/effect

20.Summarizing key ideas

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Skimming

• We skim to get an overall idea (the gist) of what a text is basically about

• To do this, we look quickly through a text• We look for clues to the overall theme, e.g.

textual features like titles, sub-headings, captions – as well as visuals.

• We often read the first or last paragraph, and we may look quickly through the rest of the text.

Here’s an example…

Skimming

Skim the title

Skim the first paragraph

Skimming

• The title suggests the article is about the effect of olive oil on your health, or ‘life’

• The picture shows a traditional way of making olive oil, and the caption mentions ‘1,000 years’

• The first paragraph refers to the history of olive oil.

From a skim of the first page we can guess what the article is about…

Skimming

Skimming and Prediction

• When we quickly skim a text, we usually make predictions about what we will learn from it.

• In this case, we can predict that we’ll learn about the history and health benefits of olive oil.

• As we read on through the text, we can confirm whether our predictions are correct.

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Skimming and Scanning

• Skimming gives us a general idea of what the text is about

• Scanning is when we search a text to find more specific information – usually key details like dates, names, places, etc.

Here’s an example…

Scanning

• The first stage in any scanning for detail question is to decide: what are we scanning for?

• In other words, what specific information do we want to find out?

• It’s helpful to highlight key words or phrases in the question.

• There are three key points in this question: ‘When did… begin?’;

‘cultivation of olive trees’; ‘around the Mediterranean Sea’

• The next stage is to find the relevant section. For example, we could scan for numbers, like ‘4,000’

• In this case, the answer is in the first paragraph: Olive tree cultivation began in about 4,000 B.C. (the first olive oil was made 2,000 years later)

• Next we need to decide which option is closest.

• It’s important to read the options carefully. The options refer to ‘years ago’, not ‘B.C.’. So the answer must be

C. 6,000 years ago.

EMBEDDED CRITCAL THINKING IN EVERY QUESTION

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Scanning: Negative factual

• Some factual questions ask you to decide which option is NOT true, or NOT mentioned in the text.

• First step is to look for key words in the question – in this case, ‘use of olive oil’

• Next, we need to scan for the relevant section, or sections, of the text.

• The heading on the second page mentions ‘benefits’ of olive oil, which is similar to ‘uses’

• We then find a reference to ‘a variety of uses’

• We can then scan for specific words that relate to the answer options.

The only option that is NOT mentioned is…

d. paint

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Understanding sequence

• Some questions ask you to put steps or events in order, or to decide which thing happened first, or last, in a sequence.

• This can relate to steps in a process, or events in a timeline.

• Again, the first stage is to identify the key words in the question. In this case, we need to find the first step in the process of olive oil production.

• Second stage is to locate the relevant section of the text.

• This paragraph refers to the ‘process of producing the oil’

• We can also see words that introduce stages.

• The text says:

• The closest option is therefore: b: crushing the whole olives

• Note that the text uses slightly different wording from the option. Some questions require you to make a connection between different word forms.

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Understanding inference

• Some questions ask you about information or an idea that is not explicitly mentioned in the text.

• In other words, you need to ‘read between the lines’ to identify the writer’s meaning.

• Again, the first stage is to identify the key words in the question. In this case, we are looking for studies of olive oil.

• Second stage is to use key words or paraphrases to locate the relevant section.

• When we read the paragraph in detail, we learn that the studies describe the healthy effects of olive oil.

• We also learn these studies are helping to change people’s understanding of olive oil, including people outside the Mediterranean.

• We can infer from the text that the writer is using studies of olive oil to help explain its popularity in other parts of the world.

• So the closest answer is ‘a.’

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Understanding reference

• Reference questions ask you to look at specific pronouns (she, it, this, those etc) or other reference words (some, there, ones, etc) in the passage.

• You then need to decide which noun or noun phrase the reference word relates to.

Here’s an example from Unit 2:

Reading Explorer 2: Unit 2A

• Reference questions give you the line number, so the scanning stage is easy!

• When you find the word, read the sentence it occurs in, and also the sentence before it.

• Look for key words or paraphrases from the question.

• In this case, the answer options all mention ‘idea.’ So we should look in the text for an ‘idea’ or words that relate to an ‘idea.’

• The first part of the sentence mentions ‘thought’:

• It also mentions ‘they’ – so first we need to work out what ‘they’ means!

• In the preceding sentence, we can see that ‘they’ refers to male humpbacks:

• We can also see that ‘this’ in line 25 refers to the previous (or old) idea that male humpbacks sang to attract females.

So the best answer is:

b. the idea that male humpbacks sing to attract females

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Understanding Vocabulary

• As you read a text, you may find unfamiliar words and phrases – or words that are used in a different way to what you expect.

• If you always refer to a dictionary for the meaning, your reading speed will slow down.

• Instead, you may be able to guess the meaning using context, or your knowledge of word parts.

Here’s an example from Unit 2:

• You are probably familiar with the words ‘thanks’ and ‘to,’ but what do they mean in the text?

• First, use the line reference to find the words

• The phrase Thanks to starts the sentence, so it’s probably connecting the sentence with the previous one.

• The previous sentence tells us about a reduction in whale numbers, from 125,000 to 6,000.

• Thanks to is followed by ‘laws against hunting’• The rest of the sentence tells us that the whale

population is now about 30,000.

• From the context we can guess that ‘thanks to’ connects a cause (laws against hunting) with an effect or a result (the rise in whale population from 6,000 to 30,000).

So we can guess that the phrase ‘thanks to’ is closest in meaning to:

A. As a result of

7 essential reading skills

1. Skimming for gist

2. Scanning for detail (factual)

3. Scanning for detail (negative

factual)

4. Understanding sequence

5. Understanding inference

6. Understanding reference

7. Guessing vocabulary from

context

Summary of key steps

Remember that most reading skill questions require the same basic steps:

1. Identify key words in the question (and in the options, if it’s multiple-choice)

2. Locate the relevant section of the text by scanning for the key words – or paraphrases of the words.

3. Read that section in detail and think about the writer’s meaning. Look for connections between the information and ideas in the text.

Explore for academic success and beyond!