CHAPTER 3

Reading Skills

“The art of reading is to skip judiciously.”—

——P. G. Hamerton

WHAT IS READING?

Reading is one of the four basics of communication—reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Unlike speaking, reading has to be learnt as an ability to look at words written and understand what they mean.

Reading, according to Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English is ‘the activity or skill of understanding written words’.

As an activity, reading involves the physical act of looking at words written or printed in a book, magazine, letter, or other written administrative communication and the mental act of understanding them simultaneously. Our eyes look at words and our mind interprets them at the same time.

UNDERSTANDING

Reading consists of two activities:

1. Seeing words printed or written on a page.
2. Understanding them at the same time as we see them. HOw

HOW DO WE READ?

Some people think we read one word at a time and then move on to the next. Some think that our eyes rhythmically move from left to right along the whole line and then move down to the next line beginning and repeating the same action of seeing and understanding the meaning of whatever is read. But our eyes, infact do not act in this way. How fast or how slow we cover with comprehension our reading material shows our skill and ability as a reader.

Some people think they read by moving their eyes from word to word. Others believe they smoothly and continuously move their eyes along the line from left to right and then go to the next line, and keep on doing so. But in fact our eyes do not act in this manner.

 

1
Learn what is reading and how we do it.

How Do Our Eyes Move and Pause and Move?

It is difficult to notice the movement of your own eyes. So video record your reading or you can see the movement of your friend’s eyes while they read and notice it. You will see their eyes do not keep moving forward without breaks. They move forward along the line, pause and then again move ahead. It is a rhythmic movement of the eye. There is a pause between the two startings. The eye sees only when it is motionless. It cannot see while it is in motion. Every time, it pauses, it sees a group of words or even a sentence, and then leaps forward to another phrase or part of the sentence along the line and thus keeps moving forward-pausing-moving forward and so on. The start-pausestart is so instantaneous and continuous that we are not aware of its happening. We feel we see and read continuously, without breaks. To realize how we actually see and read, once again read the above para of How do we read noticing how you have read the sentences. You have read them something like this:

 

Some people think/they read by/moving their eyes/from word to word./ Others believe/they smoothly and continuously move their eyes along the line/from left to right/and then go to the next line/and keep doing so./But in fact our eyes/do not act in this manner./

 

Note the number of times your eyes pause and start. A good reader makes about three stops per line, a poor reader six or seven pauses per line.

Know Your Reading Speed

Have you ever tried to know your reading ability? It is simple to do it. Read your material for five minutes. Count the number of words you cover. Divide the total number of words by 5. You get the number of words that you are able to read per minute. You must factor in the amount of understanding with which you have read the thing. Your reading speed will be something between 175 and 250 words per minute. You can improve it with training in reading skills.

 

2
Know your reading speed and style.

 

ENHANCEMENT OF READING ABILITY/PURPOSE OF READING

As a manager, executive or a scholar, if you wish to improve your reading skills, the first thing is to know your purpose of reading—to have full details of the matter or just an overview of the whole thing. Accordingly you will choose your style. The reading style depends also on the nature of the material—serious or light, simple or difficult and complex.

 

3
Understand the styles of slow study reading, normal reading, and rapid reading.

 

Thus, broadly speaking there are three reading styles or speeds.

1. Slow study reading style
2. Normal reading style
3. Rapid reading style

THE NATURE OF READING MATERIAL/THE READING STYLE

The nature of reading material determines the way the material is to be read. Francis Bacon, the famous Elizabethan essayist, says ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly and with diligence and attention. Some books may also be read by deputy, and extracts made of them by others; but that would be only in the less important arguments, and the meaner sort of books; else distilled books are like common distilled, flashy things’.¹

STYLES OF READING

Slow Reading Style

The slow style is also called the study reading style. It is the reading style that is slow and used for the careful reading of important material which is ‘to be chewed and digested’, and thoroughly understood. We use this style for understanding important text books, or complex written matter, or intricate arguments, or any serious content demanding careful attention.

As already pointed out, the study reading style/speed depends on the complexity of the written text and the subject knowledge of the reader. The study reading speed is slower than normal reading speed of educated adults for reading daily newspapers, and other light material such as magazines and fiction, etc. The study reading differs from skimming which is a quick reading of something to find its main ideas and facts, not details, whereas the study reading style leaves out no portions of the text.

Normal Reading Style

When you read everything without leaving out any words, it will be normal reading style. You read important subjects only in this way. Of course you may find it time consuming, but you can increase your reading speed by widening the span of your vision. By practice you can train your eyes to include more words in one glance.

Rapid Reading Style—Skimming

This is the quick reading style. Skimming is called surveying when it is used to have general information or overview of the text book or written content. This form of skimming is distinct from its other style known as scanning, used to get specific information in the written content.

 

4
Learn the skills of skimming and surveying.

 

Surveying—Process of Reading a Book, Long Article, or Report

To do survey reading you need to be clear about your purpose of reading the book or the written text. Once you know your purpose of reading a text, you naturally find some parts of your reading to be more relevant than other parts. You naturally skim or leave out the less relevant portions. But you read the other parts in detail. This form of skimming reading is possible only when you know why you are reading something. This selective reading is active reading that means reading what is related to your purpose of reading something. Therefore, to ensure that nothing important or relevant is being missed in skimming have questions in your mind that your reading answers.

Use of Title and Heading

In rapid reading, we tend to skip portions that do not interest us. This is helped by the titles/headlines or subheadings used in the text. For example, every morning we all go through the newspapers. Our reading of the dailies is quite fast. We glance all the front page headlines, and move to other pages of the paper and in no time with the help of the titles/subheadings we decide to read them or just turn on to the next columns. In many cases we know the nature of the information contained in the columns by the page number and its titles such as TIMES CITY SPECIAL REPORT. Page titles and sub headings given below guide the rapid reading.

 

Times NATION,

Business By Bids, Deep Focus, Times Global, All That Matters, Inter Sections Open Space Africarnival Times Sport

These page titles help present the newspaper content in an organized and structured form. And they help its readers to skim read it by surveying or scanning the entire newspaper.

Titles of books/reports, etc., heading of chapters, sub-headings used in the books, report or other long documents facilitate quick reading. Some senior executives read the business letters received or sent by looking at them for hardly a minute or two. They actually first see the opening sentence, then middle sentence and the concluding sentence and know what the letter says. Other parts of the letter like date, address, salutation/greetings, subscription and other minor details are left out as familiar frills.

Surveying Long Business Reports

Senior executives read a report they have asked for on a subject or problem in parts only. Most business reports are first read for the recommendations and then findings. The reader turns to those two sections of the report. The executive already knows the problem, the background and to some extent the method of investigation. Of keeping in mind this reading approach of the senior executive the writer of such reports structures them by changing the normal order of the sequence of elements of the report as discuss in the chapter on Business Reports.

Surveying a Chapter in a Book

Often we are able to survey the chapter in a book by reading its opening paragraph and the concluding paragraph. The writer usually presents his purpose and theme in the opening paragraph, and summarizes all the major points in his concluding paragraph.

Scanning

This process means read something quickly or skim something for a particular something. For example ‘I scanned the book for that reference’ or ‘My friend scanned through the result sheet for her name’.

Both surveying and scanning are as already said, forms of skimming, which means we do not read every word of a text. We survey a written material for getting a general idea of what it is all about. But we scan book/chapter/report/ or text for a specific information which we think is there in that text. In the case of longer materials such as books, long formal reports, index and table of contents help us in scanning them. Here is a simple and short scanning exercise. You have 10 lines of words. In each line one word appears on the left hand side of the vertical dividing line, and the same word is repeated somewhere on the right hand side. You scan the repeated word and underline it. You have 20 seconds to the exercise, first is done for you.

1. Horse/mare, mule, ass, camel, elephant, horse.
2. Algebra/geometry, trigonometry, physics, chemistry, biology, history, algebra.
3. Abstract/executive summary precise glossary substance overview abstract contents.
4. Definition/role classification purpose process barriers universal elements definition major difficulties common problems.
5. Manager/human needs management formal communication informed communication manager structure corporate communication.
6. Concept development/analysis investigation problem statement conceptualisation bibliography appendix concept development narrowing down the problem conclusions.
7. Participles/gerunds/verbal nouns adjectives prepositions adverbs participle pronouns infinitive verbs.
8. Negotiation strategies/stages of the negotiation process need to negotiate third party role negotiating strategies part is affecting negotiation.
9. Business dinning/manners foreign language customer care business dinning business etiquette intercultural differences in social manners.
10. The art of writing/purpose of writing the audience clarity in writing principles of effective writing the art of writing written business communications.

KNOW THE TEXT ORGANIZATION

If you know the way the text is organized, you can read the significant parts without spending time to read the less important section. In all expository texts, usually one reads the opening paragraph for knowing the basic approach and point view of the author. He then moves to the concluding para that sums up giving the whole argument. You read for the meaning of the text; note the words of the text. For faster reading along with the training of the mind, you need training of your eyes.

Training of Eyes

Eye training involves three things:

1. Increase the span of your eyes. That is to say, the number of words you can see at one glance. Practice to widen your span of vision.
2. Instead of moving in a linear way, train your eye not to jump from one word to another. Develop a regular and rhythmic way of moving the eyes while reading.
3. Do not read back. Develop the habit of instant comprehension.

GUIDELINES FOR EFFECTIVE READING

To be able to use your reading time more effectively, you can focus on the following things and practice them whenever you read.

 

5
Learn how to develop effective reading.

Do’s

• Know your purpose of reading clearly, this will determine your reading style. The style suitable for your purpose and nature of reading material will help your concentration.
• Read by assimilating and understanding whatever you read. Do not read to memorize the content.
• Read by comprehending the content. Follow the thought of the writer. Follow the argument of the content and anticipate what the writer is going to say next. If you read actively in this manner, it will increase your understanding of the text.
• Know the organization of the text. This will help you read fast by focusing on the essential parts of the text. You will not miss significant points if you know how the content has been organized.
• Widen your visual span. Look at groups of words, not single words. To do this look at the middle of the sentence, and then try to glance sideways. First move your eyes on the left side of the centre of the line, then to the right side. By practice, you will begin to read 3 to 4 words at a time on both left side of the centre of the line and the right side. Then move the eyes downward and do the same left and right glancing. Learn to read the printed lines in a pyramidal shape. From top to bottom. Vertically, not horizontally. By continuous practice you can learn to look at the centre of the page and then move your eyes upward and downward by focusing in the middle of each line and grasping maximum number of words at each glance. This will increase your speed significantly.
• To practice rapid reading take up simple story books, novels or short stories, fairy tales, detective novels or any thriller. Read something that is engrossing and attention holding. You would like to move to the end of the story fast. So you will read it rapidly by skimming it and trying to know what happens next, and so go up to the end. Reading simple and interesting stories and fictions can help you learn and practice the skill of skimming the text. Your reading speed depends on your sense of haste caused by your keenness to know ‘who did it? or what next’? Difficult stuff needs attentive reading which is slow reading.
• Improve your reading comprehension. Remember that reading fast is not your aim of reading by itself. You should also comprehend and understand what is read. To improve your comprehension you should follow the following suggestions while reading something.

   

  6
  Improve your reading comprehension.

   

• Keep a dictionary with you when you read. Whenever you find a word you do not know or understand, do not read further. First check its meaning and then read further. By continuously doing so, you will increase your vocabulary, and gradually begin to read different words of texts, books, articles, newspapers with understanding. In the beginning this practice will be boring, but gradually you will develop the habit of consulting a dictionary for every new word you do not know and understand.
• You may need to understand the meaning of the whole sentence. You should analyse its parts by identifying the subject and predicate. In other words, try to understand what is said about whom. Then, follow the organization of sentences into a para. Identify the topic sentence of the paragraph. It will tell you the central idea of the para. The topic sentence is placed usually at the beginning of the paragraph. It can be placed in the middle or even towards the end of the para. All sentences in the paragraph relate to the topic substance as a sub set of the main idea expressed in the paragraph.
• Do a wide range of reading. This will improve your knowledge of variety of subjects, and widen your understanding of new ideas.
• After reading a full chapter, describe the author’s view point. Analyse the inference that you have made about what the author has said about the subject you have read. Get the substance of what you have read.
• Summarise the entire reading in a few words in the form of a gist of what you have read.
• Ask yourself some questions about what, and how things happened? What was it all about?

Don’ts

• Do not allow your glance to regress, or go back to what you have already covered and read.

   

  7
  Learn the art of silent reading.

   

• The regressing of eyes hinders the reading speed. Hence, it is considered a negative feature in reading. Of course difficult texts do need going back to what has already been read. It is considered help to improve comprehension.
• Do not read aloud by mouthing words to help memorizing. It interferes with comprehension.
• Do not allow subjective reading of the text. Do not let your own bias a point of view prejudice the interpretation of the message.

READING EFFICIENCY

 

Good reader, poor reader

A good reader makes about three stops per line, a poor reader, six or seven.

Watch the Eye Movement

Get your friend to hold the book and keep below his eye level. So that you can watch the movement of his eyes as he reads the page. His eyes do not make a continuous forward swell.

Record the movement of your friend’s eyes.

SUMMARY

• Reading involves two activities, one of seeing words before our eyes and the other understanding their meanings.
• Reading styles depend on your purpose and nature of the reading material. Normal, skimming, and scanning styles of reading.
• You need to train your eyes to improve your reading speed from slow to fast.
• To improve your reading comprehension, you should learn to know the meaning of every word and the main idea of every paragraph and the subject and topic of the whole text.

CASE: CHORUS READING

It was a large group of thirty foreign learners of English in an Indian college learning to read with proper stress, intonation and rhythm. They had been given first ten minutes to read the passage silently by themselves, understand every word, if needed with the help of the lecturer. Then the lecturer broke up the sentences into the groups of words which go together, and read them aloud to the class by groups of words, and then asked the students to repeat the passage group by group the way he had read. The suggested groups were separated by bars as given below: The sentences were written on the board as shown here: On Christmas Day, in the year 1642, Isaac Newton was born/at the small village of Wools Thorpe, in England./Little did his mother think/when she beheld her new-born baby/that he was destined to explain many matters/which had been a mystery/ever since the creation of the world.

Not the whole class read aloud at the same time. Only three students together read and rest of the class listened to them. Other groups of three students followed the activity and in this manner the whole class read the passage aloud. The teacher stood near each reading group to find out individual mistakes in pronunciation and stress and corrected them then and there. The students learnt through imitation and observation the aspects of stress, intonation and rhythm in English language through a systematic method.

REVIEW YOUR LEARNING

1. What is reading? Discuss.
2. Explain the purpose of different reading speeds. Why do we need to know them as adult readers?
3. Discuss the way we read light fiction.
4. Explain and illustrate the skimming style of reading.
5. Why do we do survey reading of a text or volume? Discuss.
6. Discuss the method of surveying a chapter in a book.
7. How do senior executives read a long report?
8. Discuss some steps to improve someone’s reading speed.
9. Discuss the ways of improving one’s reading speed.

REFLECT ON YOUR LEARNING

1. In what sense is reading both a physical and mental activity.
2. Have you thought of knowing how you read a text? How would you do it?
3. What are the three reading speeds in general?
4. Think of the ways of training a young learner to improve his/her reading comprehension.
5. Comment on the usefulness of surveying as a reading skill.

APPLY YOUR LEARNING

1. It is said that before we start reading a book or article, it is useful to ask ourselves why we want to read it, and what do I hope to learn from it. Comment on the statement with some specific examples of reading some books.
2. While reading a text, we are advised to develop the habit of not reading back. Why?
3. ‘Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested’, says Bacon. Discuss the light it throws on the art of reading books.
4. Why study reading speed is the slowest speed?
5. How do you do skimming reading?

SELF-CHECK YOUR LEARNING

Follow the steps given below to self-check your reading skills:

1. Set a time limit for reading a text according to the number of words it has. You can fix different time limits for the same passage for practising different reading speeds. For example, you can begin with 60–80 words per minute, then increase it to 120–150 and finally to 200–250 words per minute or more.
2. Do not allow your head to move.
3. Check that your eyes jump back and forth from word group to word group, not from single word to a single word.
4. Note the time taken to read and complete the text. Try to do it in less time next, until you achieve a speed of 200–225 words per minute at least.
5. Always answer the following or any other set of questions to test your reading comprehension.
   1. What is its main idea?
   2. What is its purpose?
   3. Have you got the relationship between different ideas read by you?

READING EXERCISES

Now read the following passages and answer the questions that follow.

Read the text in 1 minute and 45 seconds.

1. Interpreting Observation

   Usually observations become important to us only when we can attach some significance to them. A footprint on a crowded beach would not normally arouse strong emotions, but to Robinson Crusoe on his desert sand, a naked footprint became tremendously important, because it meant (that is, he interpreted to mean) that there is someone else on the island, someone who could be a source of danger.

   Basic to interpretation is inference making. An inference is a conclusion or judgement which expresses some significance or attitude suggested by what is seen, heard, or read. We see the sky clouding up and infer that rain coming, or we hear a noise outside the kitchen door and infer that some animal is at the garbage can. Sometimes a single observation may trigger a chain of inferences.

   Thus Robinson Crusoe saw a footprint and inferred

   • that somebody else was on the island,

   • that there was a possibility of danger from that person, and

   • that he should take precautions against that danger.

   In all such instances the thing observed become a sign of something and the inferences interpret the sign.

   (160 words)

Questions

1. What is a sign?
2. How do we infer or make a conclusion from our observation of something?

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Read the text in 1 minute and 45 seconds.

• b. Growing More Food

  It is very important to give crops the right amount of fertilizer and water but we can have even better crops if we choose the best variety of plant for each. At present many farmers are using different varieties of plant for each food crop. Some of these varieties are good, some are not. One way to improve our crops is by selecting the best variety that we know of a plant, and growing only from that way is to breed a new and better variety of plant from existing varieties. To do this, we choose varieties with different good qualities as parent plants, and then from these we can grow new plants which combine the good qualities of the parents. This means that we get even better plants. Such specially bred plants are called hybrids.

  In India today, trials have shown that there is a hybrid maize which will yield twice as much dry grain as the old varieties of maize. In Ceylon, four new varieties of rice which give bigger yields have been produced. A rice from China has been found to give better yields in Uttar Pradesh, in India. Improved varieties of rice, maize, and jute are now ready in Pakistan. With the new variety of jute, two crops a year maybe possible.

  (220 words)

Questions

1. What things are important for producing more food?
2. What is a hybrid variety of plants and grains?

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Read the text in 1 minute.

• c. Interpreting Reading

  Although all reading requires interpretation of printed symbols; some kinds of reading are difficult to interpret than others. Poetry is usually more difficult than non-fiction prose, partly because a poet is less interested than a prose writer in conveying one specific meaning. The essayist tries to convey information or control the reader’s responses, thus limiting him to one clear interpretation. The poet often invites a variety of responses to the same symbols. For this reason the interpretation of a poem is not an unquestionable decision about what the poem means, it is a revelation of how the reader reads the poem. The same is true for much fiction.

  (110 words)

Questions

1. Point out the difference between the reading of an essay and a poem.
2. ‘The meaning of a poem is a revelation of how the reader reads the poem’. Explain what you understand from this statement about interpreting reading.

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Read the text in 1 minute and 20 seconds.

• d. Kunwar Singh by Jim Corbett

  Har Singh and I went out to shoot one day, last April, and all would have been well if a fox would have not crossed our path as we were leaving the village. Har Singh, as you know, is a poor shikari with little knowledge of the jungle folk, and when after seeing the fox, I suggested we should turn around and go home; he laughed at me and said it was child’s talk to say that a fox would bring us bad luck. So we continued on our way. We had started when the stars were paling; and nearer a ruppa I fired at a chital stag and unfortunately missed it. Later, Har Singh broke the wing of a pea fowl but though we chased the wounded bird as hard as we could; it got away in the long grass, where we lost it. Therefore, though we combed the jungles we saw nothing to shoot and towards the evening we turned our faces towards home.

Questions

1. When did Har Singh and Jim Corbett go out to shoot?
2. Was Har Singh a good shooter?
3. Did Har Singh believe in superstition?
4. Why did Jim suggest to go back without shooting?
5. Was Jim able to fire at a chital stag?
6. What was the other unfortunate thing that happened in the case of pea fowl wounded by Har Singh?

ENDNOTE

1. Francis Bacon, Bacon’s Essays (London: MacMillan, 1951), p. 129.