Scanning Technique in Reading Skills

What is scanning? Scanning is very high-speed reading. When you scan, you have a question in mind. You do not read every word, only the words that answer your question. Practice in scanning will help you learn to skip over unimportant words so that you can read faster.

 

In this unit, you’ll practice scanning many different kinds of materials. You should work as quickly as possible on all the exercises. Remember that scanning is a high-speed skill.

 

For instance, if you want to know the meaning of the word ‘virtuous’ from a dictionary, you will start searching the letter V first, then I, and then R; by then you probably will have found the word. This process of searching is called scanning. It is a technique of fast reading.

 

Purposes of Scanning

• To search for a word in a dictionary or index

• To find a phone number or an address in a directory

• To check the time schedule of a program in an agenda

• To check the price of a specific item in a catalog

• To know a particular information from a text

 

Scanning: Step to Follow

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●    Before starting to scan a text for a particular information, you know some basic things about that text. You will not be able to scan a text efficiently if you do not have a basic idea about that text. If the text is completely unknown to you, you should skim it first to get some ideas about that text. This will help you to guess the section or part of the text where you might find the information you need.

●    Notice how the information is arranged. It can be arranged either alphabetically or numerically. However, some texts are not arranged at all.

In that case, you have to guess a section and scan it through to get your information.

●    Scanning a random unknown page of a text is difficult. It may take more time than the usual. However, it won’t take too much time if you move your eyes vertically and diagonally keeping in mind the exact letters or numbers you are looking for.
 

Example of how to scan information in the passage!

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