Speaking with Steph: Academic Reading Strategies
Watch this video to learn about how to improve your reading skills by using specific reading strategies. You will learn about purpose, skimming, scanning, annotating, paraphrasing, and summarizing.
Here is the basic transcript:
Speaking with Steph: Academic Reading Strategies
Reading academic or assigned texts for your classes will be challenging, but rewarding if you know how to use academic reading strategies. There are several steps you should take to be a better, more engaged and effective reader.
Before reading:
Understand the purpose of the reading: Ask yourself, “Why did the author choose to write this?” There are several purposes: To Inform, to persuade, or to entertain. You can see the differences in language when a writer wants to inform or educate the reader about a topic through descriptions of events, terms, or scientific research. The writer doesn’t necessarily want to persuade the reader, they just want to describe information or facts. When a writer wants to persuade the reader, you can see the language uses persuasive grammar with modals such as, “have to, must, should, need to, etc.” They also use evidence to support their argument from research. Entertainment reading is often seen nowadays on the internet, and it’s sometimes hard to differentiate between entertainment writing, persuasive writing, and informative writing. The authors often use flashy language and data to grab the reader’s attention. Authors will often conflate the 3 together because most news organizations are a business after all.
Next, you need to decide on your own purpose for reading: Ask yourself, “Why am I reading this?” There are several purposes for reading: To learn, to comprehend. to use as support in your own writing, to critique an argument, to summarize, etc. In your academic life, you will be asked to read for a number of different reasons, but it’s important to know why in order to make the best use of the time you have.
During reading:
Now that you’ve decided on why the author wrote the text and why you’re reading it, you can use different academic reading strategies to use your time wisely while reading.
Skim: Look at the title, the headings, and subheadings and make a general prediction about the topic and the main idea. What do you already know about the topic?
Scan: Look for specific information if you have questions to answer or data to find.
Annotate: Write in a notebook or on the text itself in the margins if it’s in a paper form. Write down the main idea and supporting points. Circle key words and phrases and look them up in the dictionary if you don’t know them. Underline interesting points and ask questions to discuss further in class. Paraphrase in the margins to think about the key points in your own words. Make connections with the text and what you already know or don’t know.
After reading:
Summarize: Write a summary when you’re finished of the whole text to be ready to explain it clearly in class.
Discuss: Talk to someone about the reading in order to critically understand the different points made in the text. Be prepared for the discussion with your own questions about the text and your reaction to it.
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Comment below and let me know if you have any questions about any other writing or grammar or pronunciation in English. Speaking with Steph will make more videos each week.
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