Reading Comprehension Exercises – Skimming and Scanning, By michelle
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Learning to read in the two following ways is important! Here are some hints and tips to help you succeed when you face reading comprehension exercises to be done in a limited amount of time!

Time yourself in every step and keep a record of your marks, so you notice your progress.

The more times you read a text, the more you tend to understand. Just think of your Spanish while reading “difficult” texts. The “onion approach” is often more useful than intensive reading. Though we’ll be doing some intensive reading in our Scanning 1. Some questions depend on your general understanding of the text. You are likely to answer them after your the skimming and, for the case of specific main points in the development, after your first scanning. Other questions depend on you identifying which specific information you are required to find. In our Reading Tests we usually get a multiple choice exercise that tests general ideas and main points in each paragraph, and then a more scanning type of text, where we need to be quick in finding specific info. Tip: We actually do this every day with various kinds of texts, if you think about it. Although in the exam you’ll skip some parts of this technique, please follow all the steps for the time being, till you get enough practice. The more difficult the text is, the more useful the technique is. If you find the text easy, you can just read and answer, sure, but then you won’t learn the technique and when you need it, you won’t be good at it.

Step 1: Where we are
Read the title, the instructions and the comprehension questions (more than to find out what it is about, to get used to doing it!!!! :P ) Underline key words in the questions, or wait for that till Step 3.

Step 2:Skimming
Read the text quickly (it should take you a few minutes, a few!, 2, 3…), so as to identify:

1. the kind of text (different texts organize information differently and if we know about that, we can be quicker finding the info we need)
2. the topic
3. and the approach or the main thesis.

Skimming the written text is like jumping from stepping stone to stepping stone! You don’t need to read all the words in examples, for instance, or chunks you know are developing ideas which have been mentioned in the topic sentence.
Tips: Specific places relevant for the getting the general idea: the intro will be relevant to get the general idea, and the ending if the text is complete. Then if it’s a kind of essay or article, there will be topic sentences  (what the paragraph is about) at the beginning of paragraphs and at the end a kind of concluding sentence or introduction to the next point in the next paragraph.

Step 3: the Questions
If you understood them in your skimming (unlikely in absolute terms, though), have a quick look at your questions – at the key words in your questions.
If not (the most likely scenario), read your questions carefully now, and underline key words. If options seem to be all true, remember to work out where the contrast is. (This is hard to explain, do you know what I mean? We can discuss it.)

Step 4: First scanning – To work!
Read slowly, carefully. Be aware of which chunks you understand well and which seem to be difficult. Read them all carefully, trying to understand, but don’t spend your whole life on the difficult ones, because you’ll go back to them in your second scanning. (That’s why we do a second scanning.) Answer the easy questions. Re-read carefully the others, thinking about the whole text if necessary (sometimes going back to the whole picture helps us realize what we need to look for).
Tips: You could write on the margin, next to the area where an answer may be, the number of question it answers. This will save you time later on. You can also underline key words/points.

Step 5: Second scanning – Think over the parts you didn’t understand
In the second scanning (and third, fourth… if you’re practicing), you should try to solve the hardest parts and answer those questions. Keep in mind something: re-reading the easy parts (much more quickly than the hard parts) may be necessary because those ideas may help us to understand the difficult parts. 

Step 6: Check all your answers and copy them on the appropriate space
You have to be quick. Read again your answers, including the easy ones, to check everything is OK. In our tests, you usually get 1 minute to copy your answers in the appropriate space for answers.