Reading FluencyEFFECTIVE READING SKILLS

Introduction

Effective communication skills are always essential in academic as well as professional career.

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Purpose of Reading

Reading is important academic tasks faced by students; and also in the commercial world.

The purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what you already know.

If you don’t know anything about a subject,

then pouring text is like pouring water in your

hands, you do not retain much.

Reading Rates

Reading rates vary depending upon the reading material. For example an exciting novel is a quicker read than a text in biology.

Most people fixate once on each word across a line of print. This is called fixation.

In order to increase your speed we must take in more words with each fixation, rather than make your eyes move faster.

Tips to increase your reading speed

Tyr to avoid focusing on each word , but rather look at group of words.

Work on vocabulary. Familiarize yourself with new words so that you do not get stuck on them again.

Do not move your lips . Force yourself to read faster by following the technique of reading words in group.

Read more. Fifteen minutes a day.

Determine the purpose before reading.

Reading comprehension

Reading comprehension refers to the ability to understand information presented in written form.

Reasons for poor comprehension

The main reasons for poor reading comprehension are:

Inability to understanding a word; Inability to understand a sentence; Inability to understand how sentences related to one

another; Inability to understand how the information fits

together in a meaningful way; Lack of interest and concentration.

Improving comprehension skills

Read the variety of materials. Do not limit yourself to textbooks.

Circle unknown or unfamiliar words as you read.

Consider how interesting the subject matter is and how much you already know about the subject.

Skimming and scanning

Take a moment to preview the text before starting to read the text in detail. Read quickly without pausing to study the details. This is called skimming.

After having skimmed the text, you can study it in more detail. Reading more slowly and carefully and looking for specific information that your are interested in. This is called scanning.

Non-verbal signals

Non-verbal signals may include certain style features . Such as different fonts, bold prints underlining or italics.

Headings

Title

Subheading

Photographs

Captions

Paragraphs

Figures, bars, graphs, charts, etc…

Structure of the text

Most texts start form heading or sometimes sub-headings. After that comes introduction and the body, followed by a conclusion or summary.

Structure of paragraphs

A typical paragraphs consists of three parts. The first sentence consist of topic sentence. The second part consist the sentences that

develop the aspect . The last paragraph often contains the

summary of the paragraph.

Punctuation

Punctuation mark indicates how the author wants you to interpret the piece of text.

Punctuation is partly based on grammar.

Understanding of punctuation marks easier

is to understand grammatical structure.

Author’s Viewpoint(Inference)

Word like luckily or unfortunately to show approval or displeasure of the author.

Thus in reading the text you make inference or assumptions.

The author can reveal his view points by adding value to words.

He can also add words to show his surprise , regret and other emotions.

Reader Anticipation: Determining the meaning of words

1. Determine the world class (verb, noun, adjective )

2. Determine its function in the sentence.

3. Analyse the contextual clues .

4. Relation and familiarization of words.

5. Try and derive the eventual meaning of the word.

Summarizing

1) Familiarizing with the materials .

2) Select important information.

3) Paraphrasing.

4) Linking sentences.

5) Length of summary.