READING SKILLS
READING EFFICIENTLY
Why is reading efficiently important?
The reading that you do for your studies is often different from the reading that you do for leisure.
If you learn the correct technique for your academic reading, then you can save yourself time and ensure that you read efficiently and effectively for your essays, reports or tutorials.
Reading Goals!
Setting yourself a reading goal ensures that you read an item with a purpose, enabling you to prioritise the information that you read. To help you to define a reading goal, ask yourself: “What questions do I need answering?” This will help you to identify the information that is centrally relevant, partially relevant or simply not relevant at all.
​
Reading Styles, Techniques and Strategies
Speed Reading
Speed reading is a popular technique that does require practice but once mastered will deepen your understanding of written text. Although it can involve reading an item three times this will still be quicker than reading it just once slowly. The key principle of speed reading is the idea that a large percentage of words and even sentences can be disregarded without the meaning being lost.
Asess your current reading speed
Try this exercise to assess your current reading speed
-
Choose an unfamiliar passage of text to read
-
Time yourself reading for 5 minutes
-
Count the number of words you have read in that time
-
Divide the total by five
-
This is how many words you can read comfortably in a minute
-
Less than 200 and you might want to work on this skill
It is possible for most people to increase their reading speed by at least 50%
​
https://www.linkedin.com/learning/top-5-speed-reading-tips-2014/welcome?u=55815585
HEAR DIRECTLY FROM SOME OF OUR STUDENT VOLUNTEERS