Reading strategically
These reading strategies will enable you to find and absorb information more easily.
Surveying: reading surface messages to predict content
For example, year of publication: is it recent enough or is it out-of-date?; table of contents: is the information detailed enough for your purposes?
Skimming: reading quickly for an overview
Glance over the entire text to look for relevant or interesting ideas. Reading the first sentence of every paragraph, the topic sentence, should help you to quickly locate the main idea.
Scanning: reading quickly for specific information
Glance at headings and topic sentences of paragraphs for key words and ideas. This is like looking for a name in a telephone directory.
Identifying main points
Look for main ideas to note.
