Scanning and Predicting
Scanning a reading passage before you read it can be a very useful way to improve your comprehension if you keep your mind active as you scan.
To scan the content of the reading passage, we should very carefully read the subject, the paragraph headings, the first sentence of a paragraph or sometimes just part of the first sentence to get enough information for our thinking. Although we may not be able to understand every detail from the subject or the first sentence—and although a writer may surprise us with unexpected ideas—we can often see the general direction in which the writer is going. This reading skill can help us understand the text better when we go back for a closer reading or give us a good idea of where in the reading passage to look for answers to specific questions.
Scanning and Predicting
Active readers are making predictions before serious reading and they make corrections of their understanding of the reading passage from time to time while reading the material. There are many helpful steps to take in order to read for information before you actually begin reading. You can look ahead to the content of a passage in a number of ways.
1. Look at the title. Does it tell what you will be reading about? If so, you can then make some possible prediction about the content of the reading passage.
2. Look for subtitles. Essays, newspaper articles and other longer readings sometimes offer help in making predictions by printing subtitles. Appearing below titles in heavy, dark print or in italics, subtitles suggest the kind of material you will find in a small section of the reading.
3. Look at pictures, charts, or drawings if there are any. Often an illustration helps you figure out ahead of time what your reading will deal with.
4. Look at the first sentence of each paragraph. This may also give you a quick idea of what the reading is about before you begin to read carefully.
You will find for Reading Passages B and C we are only concerned with making predictions from titles and subtitles.
Here we just have one example from Reading Passage A to show how the first sentence of a paragraph helps us make some possible predictions about what the paragraph is about. The following is Paragraph 3 from Reading Passage A. Try to read ONLY the bolded part and make your predictions.
All of us have experienced this sudden arrival of a new idea, but it is easiest to examine it in the great creative personalities, many of whom experienced it in an intensified form and have written it down in their life stories and letters. One can draw examples from genius in any field, from religion, philosophy, and literature to art and music, even in mathematics, science, and technical invention, although these are often thought to depend only on logic and experiment. All truly creative activities depend in some degree on these signals from the unconscious, and the more highly insightful the person, the sharper and more dramatic the signals become. (Para. 3, Passage A)
Possible prediction: Some big ideas come by themselves all of a sudden.
If you find your prediction is not correct when you read on, don’t worry! You can adjust your understanding of the paragraph with the information you acquire during your reading. This is the reading process after all!