Skimming is the process of quickly browsing an article or passage and determining its main theme, interest, and other important information. Skimming is often used to quickly find something of interest (such as a student looking for a key word) or quickly studying something before an exam. Skimming can also be used when reading a newspaper. Often times, people skim the beginning paragraph of an article to determine if it is an interesting read. The main purpose of skimming is to absorb the major ideas of an article while at the same time eliminating the areas of the article that are not applicable to the information being read. In the process of skimming, many people reduce the problem of vocalization due to the fact that you are not giving your mind enough time to carefully pronounce the words as you skim. More importantly, skimming will separate the areas that are important from the jargon that is surrounding them.

Methods of Skimming

There are three methods of skimming an article. First, you can skim only the middle section of the article since it usually contains the most important concepts. Second, you can use a ruler as a pointer for skimming. Third, you can use a method called Zigzag skimming.

Middle-Section Skimming
In their nature, paragraphs are arranged so that the most of the important key words fall in the middle area of the lines. Due to this fact, one way to skim a page is to concentrate on the middle section of each line. Your aim is to look for key words that will help you get a better understanding of the material.

Ruler Skimming
Another way to skim is to use a ruler as a pointer while skimming. In order to do this, you need to place your ruler under each line that you are skimming while moving your ruler downward in a very smooth pace while skimming. Once again, your goal when using a pointer is to follow it while looking for key words.

Zigzag Skimming
The other method of skimming entails using your zigzag hand motion while concentrating on the entire page rather than only the middle section. This method is optimum for studying because it allows you to focus on the overall range of the article. Some people might also prefer to skip lines wile using the zigzag hand movement. For example after skimming Line #1, you can skip to Line #4, then to Line #7.

Exercise #1
While there are 3 methods of skimming, practice will enable you to be more comfortable with one of the methods. However, some people will decide to alternate skimming methods depending on what information they are reading. For example, it is very different skimming a science book rather than skimming a newspaper and people adjust skimming methods to suit their needs.

In this exercise you will determine which method of skimming is best for you. For each method, skim at least 3 pages and determine which method allowed you to retain the most amount of information in the quickest time. In this exercise, it is not necessary to use timing or an evaluation sheet for this exercise.

What to Look for While Skimming?

Key Words
While skimming you goal is to grasp the most amount of information about a certain topic in a very quick time and without reading every single word. Hence, you have to look for key words that tell you the main idea of each line you are reading. Although each sentence contains many words, there are keywords and jargon. The idea here is that you will be able to know what is being portrayed in the text by reading only the key words. The key words are primarily the nouns and the verbs of each sentence. For example, if you are reading “Exercise can help reduce the risks of heart disease”, you can understand the overall meaning of the sentence by only reading the words exercise, reduce, risks, and heart disease. Below are more examples of skimming for key words.

• The stock market is headed for a record.
• Denver was spared another round of heavy snow. The storm stretched nearly from Canada to Mexico.
• Gently apply the medicine to the area at the top of the lips.
• The process of killing off bacteria to provide territory for infections.

Topic Sentences
At times there are sentences within a paragraph that basically summarize everything that you should have gathered from your reading. For example, in most newspapers the first sentence is usually a topic sentence because it gives you an image of what you are about to read. The rest of the newspaper focuses on the idea presented in the first sentence but with more details. As a result, many people decide to skim the newspaper by looking at the first sentence of each article and reading those articles whose topic sentence sounds most interesting. Topic sentences are found usually in the first paragraph or the last one depending on what you are reading. For example, if you are reading a book on physics, a topic sentence might come near the end of the topic because the author is working his way up to reveal that topic sentence. This is the same case for short articles.

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