Kinds of reading mastered in school

Another point is that any specialist should be able to select the books he needs for his professional purposes. He is to understand clearly the information needed. These most frequently met cases of making use of books require skillful handling of skimming reading; general reading; close reading. All three kinds of reading taught in school are aimed at achieving different results.

- Skimming reading is aimed at having an idea of a book, an article or a topic or at defining the theme of a text. To obtain this information it’s enough for a student just to skim the headlines, titles, subtitles; to look through the fragments of a text, focusing attention on separate passages or even sentences. Skimming reading requires possessing rather a great deal of language input on the part of the reader. That’s why in school students are taught only its separate techniques providing a text topic or theme definition. Time required for skimming reading is 1.0-1.5 min/page. The degree of understanding equals 40-50% in cases when almost the whole text is looked through very rapidly. Speed requirements differ noticeably from M. West’s 400 w/min up to Macmillan’s minimal tempo of 500 w/min, average tempo of 800-1200 and maximum tempo of 2000-4000 w/min.

- General reading is aimed at a definite content of the book/article/text. Its result is understanding the general gist of the text including general information, general outline of argumentation, the author’s reasoning. That’s why this kind of reading is called reading for general comprehension. It is fluent fast silent reading done at the rate of 180-190 w/min. The speed indicates that the reader’s inner speaking has started to become fragmentarily as one of the features of silent reading fluency. The degree of understanding is not less than 70% of all the facts in the text. Such understanding includes obligatory comprehension of main facts precisely and completely. Facts of minor importance should not be misinterpreted.

- Close reading is aimed at complete and exact comprehension of the information contained in the text, its critical interpretation. This side of interpretation is specifically stressed by those researchers who call this kind of reading elucidative and comprehensive by Alyakrinsky, intensive by Schwarts, careful by Scherba. With close reading, the reader’s task is to store up the extracted information for further usage in his long-term memory. This necessity to keep the extracted information in store determines rather slow tempo of close reading. It seldom exceeds 50-60 w/min. The reading process is usually accompanied by re-reading certain words, sentences and passages; numerous stops; full and complete text pronouncing in inner speech; translation (sometimes – as a means of comprehension, more often – as a means of control); taking written notes. The degree of comprehension is 100%. Understanding primary and secondary information should be exact, precise and complete.

Thus, the main aims of teaching reading at school are teaching communicative efficiency in general reading and close reading.