How to Do Skimming in a Reading Comprehension Test
A reading comprehension test assesses your understanding of a reading passage. To skim is to read quickly for main ideas in a text. When taking a reading comprehension test, your main objective should be to understand the main point of the text, not minor details. Effective skimming increases reading speed and understanding.
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Instructions
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Read the title and any subtitles to obtain clues about the nature of the text. Titles will indicate whether a text is persuasive, informative or tells a story. Figuring out the type of text will help you determine what kind of purpose it will have and what kind of information you will need to glean from it. For example, in a persuasive text you will need to locate the argument.
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Read any comprehension questions included with the test. You only need to read enough to answer the questions, so knowing the questions ahead of time can help you filter your reading. If a question asks for a specific fact, such as a date or name, quickly locate the information in the article and move on to the next question, before even reading the text in full.
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Answer all the easy questions first before moving onto more difficult questions. Inference questions, which ask you to draw conclusions about what the writer said, will require you to read the text more fully. Save these for last.
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Glance over each paragraph in the text, after answering all the easy questions, paying closer attention to the first sentences of each paragraph, which are often topic sentences. Also look at the last sentence in each paragraph, which summarizes or concludes the ideas in the preceding sentences.
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Verify your answers by reading the sentence where the answer is located. When skimming, you are reading quickly and can easily overlook or the misinterpret the context that surrounds a piece of information. A writer may introduce a date or idea, but then declare it to be someone else's and present her own theory. Read the sentence where the information is found, as well the sentences before and after, to confirm your answer.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't read every word in the text. Look at a sentence as a whole, noting key words and ignoring minor ones.
Focus only on the information in the text, even if you are aware of facts that contradict or overrule them. Only answer the questions based on the reading selection.
References
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