Филологические науки/1. Методика  преподавания языка и литературы

Ст.преподаватель Фёдорова М.Л.

Костанайский государственный университет, Казахстан

Skimming and scanning at the lessons of professionally-oriented foreign language

Contemporary society needs professionals with a high degree of awareness on profession, constantly wanting to improve their knowledge on their own, having a professional culture that is the key to professional success. To meet the professional information needs the growing importance acquires the ability of a specialist to master a foreign language. The formation of the modern professional, possessing modern domestic and foreign advanced technology, to a large extent depends on how quickly he is able to extract a professionally oriented information not only in the native, but also in foreign languages. This raises the problem of training students who are able to gain information from professional texts with the maximum under- standing the special nature of the information. Reading at the present stage of human development, committed provement of science and technology is one of the most important means of obtaining information presenting one of the spheres of public communication of human activity. As the experts deal with different sources of information, they need to possess different reading strategies and in accordance with the object and purpose, to extract information of varying depth and breadth. It is important to determine the number of necessary types of reading for nonlinguistic students, stages of their introduction in the course of the training, which determines relevance. The problem of learning to read in a non-language universities is studied by many authors ,for example A.Bagrova, E.Davidenko.

Skimming and scanning are two very different strategies for speed reading.

They are each used for different purposes, and they are not meant to be used all the time. People who know how to skim and scan are flexible readers. They read according to their purpose and get the information they need quickly without wasting time. They do not read everything which is what increases their reading speed. Their skill lies in knowing what specific information to read and which method to use.

Skimming is one of the tools you can use to read more in less time. Skimming refers to looking only for the general or main ideas. You read only what is important to your purpose. To skim effectively, there has to be a structure but you don’t read everything. What you read is more important than what you leave out. For example, you are doing research on a long chapter or a web site. By reading the first few paragraphs in detail, you will get a good idea of what information will be discussed. You can begin to read only the first sentence of each paragraph. Also called topic sentences, they give you the main idea of the paragraph. If you do not get the main idea in the topic sentence or if the paragraph greatly interests you, then you may want to skim more.

At the end of each topic sentence, your eyes should drop down through the rest of the paragraph, looking for important pieces of information, such as names, dates, or events. Continue to read only topic sentences, dropping down through the rest of the paragraphs, until you are near the end. Since the last few paragraphs may contain a conclusion or summary, you should stop skimming there and read in detail. Remember that your overall comprehension will be lower than if you read in detail. If while skimming, you feel you are grasping the main ideas, then you are skimming correctly.

Skimming will help you locate the information quickly while making sure you use your time wisely. It will also increase the amount of usable material you obtain for your research.

Scanning is another useful tool for speeding up your reading. Unlike skimming, when scanning, you look only for a specific fact or piece of information without reading everything. For scanning to be successful, you need to understand how your material is structured as well as comprehend what you read so you can locate the specific information you need. Scanning also allows you to find details and other information in a hurry. Establishing your purpose, locating the appropriate material, and knowing how the information is structured before you start scanning is essential.

The material you scan is typically arranged in the following ways: alphabetically, chronologically, non-alphabetically, by category, or textually. Alphabetical information is arranged in order from A to Z, while chronological information is arranged in time or numerical order.

Information can be also be arranged in non- alphabetical order, sometimes information is located within the written paragraphs of text, also known as a textual sense, as in an encyclopedia entry.

You should keep the concept of key words in mind while scanning. You should explain to the students that the purpose will determine the key word. They scan when their aim is to find specific pieces of information. If you were doing the research for an oral presentation, you could scan the index of books, web sites, and reference materials. You would discover whether they contain any information you want and the pages where the information can be found.

With some of this information, your students can use scanning more intentionally and frequently. The more you practice, the more effective scanning will become. Finally, the most important benefit of scanning is its ability to help your students become a more flexible reader. Scanning adds another high gear to reading.

It is necessary to explain to your students that they may be used to reading every word and may be uncomfortable leaving some words out, they need to give themselves permission to overlook some words by skimming, scanning, and skipping material according to the reading purpose.