An easy way of reading for detail

It’s unlikely that you will need to read more than a few paragraphs in this style. Most of the time, you will be skimming or scanning first. Once you have found the information you want, then you will need to switch to reading for detail. Here’s how to do it.

1. Read the whole paragraph without stopping. Don’t worry if you don’t understand it all yet, the following steps will help with that.

2. Once you have read the paragraph. Come back to the sentences that you don’t understand. Underline any words you don’t understand in those sentences and think about which other word you could use to replace them and make a sentence that you do understand.

This is guessing from context and is a very important skill to develop as it will help you learn to read faster and more fluently.

3. When you have already tried guessing the word you don’t understand from context, go back an check with a dictionary just to make sure you were right.

Learning to read for detail like this takes time to start with and you may be tempted just to look all the words up straight away in your dictionary. Try not to, though. Remember, you won’t always have a dictionary with you wherever you go, so it’s very important to invest the time in learning to read for detail and guess from context.

This is part of my improve your English reading skills series.