Reading

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English for Health Professionals

Improving your

READING SKILLS ENGLISH RESOURCES © 2009 OET-IELTS.com OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre. For official OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org) IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is the property of IELTS For official IELTS information and documentation, please see: (http://www.ielts.org)

Improving your Reading Skills Regardless of whether you are currently studying, you should continue to engage in reading every day for both professional development and personal enjoyment. There are a number of ways you can practice and improve your reading skills. READING SKILLS • • • • •

Read the title, subtitles and subheading to find out what the text is about. Look at the illustrations to give you further information about the topic. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph. Don't read every word or every sentence. Let you eyes skim over the text, taking in key words. Continue to think about the meaning of the text.

Skim several times •

When reading a large amount of material, you can first skim over the chapter and section titles to give you an idea of what the material is about. Then quickly scan through the material again to get a better idea of the topic. Finally, you read the assignment, but still reading rapidly.

Read first sentence •

Since often the first sentence of each paragraph states the main idea of that paragraph, while the other sentences elaborate on that idea, you can skim read by just reading the first sentences. In some cases, you can get enough information by only reading the first sentence from each paragraph.

Look at groups of words •

One of the primary tricks in speed-reading is to look at phrases and groups of words instead of individual words. Instead of reading word-by-word, you read in chunks of information. You don't have to say the word to understand what it means.

Complex reading •

With some complex reading—like Mathematics--you should still skim over the material, quickly looking at section titles and the equations and formulae. After you get an idea of what the material is about and where it is going, you can read it more carefully. Since you often may have to work out problems with a pencil, obviously your reading speed will not be as high as other type of reading.

ENGLISH RESOURCES © 2009 OET-IELTS.com OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre. For official OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org) IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is the property of IELTS For official IELTS information and documentation, please see: (http://www.ielts.org)

Improving your Reading Skills Practice with newspaper •

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Try reading several words, a phrase, or even a sentence at a time. A good way to practice this is to read newspaper articles by scanning down the column, digesting all the words across, instead of reading each word at a time. A newspaper column usually has 4 or 5 words per line, and you should be able to process all of them at once. This method is one of the best for getting used to reading phrases instead of words. Just practicing reading this way should noticeably increase your speed.

Summary •

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If you think about reading faster, you will make an effort to pick up the pace. Reading speed is something you must work on and concentrate on until it becomes a habit. Being able to read and comprehend the material at high speed is a skill that is worthwhile for students and people in business. Most methods involve reading chunks of information so that you are skimming or scanning the book or document.

ENGLISH RESOURCES © 2009 OET-IELTS.com OET (Occupational English Test) is the property of the OET Centre. For official OET information and documentation, please see: (http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org) IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is the property of IELTS For official IELTS information and documentation, please see: (http://www.ielts.org)