Skimming a text, using section headings.

In some academic writing, the text is organised through the use of headings and sub-headings. You can therefore get a good idea of the overall content of a text by reading the headings and sub-headings first. This should help you get a feeling for the content and organisation of the text. In many cases that will be enough, but if it isn't, you will now have a good idea of the content of the text and you will find it easier to read in detail. Familiar texts are easier to read.

As reading is an interactive process, you have to work at constructing the meaning of the text from the marks on the paper. You need to be active all the time when you are reading. It is useful, therefore, before you start reading to activate the knowledge you have about the topic of the text and to formulate questions based on this information. The title, sub-titles and section headings can help you formulate questions to keep you interacting with the text.

Understanding texts

Useful skills are:

• Understanding text structure/organisation. Understanding the text organisation will help you understand the writer's purpose and where to find other information.

• Understanding conceptual meaning, e.g. comparison, purpose, cause, effect

• Understanding reference in the text, e.g. it, he, this, that, these those

• Dealing with difficult words and sentences.

• Critical reading. Reading critically - evaluating arguments, weighing evidence, recognising implications, and assumptions, the author's point of view.

Understanding text structure/organisation.

Every text has a structure. It is not just a random collection of sentences. The parts that make up the text are related in a meaningful way to each other. Recognising the way in which a text has been organised will help you to understand it better. The writer may, for example, be explaining two opposing points of view, or describing why something happens. Undestanding the text organisation will help you understand what the writer is trying to do.

Understanding conceptual meaning.

You will be able to increase both your speed of reading and your comprehension if you can recognise some of the rhetorical functions that the writer is using. Writers use language, for example, to analyse, to describe, to report, to define, to instruct, to classify, to compare, to give examples, to explain, to give reasons, to argue and discuss and to draw conclusions. To understand the text it is necessary to understand what the writer's purpose is.

Identifying reference in the text.

Every text has a structure. It is not just a random collection of sentences. The parts that make up the text are related in a meaningful way to each other. Recognising the way in which a text has been organised will help you to understand it better. In order to understand the text, it is necessary to understand how the sentences are related. Certain items of language in English have the property of reference. That is, they do not have meaning themselves, but they refer to something else for their meaning.

Words like "it", "this", "that", "here", "there" etc. refer to other parts of the text. You need to understand these connections or links. There are four main types of links used in academic texts: reference, ellipsis and substitution, conjunction and lexical cohesion (Halliday and Hasan, 1976).