The intricacies of reading skill

Updated on: Wednesday, August 10, 2011

The Newspaper in Education (NIE) classes, have been giving the students something more than the academic classes, setting the tone of learning beyond the curriculum. In fact, one of the aims of The Hindu's NIE initiative is to encourage the habit of newspaper reading among students.

During the first session of NIE for this academic year, on Monday, the Nirmala Higher Secondary School VII ‘A' 1, students had the opportunity to learn the intricacies of reading skill.

Resource person Y.Jothi explained the importance of reading. She said that reading was an activity that necessitated a high level of concentration, and added to the conversational skills of the reader. Children who start reading from an early age have good language skills and a better grasp of the subject.

She then spoke of the ways of reading and primarily looked upon skimming and scanning of the newspaper. Skimming is used to quickly gather the most important information. One has to run his/her eyes over the printed text, noting important information and simultaneously grasping relevant points. Use skimming to get speed on current affairs. It's not essential to understand each word when skimming. It helps us to quickly get the general news of the day.

The headings do provide a reliable indication of the content of the news.

One can turn the pages randomly and check its readability, style and seriousness in terms of treatment.

Scanning is used to find a particular piece of information; it could be used to look on advertisements, schedules, meeting plans in order to find the specific details you require.

During the activity session, the students were asked to form separate groups and were asked to skim and scan through the day's newspapers.

The kids were sharp enough to scan and skim through the major headlines and the advertisements during the activity.

The intricacies of reading skill

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