way2go! 7. Coursebook, Schulbuch

168 STRATEGIES Before you read Reading Determine the purpose of your reading. Are you looking for specific information, do you need to know the general meaning (gist) of the text, or are you simply reading for pleasure? The purpose of your reading will determine which technique works best for you. Identify the type of writing. Is it a factual article or somebody’s opinion? Is it a piece of fiction or a text relating real events? Why was it written? To inform? To entertain? To convince? Think about what you already know about the topic of the text. This will help you relate the information to your present knowledge and make it easier for you to understand and remember what you read. Make predictions about what the text will tell you. For this, you can use headlines or subheadings, pictures and the text below pictures if you read an article, or the title, cover and blurb 1 of a book. Your predictions will help you relate the information in the text to what you know already, and evaluate it more easily. While you read Depending on why you read the text, you will use different strategies. Skimming (or reading for gist) means reading a text quickly to get the main ideas . You speed through the paragraphs to get an overall understanding of the text. Very often the main idea(s) can be found in the first and last paragraph of a text, or in the first sentences of each paragraph. Note, though, that some magazine or newspaper articles will start with an example, not the main idea(s). Scanning means looking for specific information in a text. When you scan, you should think about what the information you want might look like. Are you looking for numbers or years, or names of people or places? This will help you to find the information quickly. Once you have found what you are looking for, you can stop reading. Intensive reading (or reading for detail) means working with a text in detail to understand as much as possible. This means you will have to read the whole text, sometimes several times, from beginning to end and interact critically with the text by underlining keywords, writing notes or questions into the margin of the page or crossing out passages that are not important. This is easier if the text is on paper, but most e-readers also offer annotation and highlighting functions. Make yourself familiar with them. Extensive reading (or reading for pleasure) is exactly that – reading for pleasure, so enjoy. It’s a great way to consolidate your language skills and learn about the culture of a country. If you’re not sure which book to read, start with one that you would read in German as well. If you’re a fan of fantasy, don’t go for hard core crime in the foreign language. Books that win prizes (the Man Booker Prize in the UK, for example, or the Pulitzer Prize in the US) are also almost always a good choice. 1 blurb: Klappentext These strategies can help you to make the most of your language skills in real life. Reading and listening strategies Nur zu Prüfzwecke – Eigentum des Verlags öbv