Study skills: Reading Practice

We read every day. The material we read is always different. What material can you think of?

Here is some common reading material we read:
a bus timetable       the menu in Costa         the school timetable      the teacher's writing on the board
your coursebook    the Kaplan website        this blog            a text message    a Whatsapp message      a Facebook post          an email        a free newspaper         an article on the internet     a study book

Why do you read? Do you read for pleasure and enjoyment? Do you read to find out facts and information?

When we read, we use different skills. These skills are:

skimming What is the article about? We skim a text for a general understanding. For gist.
scanning  We scan a text for specific information. For example, what time does the film start? When does the bus leave?
reading for detail We want to know more information and detail. For example, what colour was the man's jacket? How did James Bond feel?

Look at the reading material above. Which would you skim, which would you scan, and which would you read for detail?

Study skills: Typing

A lot of students find typing very difficult. The keyboard is strange and the letters are different . Typeracer is a website that can help you.

Click on this link: http://play.typeracer.com/ and then click on the word practice. Type the words into the box. Can you beat the clock? The word you need to type will appear in green.

Study skills: using a dictionary

It's really important that you use a good English dictionary to help you to improve your vocabulary. Many students use an electronic translator to translate English words into their own language. However, if you do this, you are only learning half  the language.

A good English-only dictionary will tell you many things more than a translation. A dictionary will:

• tell you what kind of word it is (noun, adjective, verb etc)
• show you what is the plural spelling/ the past tense/ countable or uncountable
• show you how common the word is. The most common words are often in a  different colour
• give you the definition of the word and will give you an example sentence. It's very important for you to see how the word is used in a sentence
• tell you some synonyms of the word (other words that mean the same or similar). You can also find synonyms in a thesaurus
• use pictures to help you understand the word