How to Read Faster on The CELPIP Exam: Skimming and Scanning

Well, hello there. Welcome to the next edition of the Speak English Fearlessly podcast. In today's episode, we're going to be talking all about how you can improve your reading skills for the self-epic exam. More specifically, we're going to be focusing on how you can actually improve your reading speed so that you don't get stuck reading through a long text

and you run out of time. That's such an important skill to master, isn't it? In fact, just this past week I was working with a couple of students on this very thing. They kept getting back to me saying, you know what, I get lost in the text and I don't have time to answer the questions. And so we began focusing our attention on these two skills

that I'm going to be talking with you about today. By learning how to master them through practice and practice and more practice, you will see that your ability to read through long texts and short texts will actually improve. You'll be able to read faster and more effectively and you'll be able to answer the questions that you need to answer on your test much easier.

If you've ever felt that you get lost in the in long texts and you don't have time to answer the questions or all of the questions then this is the episode for you. So pull up a chair, Drop your listening device into your pocket and join me as we talk about the two skills called skimming and scanning. But before we get to that, I want to share a little story with you

about how skimming helped me. A few years ago, I was studying in a master's degree program through my workplace. There was lots of reading to do, as I'm sure you can imagine. and some of the books that we needed to work with were easy to read. They were short and they dealt with subject matter that I found easy to understand. Thankfully I was usually very interested in the

subject matter I was reading about. So that helped me to work my way through each book quickly. But not all the books were short and sadly not all the books were interesting to read. I can remember one massive book in particular. It was heavy and it was huge.

And worst of all, it was kind of boring in places. Like so boring, I remember jumping to my feet and screaming, I can't take this anymore. And I threw it on the sofa where I had been sitting and I walked away.

But you know what? what I couldn't stop. Because I had to submit an 18 page research paper about it in just a couple of weeks. I had to keep going. It was so terrible. I felt like I was literally going to start crying if I had to read another word. And that's when I discovered how important

skimming can be. I decided, in order to keep my sanity, that I would only skim through the chapters that were not that interesting to me. I still had to push myself hard to not give up because it was so long. It was probably the longest, biggest book I've ever had to read in my whole entire life. So I had to really persevere through it. And thankfully

you're not going to have to face something so big or long on the self-exam. But it It might be boring or it might be difficult for you to work your way through, which is why skimming is going to be very important for you. And here's how to do it.

Skimming means you don't read every single word. Instead, you're focusing on article headings, as well as the first and the last sentence of each paragraph. You also should focus on reading words or phrases that are in italics.

You know what I mean by that? The words that are written in such a way that the text is kind of slanted to the right, like they're leaning to the right a little bit. That's in italics.

And you should also read sentences that have words that are in bold. And there's a reason for that. If they're different, if the words are kind of written in a way that's different than the rest of the text, it might signal that it's worth reading because it's important.

The author wants you to notice those words. So notice them. If you see words in italics or words in bold, read that sentence. So that's kind of it. Skimming is not that hard. It's not complicated. It means that you're not reading every word. It means that you're focusing on the headings of the article. It means that you're focused on the first and the last

sentences of each paragraph. And the first sentence of the paragraph usually, not always, but usually will tell you what the rest of the paragraph is going to be talking about. And the other sentences that come after usually are there to provide support or extra information to add to what what that topic sentence or that first sentence

of the paragraph is talking about. You should also read words or phrases that are in italics as well as words or phrases that are in bold. It's also important to remember

that when you're skimming, you're not reading every word, right? You will get a general idea of what it's talking about. And it will also give you an idea

of where you can find certain information. and that's gonna be helpful as you work through each of the questions of the exam. And just like any skill,

this is one that will get better if you practice it. The more you do it, the easier it will become for you. So that was skimming. I said that there were two skills

that you needed to be working on. The second skill is called scanning. Scanning is also not reading every single word in your text. Isn't that a relief?

You don't have to read every single word, especially on an exam like the self-hip where you're racing against the clock. Or maybe not racing, but you're working against it. So you don't want to waste time reading things that you actually don't need to read.

Here's how to do it. First work through the questions one at a time. The questions on the CELPIP exam aren't going to have you jumping from one place to another inside of the text.

They follow in order. So the answer to the first question will probably be somewhere near the beginning of the text. The answer to the second question will be a little bit below that.

And the answer to the third question and so on will be a little bit farther down in the text.