英语阅读技巧-Reading Skills

英语阅读技能学习及练习Reading Skills SkimmingScanningIntensive readingExtensive readingWhere are the people in the photos? What are they reading?Why are they reading?1 Adapted from New Headway Academic Skills 2, P6Skim the text below and write in the paragraph headings. Choose from this list:1. Scanning2. Intensive Reading3. Extensive Reading4. SkimmingEffective ReadingDuring your course you will do a lot of reading. It is essential that you learn how to be an effective and efficient reader in order to make the best of your study time. Learning to be a good reader takes practice. You need to develop different strategies or methods of reading.A. ___________________Sometimes you will read just to get a general idea of a text. This is skim reading. First, identify your reason for reading, for example, to decide whether or not an article meets your needs, or perhaps to understand a writer’s attitude. To do this, read the text very quickly. Don’t worry about readin g and understanding everything. Instead, look particularly at the first and last paragraphs, and at the first and last sentences of paragraphs. These often summarize the main points.B. ___________________Sometimes you will read quickly to find particular pieces of information, for example, a statistic, a date, a person’s name, or the name of a place. Again, you do not need to read every word to find this information. Instead, scan the text using a finger or pencil to move quickly through the words. You could time yourself to see how long it takes you to find the information. Always try to improve your speed.C. ____________________Sometimes you read for every detail, for example, a description of a process, the results of a scientific study, or a set literature text. To do this, take your time. Stop and think about what you are reading. Have you understood the text? You may need to read the text more than once, in order to make notes or highlight important points for future reference. This is called intensive reading or study reading.D. _____________________Sometimes you will read for pleasure --- perhaps as extra research or purely for interest. You may concentrate, but you don’t have to worry about detail. This is extensive reading.We do not always read the same kinds of texts in the same way, and we often use more than one method of reading for a single text. Your reason for reading will help you decide how to read.Now answer these questions:1. Which two ways of reading are the quickest?2. Which way would you read for enjoyment?3. Which way of reading is the slowest?4. Which reading skill did you use to answer questions 1-3?Facts and figures Scan the texts below and answer the questions•1,400,000 people in India work for the Indian RailwayCompany –that’s 1.8% of the country’s population.•About 650,00 students in the UK study foreignlanguages at school –52% study French; 21% studyGerman; 7% study Spanish and 20% study otherlanguages.•40 million people live in the South American republic ofArgentina. About 16 million live in or near the capital city, Buenos Aires–that’s about 40% of the population.•Around the world, about 500 million homes have atelevision. 88% of homes in the United States have aDVD player, but in China it’s about 15%.Scan these short texts to complete these sentences with the correct numbers.1. ______ % of homes in China have a video recorder.2. ______ million peo ple live in or near Argentina’s capital city.3. ______ % of India’s population work for the Indian Railway Company.4. ______ million homes in the world have a television.5. The population of Argentina is ___________ million.6. ______ % of foreign language students in schools in the UK study Spanish.Life in Britain Today Scanning FoodBritish people like good food, and more than half of them go toa restaurant every month. Fast food is also very popular – 30%of all adults have a burger every three months, but 46% havefish and chips.SportBritish people don’t do a lot of sport. Only 17% of people goswimming every week, 9% go cycling and 8% play golf –andonly 6% of people play football (but 32% go to watch it). Cinema and TVCinema and TV are very popular in Britain, and about 60% ofpeople between 15 and 24 go to the cinema every month. Athome, men watch TV for about three hours every day – half anhour more than women.HolidaysBritish people love going on holiday, and have 56 million holidaysevery year. Most of these holidays aren’t in the UK – 27% are inSpain, 10% are in the USA, and 9% are in France. Maybe this isbecause the weather in Britain isn’t very good.Read the text again and underline the correct answers in the sentences below.1. The favourite food in Britain is: a) burgers b) fish and chips2. 6% of British people a) go swimming b) play golf c) play football every week.3. British men watch about a) 2 hours b) 3 hours c) 4 hours of TV every day.4. Their favourite country for a holiday is a) Spain b) France c) the USA.Reading Skills 2 Adapted from O’Connell, Focus on IELTS Foundation, Pearson, 2006, U11 SkimmingSkimming is looking quickly through a text to get a general idea of the subject. For example, you skim a newspaper to see which articles interest you, without reading everything in detail. In an exam, you skim a text to find the parts you need to study car efully. This means you don’t have to read the whole text several times.Skim the newspaper extracts and find TWO which deal with each of the following topics: Topic Extracts1 Education ………… …………2 Space exploration ………… …………3 Family matters ………… …………4 Business and work ………… …………5 Medical matters ………… …………6 Technology ………… …………7 Crime and punishment ………… …………8 ScanningScanning is looking quickly through a text to find specific names, facts or figures. For example, you might scan a list of television programs to find the name and time of the program. In an exam, you scan a text for information to answer a question.Scan the extracts for information to answer the following questions.1 In which Brazilian state did prisoners riot?2 How long do grandparents spend looking after their grandchildren?3 What is the name of America’s most recent spacecraft?4 In which month is Yuri Malenchenko due to return to Earth?5 What is the maximum time junior doctors in Europe will be able to work in future?6 How long was the world’s longest marriage?7 According to research, what food can help protect you from cancer?8 What was Volkswagen’s annual profit?CitiesA. Skim the text below and write the sentences a –d at the beginning of paragraphs 1-4.a. Our typical image of a medieval city is ofsomewhere smelly and unhealthy.b. Ancient Rome had many of the sameurban problems as cities today.c. The world’s oldest city is Jericho in theMiddle East, which dates back to 8,000 BC.d. The world’s most mysterious cities are tobe found in the Indus Valley.1.______________________________________________________________ It has been destroyedmany times in its history but it has always been rebuilt. AncientRome was the first city to have a population of 1 million. At itsheight the entire Roman Empire had a population of 100 million.We often imagine that the enormous cities of Asia are atwentieth century phenomenon, but throughout history, theyhave always been bigger than cities in Europe. In 1450, thebiggest city in the world was Beijing (population 600,000), and most of the ten other biggest cities were also in China. London had a much smaller population of just 75,000.2._______________________________________________________________ Known as the ‘Secret Cities’, they are around 4,500 years old, but no one knows who built them or where they disappeared to. Whoever they were, they were so advanced that they invented their own form of writing (at around the same time as the Ancient Egyptians) and built a system of drains and plumbing almost 2,500 years before it was ‘first invented’ by the Romans. Tower blocks are not a mo dern invention either. Buildings over six storeys tall existed in many cities in the Middle Ages, and in Ancient Rome some blocks were so high that sightseers used to come from the countryside especially to look at them.3._____________________________________________________ Thisis not entirely true, however. Public services such as bathhouses, drainsand hospitals were relatively developed. Medieval Florence, for example,with 90,000 people had thirty hospitals with over a thousand beds. Itsdrainage system was much better than those of many nineteenth-centurycities.4. _____________________________________________________________ Crime was an acute problem–few people dared to go out after dark for fear of robbers and cut-throats. Even then many of the poor lived on welfare. The Emperor’sgovernment regularly distributed bread to 200,000 poor people. Trafficcongestion is not a new problem either. In the centre of Ancient Rome itwas so bad that Julius Caesar had to ban all wheeled vehicles duringdaylight hours.B. Scan the text to find the following information as quickly as you can.1. The first city in the world to have a population of more than 1 million.2. The number of hospitals in medieval Florence.3. The name of the oldest city in the world.4. Two inventions made by the civilisation that inhabited the ‘Secret Cities’.5. The name of the biggest city in the world in 1450.6. Two ‘modern’ urban problems that also existed in ancient Rome.C.Read the text carefully and decide whether these statements are true (T), false (F) or not given (NG) in the text:1. Jericho is a modern city.2. Ancient Rome was the largest city in the world.3. Only the ancient Egyptians had a system of writing.4. The Romans invented plumbing.5. Beijing is the largest city in the world.6. In 1450, the ten biggest cities were in China.7. There were tall buildings in ancient Rome.8. Medieval cities provided medical care.9. Crime was a serious problem in ancient Rome.10. Traffic congestion became a problem in the last century.D. Find words in the text that mean the same as:reconstructed _____________ creation _____________huge _____________ floors _____________ occurrence _____________ water control _____________largest _____________ very serious _____________ unexplainable _____________ crowding _____________ progressive _____________ forbid _____________EIT 2.1Leisure ActivitiesWilliams, J. (2011). Making Connections (Low Intermediate): NY, CUP.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Most people today have more time for leisure than people had in the past. What are they doing with this time? Some people just want to relax. They watch television, read, or listen to music. Others want to be more active and productive with their leisure time. They want to learn something new or to develop a new skill. Other people want to participate in activities with people who have similar interests.Today, many people use their leisure time to do something productive.Perhaps because they work only with their minds all day, they want todo something with their hands. They want to do something verydifferent from their office jobs or schoolwork. Some enjoy working in agarden. Others like to build or fix things in their leisure time. Forexample, they may want to work with wood, build furniture, or paint.Others learn how to cook foods from other countries.For some people, the most important thing about leisure time is to spend it withother people. This is especially true for those people who like to play sports. All overthe world, soccer, basketball, tennis, and other sports bring people together. Othergames of competition also bring people together. Card games, such as poker, arepopular in the United States. Dominos are popular in Latin America and theCaribbean. Many people in Asian countries, especially in China, enjoy mahjong. DominoesSome of these games are very traditional. However, in somecountries, the younger generations likes to make up newgames. In Japan, for example, there is a new popular gamecalled cosplay. Cosplay comes from the words costume andplay. In cosplay, people dress in costumes. They want to looklike their favourite characters from comic books, movies, orvideo games. In Japan, people dress as their favourite animecharacters. In western countries, cosplay is also beginning tobe popular. There, people dress up as characters from StarTrek or comic books.Cosplay in JapanLeisure activities, such as games, create a community, that is, a group of people who share interests. Technology makes it possible to create a community even if people are far apart. The best example of this is online games. People all over the world play online games such as Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft. Others participate in virtual online communities, such as Second Life. In these virtual communities, people can pretend to be someone else. They can choose to be a different person or even an animal or a plant.Communication on the Internet is a very popular leisure activity for millions of people. They keep up with old friends and meet new friends on social network sites such as Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Orkut, Mixi, Cyworld, and Xiaonei. These are online communities where people can share news, information, pictures, and videos.Social network sites are global communities, and they are growing. In 2009, Facebook had more than 100 million members all over the world. The users spent almost twice as much time on social network sites in 2009 than in 2006. One year later, the number reached 500 million, with over 100 million in the United States. The popularity of this form of leisure will continue to grow because more people are using the Internet, especially in countries like China. One young man in China recently told a newspaper, “I spend most of my leisure time on the Internet.”8 People spend their leisure time in many different ways. Some people want to learn. Others just want tohave fun. Some prefer to spend their time alone. Others want to spend their leisure time with other people. The most important recent development in leisure activities is in technology. More and more people depend on technology for their leisure activities today.A. SkimMatch each paragraph in the article with the main ideas below._____ A Some people want to work with their hands during their leisure time._____ B Sports and other games are popular leisure activities._____ C Playing games online is a popular leisure activity._____ D Social network sites are becoming more popular._____ E Some people like to dress as their favourite characters in their leisure time._____ F There are many different choices for leisure activities._____ G People make different choices about how to spend their leisure time._____ H Many people spend leisure time on social networking sites.B ScanScan the text quickly and find the following information.1. Practical ways to use leisure time.2. Sports that are popular all over the world.3. Where card games are popular.4. Where cosplay is most popular.5. Online games that are popular globally.6. The name of a virtual online community.7. Examples of global communities.8. The number of Facebook users in 2009.C. Reading for meaning.Decide if the information in the statements below is true (T) false (F) or not given (NG).1. Most people work more than in the past.2. Many people don’t work with their hands.3. Most people use their leisure time as a social activity.4. Mahjong is the most popular game in China.5. Cosplay is better-known in Japan than in the west.6. Technology can be used to create international communities.7. Older people enjoy using social media.8. In 2006 there were 100 million American Facebook users9. Chinese users spend more time on the internet than American ones.10. People use technology increasingly as a medium for leisure activities.D Vocabulary Study: Words in ContextComplete the following sentences with words or phrases from the box below.1 My brother always wants to do something ______________________ with his free time. He likes topaint the house or fix things.2 I _______________ with my friend from school. We send each other e-mail messages every week.3 Orkut is a social _________________ site in Brazil, but Mixi is the most popular one in Japan.4 He ____________________to know the answer, but he really did not know it.5 The students and teachers both ______________ in the school basketball game.6 The two brothers live far ______________, but they talk on the phone every Sunday.7 She knows that the ______________ worlds on the Internet are not real, but she likes to visit them.。