What skills should you improve in reading?

What Will You Learn in This Article? 

You're going to learn reading skills, its types and tips on how to improve them with the help of our well-researched and top quality article  in this lesson. 

What is the definition of Reading Skills? 

Reading skills are those skills by improving which you become a good reader. It is reading skills that enable you to read, understand, interpret and evaluate the written texts that you read. 

If you don't have these reading skills, you can not read, comprehend or interpret the texts that you encounter. 

What are Reading Skills? 

Reading skills include improving 4 essential things. They are 1. vocabulary 2. Pronunciation 3. Grammar 4. Fluency

1. Vocabulary 

Vocabulary means all the words used in a particular language (lexicon). Vocabulary within itself carries knowledge, information, ideas, thoughts in the form of meanings. Vocabulary serves as a useful and important tool for communication, along with being a means of acquiring and transforming knowledge. 

For a second language learner, vocabulary is a part of his/her learning which prepares him/her to communicate properly in that language. 

2. Pronunciation

Pronunciation is the way in which a word is articulated or spoken. 

Pronunciation helps us learn how to pronounce or speak a word correctly so that we are fully understood by others. 

Pronunciation includes the study of sound production, (the study of how to produce speech sounds of a language) letters articulation, (the study of which muscles of our mouth are engaged in articulation or saying of a letter) syllables, (the fragment or unit of a word or a speech that's spoken just in one chest pulse) 

stress (a chest pulse on a particular syllable) 

And intonation (the rise or fall of voice in speech)

Simply put, studying Phonetics and Phonology, which deal with the sound system of a language is pronunciation learning.

3. Grammar

Grammar is the set of rules that deal with the structures, sentence patterns and word orders of a language. 

Grammar gives instructions and guidelines for using a language effectively and efficiently so as to prevent grammatical errors in that language. 

It is grammar that serves as a useful tool for effective communication.

4. Fluency

Fluency is said to be present in a person's speech when there's fluidity, naturalness, and coherency. Fluency simply means the ability to speak a language properly. It is because of fluency in a person's language that he or she is understood by others completely. Fluency is the thing that creates so great effect in speech as to be accepted by others. 

Types of Reading

There are mainly four types of reading a text. 

1. Skimming 

Skimming is a technique of reading a text that you use to quickly read some written material in order to get the essential points out of it. 

For instance, when you read a newspaper, you actually skim it quickly so that you get the most important information. 

2. Scanning

Scanning is a technique of reading a text that you use to read some written material in order to get the piece of information that you need. 

For instance, when you read a dictionary to find out the meaning of a word, you scan the dictionary to know the meaning of the word that you need. 

Note:- As both skimming and scanning are techniques of quick reading, they save your time or they use less time. 

3. Intensive Reading

Intensive reading is a deep reading of usually short texts for gaining full knowledge about something. 

For instance, intensive reading involves careful and close reading of short stories and poems. 

4. Extensive Reading

Extensive reading is also a deep reading of novels, long stories and prose for pleasure and enjoyment to gain a general understanding of the texts.

Tips on How to Improve Reading Skills in English 

1. Learn Vocabulary with Pronunciations 

Learning vocabulary with pronunciation is the first essential step by which you can better your reading skills, because when you read some newspaper, blog article or magazine, you actually come across many words that are new to you. If you have already learnt those words with their pronunciations, you can easily read the text you've encountered. 

For learning words with their pronunciations, you can either study phonetics and phonology wherein you learn the sound of the English language or simply use Google Translate to hear the correct pronunciations of English words. 

2. Learn Grammar Rules and Sentence Constructions

When you learn grammar rules and complex sentence constructions, you attain the ability to make sense of whatever texts you read. 

Learning grammar rules and complex sentence constructions also helps you in reading and understanding the texts successfully you encounter. 

3. Increase English Language Fluency

If you can speak English fluently, naturally and coherently, then you can read the texts in English properly. So keep learning, speaking and reading English. Within a few months, you will notice improvement in speaking and reading as well.