Strategic Reading Strategy 2: Methodical Skimming

Many UW Undergraduate students find skimming a great way to get an understanding of what an article is about quickly by being able to identify different keywords and parts of an article.

Image credit: UW Visual Asset Collection Links to an external site.

Recall from the Anatomy of an Academic Article that many academic and research texts have a basic structure.

• Read the abstract, introduction and conclusion. Often this will be sufficient for a brief understanding of the main purpose. 
• Skim the middle of the text and look for a statement of methodology, and any visuals presented. What are the method(s) for collecting evidence? 
• Go back and read the entire text quickly, skipping equations, figures and tables. 

Discipline-specific vocabulary: When is it worth it to look it up? 

• Is the word essential for your understanding of context and main argument? 
• Is this word appearing multiple times in the text? Where does it appear? 
• If it’s present in the abstract or introduction, it’s likely worth looking up.
• If it’s present in the main body of the text only, and you can understand the main argument without knowing the word, it’s likely only supporting language.

Adapted from Organizations & Markets Links to an external site.