Skimming vs Scanning

What is scanning?

• Quickly reading over a text to get the general gist.

• Quickly reading over a text to find some specific information which is focused upon.

• Taking the time to understand the whole text in depth.

What is skimming?

• Quickly reading over a text to get the general gist.

• Quickly reading over a text to find a specific piece of information which is focused upon

• Taking the time to understand the whole text in depth.

Looking for your flight number at the airport information board is an example of...?

• Skimming

• Scanning

Looking through a magazine to check what articles to read is an example of...?

• Skimming

• Scanning

When you read the opening and closing of the paragraph or text, you are...

• skimming

• scanning

Would you use skimming or scanning in the following situation?

You've got a book on football in front of you and you want to know who won the Golden Shoe Award.

• skimming

• scanning

Would you use skimming or scanning in the following situation?

You have picked up a book on dinosaurs in the library and you want to decide whether to borrow it or not.

• skimming

• scanning

You look at a newspaper to see if there's a film on TV tonight.

• skimming

• scanning

You need to decide if a long article will be useful for some research you are doing.

• skimming

• scanning

You have a meeting in 10 minutes, and you haven't read the report you are going to discuss.

• skimming

• scanning