Developing your reading skills is so important. Lots of students think that when reading you have to understand every word and make sure that you read each one – this isn’t really true! Ok, sometimes you do, but most of the time not and it slows you down and can make you feel bad if you don’t understand. Also, it doesn’t reflect how you read in your own language, most of the time you only have a few seconds or minutes to read something and you just want to find the most important information – and when you find it you read in more detail. So that’s what we want you to try and do in English! Try moving your eyes faster over the page, or drawing a line under the words with your finger quite quickly. You could also try pulling the point of a pencil down the middle of the page. This forces your eyes to move more quickly over the text, and you start to get the general idea about what your are reading. If you don’t understand a word – move on! You don’t always need to understand everything, and if you get to the end and realise it was important, then it’s time to go back and work out what the meaning is. Don’t forget to write it in your vocabulary book!
