Hey, How do you Read?

Reading Skills
Reading Skill is the most basic trait or requirement which is needed to excel in any field. Reading Skills are specific abilities which empowers an individual enabling him to:

• draw the meaning out of a written form of language
• interpret the meaning with fluency and comprehension, and
• form the mental picture of the written message.

Prominence of Reading Skills

• Improves your writing, speaking and presentation skills.
• Develops your ability to think critically and make connections with our own lives.
• Builds your knowledge in variety of areas depending on subject matter of what we read.
• Fosters your writing and language skills to excel in academic and professional career.

Tactics to unfold Reading Skills
For quick and constructive reading following tactics should be followed:

• Sneak peek or Preview the title, headings, captions to pick up the general idea of the content and structure of a reading material.
• Predict or forecast the content structure and main idea of the text or a writing based on prior knowledge and clues appearing in the text like pictures,illustrations,etc.
• Flick through the text before actual reading so that a general idea of the text can be perceived and also previous predictions can be confirmed.
• Conjecture the meaning of new or unknown words or text from the words accompanying it.For example: "We wish him happiness and prosperity on the occasion of his birthday." Here, meaning of word prosperity can be conjectured or guessed from the accompanying word 'happiness'.
• Paraphrasing is the ultimate tactic to understand the meaning of the text with clarity. Difficult portions and sections of the text can be rephrased into simple words to give it a simple and clear meaning.          

Other Skills 

• Increasing reading activities can help build vocabulary for enhancing the reading skills.For building vocabulary informative magazines and newspapers are also useful.
• Using dictionary for new or difficult words and making notes of those words with meaning helps in retaining it for long time.
• Instead of reading a text word-by-word form a grouping of words and habituate yourself viewing the meaning of sentence in blocks.
• For increasing the focus and maintaining consistent eye motion using of fingers to point at the text while reading is useful.

As a closure,Reading good materials and texts feeds the mind with healthy ingredients. Cultivating the reading culture in ourselves upgrades our intellectual capacity. Be a Reader, Be a Leader. :-)