Skimming is a reading technique used to get the gist of a text. Readers quickly glance over headings, subheadings, and first sentences of paragraphs to capture the main ideas without delving into details.
Example 1. You are reading a news article quickly to understand the main points or headlines, rather than focusing on every sentence. You skim to grasp the general idea of what happened.
Example 2. When reviewing a book for an exam, you might skim each chapter to get a sense of the key topics and themes without reading each word carefully.
Scanning is a reading technique aimed at locating specific information quickly. Readers move their eyes rapidly over the text to find keywords, phrases, or data points without reading every word.
Example 1: Imagine you're looking through a long document to find a particular date. Instead of reading every word, you scan for any numbers or date-related information.
Example 2: If you are reading a book to locate the definition of a term in the glossary, you would scan through the pages, ignoring other content until you find the word you need.