SCANNING

What is “scanning?”
Scanning is a skill that allows for students to search for key words/concepts/ideas.
More often than not, the student knows exactly what he/she is looking for. So the
assigned task is finding out specific information, such as finding the name of an
individual in a telephone directory or looking for a word in a dictionary. The written
articles that are scanned are often written in a particular order or in categories. The
scanner has the key words in mind as they scan the list. The term scanning can be
used to refer to other actions associated with looking for something in particular.
Therefore, you ‘scan’ a text looking for particular information, words or ideas and
disregarding unrelated information. Scanning is important to improve reading skill.

The procedures of scanning technique are:

-Keep in mind only the particular information to be found out.
-Make a choice, which clues would support the finding of the required
information.
- Have a rush view and sweeps down the page quickly to find out the clues.
If the clues are found out, read that section to get the information needed.

Scanning is unlike skimming, because readers are not concerned with the broader
meaning of the text, but the detail. In this technique, the readers look for specific
information within a text such as dates, names, and places, among others. Moreover,
Brown (2003) explains that scanning is the process of quickly searching for particular
piece or pieces of information in a text. The purpose of scanning is to extract specific
information without reading the whole text. It is basically fast reading. To do so, it
involves moving your eyes quickly down the page seeking specific words or phrases.

How is scanning done?

When a student is asked to employ scanning in a task, this process involves moving
the eyes quickly through the text (or down a page) looking for specific words and/or
phrases. Scanning can also be used in a research project, where the student can
scan the text to determine whether it will provide the information he/she is looking
for. It is important to note, once you have scanned a text, you might go back and
skim the text to identify the main ideas.

Activities:
Activities may include exercises that are devised by the teacher in which students
scan for a single word or specific text . Activities may include exercises that are often
carried on as a competition so students will work quickly. Students use skills of
prediction and anticipation. Students may do any of the following:

1) make predictions and guesses.

2) use titles and tables of contents to get an idea of what a passage is about.
3) activate prior knowledge about the topic of the passage by answering some
questions or performing a quiz.
4) anticipate what they want to learn about the top.
5) use titles, pictures, and prior knowledge to anticipate the contents of the text.

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6) use key words, that may have been given to them by the teacher, that do not
appear in the text, that allude to the main idea.

It is an accepted view today that efficient readers are not passive. They react with a
text by having expectations and ideas about the purposes of the text as well as
possible outcomes. They reflect on expectations as they read, anticipate what will
come next. In other words, they "interact with the text". You can totally ignore
unnecessary ones. If you’re reading, you must be having or about to have questions
to be answered, just wisely choose what to read and quickly get what may benefit.

Role of Teacher:

1) The teacher selects passages that do include specific information.

2) The teacher may use authentic materials that are commonly scanned in
real life, such as the telephone directory, menus, bus schedules.
3) The teacher may ask students before they scan a text to note how the
information is organized in the text.
4) The teacher needs to remind students that as they read carefully to find the
required information, they should pay particular attention to titles and
keywords.

Role of the Student:

1) The student forms questions before reading. What specific information are
they looking for?
2) The student looks for contextual clues. The student tries to anticipate what
the answer might look like and what sorts of clues would be useful.
3) The student is aware of the graphic form that the answer may take, such as
a numeral, a written number, a capitalized word or a short phrase that
includes key words.

USES:

1) Scanning is a quick reading, focusing on locating specific information.

2) Scanning involves quick eye movements, not necessarily linear in fashion,
in which the eyes wander until the reader finds the piece of information
needed.
3) Scanning is used when a specific piece of information is required, such as
a name, date, symbol, formula, or phrase, is required. The reader knows
what the item looks like and so, knows when he has located what he was
searching for. It is assumed then, that very little information is processed
into long-term memory or even for immediate understanding because the
objective is simply matching.
4) Scanning is used often with technical, scientific or professional materials to
locate specific information.

You may also need scanning to locate the correct answer for given questions. You
are likely to scan when you have no intention of getting a general idea. Obviously, if
you have no doubt of your purposes for reading and other unrelated information is
far from support, now take scanning into your consideration. Scanning is perfect

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when it comes to looking for something more particular rather than an overview idea
in your mind.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SKIMMING & SCANNING:

When to use Skimming: to quickly locate relevant sections from a large quantity of
written material. Skimming is especially useful when there are few headings or
graphic elements to gain an overview of a text.
When to use Scanning: to quickly locate specific information from a large quantity
of written material.
Skimming involves reading quickly to get the main idea of a text.
There are many cues or indicators to watch out for when skimming a text.
• note any bold print, tables, charts or images.
• start at the beginning of the text and skim your eyes over the text very
quickly.
• you might read a few words of every paragraph, perhaps the first and last
sentences. Reading topic sentences (usually the first sentence of a
paragraph) can be an effective way of understanding the main idea of a
paragraph
• the aim is to get an overview of the key words and points in a text without all
the details.

Scanning involves scanning your eyes over part of a text to find specific
pieces of information.
• after gaining an overview and skimming, identify the section(s) of the text
that you probably need to read.
• start scanning the text by allowing your eyes (or finger) to move quickly over
a page.
• as soon as your eye catches an important word or phrase that you were
searching for, stop reading
• you then slow down to read the relevant section more thoroughly.

EXAMPLES:
The "What's on TV" section of your newspaper.
A train / airplane schedule.
A conference guide.
Examples include reading a bus timetable or reading the results of an
internet search.

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