A TYPOLOGY OF READING

STRATEGIES
DEVELOPED BY
ELTU, CHINESE UNIVERSITY OF HONGKONG)
Strategy Comment
It is important for students to have a clear
1. Having a purpose purpose and to keep in mind what they
want to gain from the text.
Conducting a quick survey of the text to
2. Previewing
identify the topic
Looking quickly through the text in order
3. Skimming
to get the general idea of what it is about
Looking quickly through a text in order to
4. Scanning
locate specific information

5. Clustering Reading clusters of words as a unit

Avoiding habits such as reading word-by-

6. Avoiding bad habits
word

7. Predicting Anticipating what is to come

Asking questions and then reading for

8. Reading actively
answers
Identifing ideas that are not explicitly
9. Inferring
stated.
Strategy
10. Identifying genre
11. Identifying paragraph
structure
12. Identifying sentence structure
13. Noticing cohesive devices
14. Inferring unknown vocabuary
15. Identifying figurative
language
16. Using background knowledge
Comment
Identifying the overall
organizational pattern of a text
Identifying the organizational
structure of a paragraph, for
example, whether it follows an
inductive or deductive pattern
Identifying the subject and main
verb in complex sentences
Assigning correct referents to
proforms, and identifying the
function of conjunctions
Using contexts as well as parts of
words (e.g. prefixes, suffixes, and
stemps) to work out the meaning
of unknown words
Understanding the use of
figurative language and
metaphors
Using what one already knows to
understand new ideas

17. Identifying styles and its
purpose
18. Evaluating
19. Integrating information
20. Reviewing
21. Reading to present
Understanding the writer's
purpose in using different stylistic
devices , such as a series of short
or long sentences
Reading critically and assessing
the truth value of textual
information
Tracking ideas that are developed
across the text through
techniques such as highlighting
and note taking.
Looking back over a text and
summarizig it.
Understanding the text fully and
then presenting it to others