Getting the General Picture Extracting Detailed Information

c. Getting the General Picture

Readers and listeners often read or listen to things because they want to ‘get the general picture‘. They want to have an idea of main points of the text-an overview-without being too concerned with the details. When applied to reading this skill is often called skimming and it entails the reader’s ability to pick out main points rapidly, discarding what is not essential or relevant to that general picture Harmer, 1991: 183. Skimming involves the quick reading of a text –not every word- in order to understand the gist or main points of a passage Jordan, 1997: 17. Readers can skim a text to get general idea of a passage, for example, most readers are able to read a newspaper headline and the first paragraph or the second one of a text to determine what it is about. Skimming activities provide students with a general idea of the text themes and the organization and development of ideas Crandall in Richards, 2001: 272. In skimming, the candidate can: obtain the main ideas and discourse topic quickly and efficiently; establish quickly the structure of a text; decide the relevance of a text or a part of a text to their needs Arthur Hughes, 2003: 138. Another statement is stated by Djuhari 2007: 264 that in reading for main ideas or skimming is generally characterized by giving the following questions: 1 What is the topic of the text?; 2 What is the main idea?; 3 What is the subject? From the descriptions, it is concluded that to skim is to get general idea of a passage.

d. Extracting Detailed Information

Harmer 1991: 184 states that readers or listeners often have to be able to access texts for detailed information. The information required can be of many kinds. Exactly what does the writer mean? What precisely is the speaker trying to say? Questions like ‘How many?’ ‘Why?’ ‘How often?’ are often answered by reference to this kind of detail. Sometimes the detail they are looking for is the writer’s or speaker’s attitudes; how do they feel about the situation or person they are describing? What, precisely, is their intention? In our need to teach purposeful reading and listening with an emphasis on skimming and scanning in reading readers should not forget the importance of detailed reading and listening.

e. Recognizing Function and Discourse Patterns