The Next 30 Years
Ⅰ.Reading Strategy: Scanning for Organization and Content
When you re reading a text in order to find specific information, scanning it first to get an idea of the way the text is organized can be a big help.Visual clues - things like numbers and dates; lists, sections and subtitles; dialogs,quotations and recurring phrases - are easy to see in a text, and can often give us a good picture of its organization and content before we start reading.
A good survey takes only a few minutes.But in those few minutes, you can learn, for example, what is important in the chapter.Knowing what is important,you will be better able to distribute your attention as you read; you will not treat every sentence as if it were equally important.To survey a chapter, you should complete just four basic steps:
Step 1: Read the title and all introductory material.Try to discover the general topic of the chapter and any statements or questions about chapter purpose or objective.
The topic of a chapter is usually conveyed by its title.Titles like“Problems of Unemployment”，“Stages in Digestion”,and“Early Theories of Evolution”，for example, tell you what the author will discuss.
However, when you survey, you should look for more than just the topic.
You should look as well for the purpose, or objective, of the chapter.What does the author expect you to understand after you have finished the chapter?Authors of textbooks often use the first page or two of a chapter to tell you precisely what they expect you to learn.In fact,the opening pages of a chapter may offer an explicit statement (or statements) of the purpose.
Sometimes authors announce their objectives by using opening questions.That means they tell you in the introduction what questions the chapter will try to answer.
Step 2: Read the headings.Use them to raise questions about the chapter.
Like the title, major and minor headings can help you anticipate the contents of a chapter.As you know, major headings identify the topics of individual sections within the chapter, while minor headings tell you what specific aspects of those topics the author intends to address.
But headings can serve another purpose, by adding words like who, what，why, when, where and how, you can turn the headings into questions about the chapter.
Step 3: Read the first sentence of every paragraph.
When you survey, you should use the major and minor headings to anticipate what the chapter is going to cover.In addition, you should read the first sentence of every paragraph.A good portion of the time, textbook authors open their paragraphs with topic sentences.Those topic sentences can give you an even clearer idea of what information the chapter contains.
Reading the first sentence of every paragraph can also give you clues to the way an author presents material.As you move from paragraph to paragraph，you can check to see if the author uses underlining, lists, italics, or illustrations to emphasize important points.Knowing that an author favors a particular method of emphasis can help you when you are reading because you ll find it easier to pick out the important passages.
Step 4: Read the last page of the chapter.Look for headings like“Summary”，“Review”，“Conclusion”，“Key Terms”,and“Questions”.
As we know, authors frequently use summary paragraphs to repeat essential points.As you might expect,this pattern holds true for chapters as well as for individual selections.Many authors end their chapters with a section called “Summary”，“Review”,or“Conclusion”.
Although these sections usually consist of several paragraphs rather than one, they still function like summary paragraphs: they tell you, in general terms, what is essential to the chapter.They are the author s ways of saying:
“This is what you should thoroughly understand after reading this chapter.”
In conclusion, we want to make an important point about surveying.Even if you decide to use different steps when you survey, your purpose should still be the same: try to get as much advance information about the chapter as you can.
Find out what topic is under discussion, what ideas are presented about that topic, and how those ideas are supported.In short,focus on your reading.It will help improve your speed, comprehension, and retention.
Ⅱ.Applying the Reading Strategy
In this part,you are required to use the reading strategy you have just learned.The following two passages are organized chronologically.Now underline the time markers in these two passages and the first few time markers have been underlined just for your example.And then summarize the main idea of these two passages.
When Annie Sullivan first arrived to teach her young pupil, Helen Keller,she found a little girl who could not see, hear, or speak.Because she was cut off from the world, the child behaved like a savage.She would bite, kick and spit if anyone approached her, and yet in less than a month,Sullivan had taught her to name objects.Even more astonishing, she had taught Helen to speak，giving her access to language and communication.With Sullivan as her teacher,Keller went on to read Braille in English,Latin, Greek, French and German.
In her ***** years, these accomplishments, in the face of her handicaps, made her a source of inspiration, and she became a figure of international importance.
Main idea:
Charles Lindbergh s strong and independent character shaped every event in his altogether spectacular life.In 1927, when he decided to fly nonstop over the Atlantic, everyone said it was impossible.But Lindbergh would not listen and flew anyway, becoming an international hero.When the public demanded that Lindbergh return a medal given to him by the Nazis, he refused.No matter how unpopular his decision, he would not bend to public opinion.More important to him were the dictates of his own conscience.When Lindbergh knew he was about to die of cancer, he methodically planned the details of his funeral.Characteristically, he was not about to leave such an important event in the hands of anyone else.Lindbergh wanted to die just as he had lived - on his own terms.
Main idea:
Ⅲ.Reading Tasks
A.Pre-reading activity
