In the context of reading, skimming is a common strategy. It involves looking for key words, punctuation, bulleted lists, and the like, instead of reading every single word in the text. The purpose of skimming is to grasp the main idea of a text, and if that’s your goal, and if you know you won’t understand everything on the page or screen, that’s fine.
Skimming is certainly fine for a beach read, where it’s not important to recall every detail of a scene or decode complex words. If you’re reading for knowledge, though, skimming isn’t enough.
Experts often contrast skimming with “close” reading. Though the exact definition is up for debate, it can basically be described as when a reader connects new information to prior knowledge, asks meaningful questions about the material, and develops a deeper understanding of the text.
Studies have shown that close reading causes more widespread brain activity than skimming, which may help with later recall.
Some educators believe the gap between approaches may not be that significant, that readers use both skimming and close reading to gain an understanding of a text, even if understanding meaning is the primary goal. Studies show that even strong and avid readers often skim parts of a novel or skip ahead.
Gaining a deep understanding also doesn’t mean reading all the words in order, as the term “close reading” might suggest. Instead, the experience actually might be highly nonlinear and involve going back and rereading words or some sections completely.
A person’s familiarity with the type of material they’re reading might also influence the strategy they use to read. If you read a lot of books on a particular subject, such as chemistry or psychology, you might get more familiar with the terminology.
That, in turn, might improve how efficiently you can read the texts and how much you can retain from the reading, even if you don’t look at every word.
Studies suggest that a good way to improve your reading speed while maintaining comprehension is to increase your vocabulary. People familiar with a subject have a more intimate knowledge of the terminology that’s used — that is, a larger vocabulary.
There’s a trade-off for close reading. It’s believed to require more focused attention and is generally more time-intensive. The problem is, it’s difficult to maintain that focus for long periods. Try breaking up the whole reading into multiple, easier-to-complete sections to get around the problem.
For reads that require more sustained attention, you should also try to minimize distractions so you’re in the right headspace. And mute the phone. Studies show our phones — especially getting and receiving texts — are a major source of distraction.
Some recent research has suggested that reading on screens leads to more skimming than close reading, since most digital media tend to be relatively short pieces and not long-form text. While some higher education researchers have speculated this has had a detrimental effect on readers’ cognitive skills and negatively impacted our attention spans, it remains a hotly debated topic.
Other researchers believe our changing reading habits aren’t likely to erode attention, because that would have profound effects on other areas of cognition, like memory. Instead, our limited attention spans may be because the internet provides us with endless entertainment, and our willingness to focus on a given text might be decreasing as a result.
There also may be a pervasive feeling that we need to consume information as quickly as possible, because there’s so much of it out there to absorb. That makes it difficult to hold our attention on a single page or site for long periods, and so we resort to skimming.
Practice doing close reading and focusing our attention on longer texts may be the answer; as with anything else, it gets easier the more you do it.
And instead of pitting skimming and close reading against each other, we should come to understand that both are important to approaching and understanding content, especially in the digital age.
Adapted from:
Mesa, Natalia. (January 16, 2025). “Is there a ‘right’ way to read?” National Geographic. Retrieved from https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/reading-skimming-attention.
