In academic study, especially at university, you will have vast amounts of reading for every course. If your only strategy is to read everything, one word at a time, you will never succeed. It is therefore important to develop strategies to improve reading speed. Other important skills will be needed, including note-taking and summarising, and you will need to learn to read critically. This section gives information on all of these, together with some information on two important academic reading exams, TOEFL and IELTS.

Reading skills

Learn how to increase reading speed via skills such as skimming, scanning and surveying a text, understand the importance of establishing a purpose, and find out how to guess unknown words.

Note-taking

Understand note-taking basics and learn more about different styles of notes.

Summarising

Find out more about summarising a reading text.

Critical reading

Understand what critical reading is and how to read critically.

Exams

Find out more about the reading component of important academic English exams, including TOEFL and IELTS.