Previewing and Predicting

In this section, you will learn about previewing a text to prepare for reading. This will help you understand the text more clearly and use your time better.

When we sit down to read something new, there are a few things we can do to make understanding easier. By pre-reading, or previewing before we read, we can better follow the author's ideas. In this section, you will learn about previewing a text to prepare for reading. This will help you understand the text more clearly and use your time better.

One way to learn from a reading passage is to make predictions. This means making a guess as to what will happen in the reading. Using the title, subtitles, and pictures, you can guess what the author may be saying before you start reading. Then as you read, see if you're right.


When and How to Preview

Previewing is a strategy that readers normally use before reading a text. When readers preview a text before they read, they first ask themselves whether the text is fiction or nonfiction.

  • If the text is fiction or biography, readers look at the title, chapter headings, introductory notes, and illustrations for a better understanding of the content and possible settings or events.
  • If the text is nonfiction, readers look at text features and illustrations (and their captions) to determine the subject matter and to remember prior knowledge to decide what they know about the subject. Previewing also helps readers figure out what they don't know and what they want to find out.

 
Since most college reading involves reading textbooks, we will look at nonfiction or informational text in more detail. To preview nonfiction text, we must first understand nonfiction text features and structures.
 

Nonfiction Text Features

Nonfiction texts contain useful features that organize information. You can learn to read these text features like a map to help point you towards the things you want to know!


Nonfiction Text Structure

Buildings and texts: they're similar in an unexpected way! They both have STRUCTURE. We'll explore five different ways to structure nonfiction texts, using as our example the greatest food in the world…pizza.



Now that we know what it means to preview, let's look at some other reading skills that can help us understand a text in more detail.

Source:

Text adapted from Lumen Learning,  https://courses.lumenlearning.com/vccs-enf102-17fa/chapter/text-previewing/
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Videos: Khan Academy, https://www.khanacademy.org/ela/cc-2nd-reading-vocab/xfb4fc0bf01437792:cc-2nd-the-moon/xfb4fc0bf01437792:reading-for-understanding-informational-text/v/using-text-features-to-locate-information-reading, https://www.khanacademy.org/ela/cc-4th-reading-vocab/x5ea2e43787f7791b:cc-4th-superheroes/x5ea2e43787f7791b:close-reading-informational-text/v/the-structures-of-informational-texts-reading
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.