How to Scan a Text in English: Reading Techniques (Part 2 of 3)

This article explains how to scan a text in English, a key skill for IELTS, TOEFL and Cambridge reading tests, and gives you a practice text with questions and answers.

1.Reading strategies

As explained in part 1, the two main reading strategies are skimming and scanning. Skimming gives you the general idea (the gist). Scanning works like a magnifying glass: you use it to find specific details, such as names, numbers, dates and key words.

2.How to scan a text

Scanning is simple, but it takes practice. The method looks like this:

1. Understand what you are looking for. Underline the key words in the question.
2. Think of synonyms and paraphrases. The text often uses different words from the question.
3. Skim the text to guess where the information is likely to be. (Not sure how? See part 1: skimming.)
4. Find the information and underline it, so you don't lose it.
5. Use what you found to answer the question.

Some key words are easy to scan for because they cannot be paraphrased: names, numbers and dates stand out on the page. Others, like "free" or "volunteers", may appear as synonyms, so always keep a few alternatives in mind.

3.Let's practise

Step 1: find the key words

Read the questions in Step 3 first, before you read the text. For each question, underline the words you will scan for.

Key words (click to expand)

Names and numbers: Hannah Okafor, Peter Lang, first full year, year, how many
Other key words: volunteers, job before she retired, most often, donation box, borrow tools, town council, rent, leave their items, more business, tool library

Step 2: the practice text

(This practice text was written by GrammarTrack for this exercise. The people and places in it are fictional.)

4.The Riverside Repair Café

A. Every second Saturday of the month, the community hall on Mill Lane in the small town of Eastbrook fills with broken things: toasters, bicycles, lamps and torn jackets. The Riverside Repair Café opened in March 2019 with six volunteers and two tables. Today it has 41 volunteers, and visitors bring in their broken items for free repairs.

B. The idea came from Hannah Okafor, a retired electrician who was tired of seeing working parts thrown away. "Most things break in one small place," she says. "A loose wire or a worn belt is enough to send a whole machine to the bin." She borrowed the format from repair cafés she had visited abroad and persuaded the town council to lend the hall for free.

C. The rules are simple. Visitors register at the front desk, describe the problem and wait for a volunteer with the right skills. Repairs are free, but visitors are expected to stay and watch, so that they can fix the same problem themselves next time. A donation box by the door pays for spare parts and tea.

D. Volunteers keep a record of every item. In its first full year, the café looked at 380 items and repaired 254 of them. Electrical items were the most common category, followed by clothes and bicycles. The hardest jobs, according to volunteer Marco Silva, are modern laptops and phones, because many are glued shut and spare parts are hard to find.

E. Not everyone was enthusiastic at first. A local shop owner, Peter Lang, worried that free repairs would take business away from his repair shop. Instead, the café now sends him the jobs that need special tools, and he estimates that his business has grown by around ten per cent since it opened.

F. The café's next plan is a "tool library", where residents will be able to borrow drills, ladders and sewing machines for up to a week, for a small yearly membership fee. The organisers hope to open it in the spring, if they can find a room to store the tools.

Step 3: answer the questions

Locating information. Which paragraph, A–F, contains the following information?

1. the person who started the café
2. a reason why some devices are difficult to repair
3. a project the café is planning

Short answers. Answer with NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER.

4. In which year did the café open?
5. How many volunteers does the café have now?
6. What was Hannah Okafor's job before she retired?
7. How many items were repaired in the café's first full year?
8. Which type of item did visitors bring most often?
9. Apart from tea, what does the donation box pay for?
10. For how long will residents be able to borrow tools?

True, False or Not Given?

11. The town council charges the café rent for the hall.
12. Visitors can leave their items and collect them later.
13. Peter Lang's repair shop has had more business since the café opened.
14. The tool library will open in a new building next to the hall.

Answers (click to see)

1: B. "The idea came from Hannah Okafor"
2: D. "many are glued shut and spare parts are hard to find"
3: F. "The café's next plan is a tool library"
4: 2019
5: 41
6: electrician
7: 254 (not 380: that is the number of items the café looked at)
8: electrical items
9: spare parts
10: (up to) a week
11: False. The council agreed "to lend the hall for free".
12: False. Visitors "are expected to stay and watch".
13: True. "his business has grown by around ten per cent"
14: Not Given. The text says they still need to find a room; it does not say where.

Question 7 is a typical trap: the text contains two numbers close together (380 and 254), so read the question carefully and check which one it asks for.

The tenses in the text are clues too. The past simple tells you what happened once ("opened in March 2019"), the present simple describes how the café works today, and the present perfect with since links the two ("his business has grown ... since it opened"), which is how you know the answer to question 13 is True.

Next: learn how to read deeply and remember more in part 3: active reading.

And always remember:

Practice makes perfect!