Learning Skills
How can I read all of this?
You probably can't! Before you start reading, you need to know your purpose for reading a particular text. At times, you might only have to skim the information, which means you try to understand the main ideas. It is a bit like taking the cream from the top of the milk. Often this is quite enough and will give you all the information you need. An example of this could be the pre-reading you have to do for a lecture or tutorial. Sometimes you might quickly skim over an article to see if it is relevant for your research.
At other times scanning a text will be sufficient. Scanning means you are looking for specific information in a text. For example, if you are doing research and you are looking for some specific information to back up a statement you have made, you don't have to read every word. All you need is to find that one statement.
So, knowing what kind of information you need from a text will save you a lot of time and effort.