The best way, and perhaps the only way, for today's student to cope with the effects of the information explosion on college reading lists is to become a competent and confident skimmer and scanner. Despite this obvious “need,” it is difficult to get students to skim and scan because of the negative attitudinal biases of both students and teachers. As a result, these skills are either ignored or not taught effectively. Failure to teach skimming and scanning skills is postulated as the reason many reading programs fail to produce flexible readers. Evidence is presented that skimming and scanning skills can be taught effectively. The results of a series of studies conducted in the process of developing and field-testing a skimming and scanning improvement program are described and their implications discussed.
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