English Skills For Technical Students

Q. What do you mean by Skimming and Scanning?
By skimming we mean skimming over the surface of a piece of writing or glancing the rapidly
through a text, to find out its general content , central idea or gist . We do this , for example when we
want to find out whether a certain article is relevant to our own area of study of research , or when we
glance over a page of study of a newspaper to see if there is anything word reading in detail, or when we
leaf through a book to find out its subject matter.
By Scanning we mean darting over much of a text to search for a specific item or piece of
information that we wish to discover . This skill there fore also involbes the ability to reject on pass over
irrelevant information . It is the kind of reading we do when , for example , we read through a
biographical account to find out the date on which certain event happened or when we go through the
table of contents in a book to see whether a certain aspect of a problem has been dealt with in the book
or when we glance through the telephone directory looking for a person’s telephone number , that’s all
about Scanning.

Q. Reading for Information structure:-
Every thing has a structure – the chair the pen , the building even we , our selves in the same
way written language ( a text ) has a structured , the way in which the writer has structured the
information that he wants to pass on to us .

Q. Read the text below and prepare its information structure:-
In the twentieth ( 20
th
) century one of our greatest problems is pollution in our cities . The air
constantly being polluted from smoke , from factories and rural areas – is polluted by uncollected
garbage . Water is also polluted particularly as a result of unrated sweage. Also oil trankers often clean
their tranks at sea and power station release hot water into rivers , which kills fish and plants .
Ans.
Pollution

Air Water Land


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A more details information structure of the text is what ?
Pollution

Air Water Land
Where :
Smoke from factory , Unrated sewaye , Uncollected garbage ,
Emitted from motorvechiles , Oil from tranks ,
Hot water from power station ,


Q. Time and Tense :
Tense > Latin ‘tempus’ > Time.
1.
I write a letter . --> Verb ‘write’ refers to Present tense .
2. I wrote a letter . --> Verb ‘wrote’ refers to Past tense .
3. I shall write a letter . --> Verb ‘shall write’ refers to Future tense .
Tense

Present : Past : Future :
 Simple “” “”
 Continuous “” “”
 Perfect “” “”
 Perfect Continuous “” “”








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Present Tense :
Simple Present : Formation :