Previewing means surveying a text quickly before, you read it carefully. You preview when you want to get information. Previewing can help you with your reading. When you preview, you get an idea about the content, this way, your brain which is already activate gets an idea about the context and helps you in understanding the subject matter of the text.
For Example: You might preview by-
• A newspaper, by reading headlines
• A letter, by looking at its envelope
• A book, by reading its front and back cover
The previewing can help you to decide-
• Which article to read
• Whether to open a letter or not (It can be a junk mail).
• If the book is worth reading or buying.
Why use previewing?
According to research, previewing a text can improve comprehension (Graves, Cooke, & LaBerge, 1983, cited in Paris et al., 1991). Previewing a text helps readers prepare for what they are about to read and set a purpose for reading. Previewing helps students become more active and powerful readers. By activating prior knowledge and making connections, students are thinking about big ideas. They can predict and infer, looking for text evidence to support their lines of thinking.
The genre determines the reader’s methods for previewing-
• Readers preview nonfiction to find out what they know about the subject and what they want to find out. It also helps them understand how an author has organized information.
• Readers preview biography to determine something about the person in the biography, the time period, some possible places, and events in the life of the person.
• Readers preview fiction to determine characters, setting, and plot. They also preview to make predictions about story’s problems and solutions.
Previewing Techniques-
Consider previewing a text as similar to watching a movie preview. Think of previewing a text as similar to creating a movie trailer. A successful preview for either a movie or a reading experience will capture what the overall work is going to be about, generally what expectations the audience can have of the experience to come, how the piece is structured, and what kinds of patterns will emerge.
Previewing engages your prior experience, and asks you to think about what you already know about the subject matter, or the author, or the publication. Then anticipate what new information might be ahead of you when you return to read this text more closely. In order to preview anything certain steps need to be kept in mind:
• Look at the title, subtitles, author, and source try to guess what the text is about.
• Read the introductory paragraph.
• Consider what you already know about the topic.
• Look at the visuals.
• If you are reading in a foreign language, try and predict which economic terms and general expressions might appear in the text.
How to use previewing?
When readers preview a text before they read, they first ask themselves whether the text is a fiction or non-fiction. 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 non-fiction, readers look at text features and illustrations (and their captions) to determine the subject matter and to recall 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.