What Is Previewing?

Previewing is a reading strategy typically used before reading a text. It involves taking a quick glance at the text’s features. Previewing helps you get ready to read the text properly by getting all the context around it.

Preview Process

Text features to look at	To find quickly information on
Titles Subtitles Headings	→ Text topic(s) → Text type
Pictures & illustrations Graphs & tables	→ Important text elements → Summarized information → Additional & complementary information
Cover Back cover	→ Text topic(s) → Author information → Descriptions → Summaries
Descriptions Summaries	→ Text topic(s) → Tone of the text → Text type → Literary genre
Glossaries	→ Vocabulary → Technical knowledge
Bold text Italic text	→ Important information identified → Emphasis on specific information → Attention grabbers

Previewing at a Glance

Quick overlook of the different things to look for when previewing a text as a reading strategy. Previewing is about gathering basic information in order to prepare for reading a text. Description : Overlook of previewing

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Reading Strategies at a Glance

Summary table of the 12 reading strategies: previewing, activating prior knowledge, making predictions, decoding, visualizing, questioning, annotating, making connections, graphic organizers, inferring, summarizing and skimming & scanning.

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What Is Previewing?

Preview Process

Previewing at a Glance

Reading Strategies at a Glance

See Also