Skim reading is a useful skill to learn when you are preparing of academic study. You are likely to have a lot of texts to read, a lot of research to do, and not enough time to read everything on a topic. It is therefore often important to decide whether it is worth reading a text in greater detail. You can do this by skimming a text quickly to identify the main ideas using headings, sub-headings, and topic sentences to help give you a bigger picture.