Reading is a process whereby a reader brings meaning to and gets meaning from print. This implies that readers bring their experiences as well as their emotions into play in order to derive meaning from text. 

• Reading for meaning is the activity we normally engage in when we read books, journals, newspapers, etc.
• It involves looking at sentences in a text and understanding the message they convey, in other words, making pause of a written text.

•  ​Rapid or Speed reading is the process of rapidly recognizing and absorbing phrases or sentences on a page all at once, rather than identifying individual words.

Purpose of rapid reading:-

• To increase speed without loss of comprehension.
• To increase self-confidence, eye span, vocabulary, and flexibility.
• To create interest in reading i.e., students will read stories, novels, and books of their choice.
• To overcome vocalization i.e., to speak the words while reading. So, the students who face difficulty in pronunciation can easily do rapid reading.

​Thus, from the above-mentioned points, it is clear that the purpose of 'rapid reading' is for interest.

 Skimming and scanning are methods of rapid reading.

• Skimming means glancing 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 or research, or when we glance over a page of the newspaper to see if there is anything worth reading in detail, or when we go through a book to find out its subject matter.
• Scanning, on the other hand, mean darting over much of a text to search for a specific item or piece of information that we wish to discover. This skill also involves the ability to reject or 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 a certain event happened,