Active readers make use of different reading strategies to help them save time and cover a lot of ground. Their purpose for reading should determine which strategy or strategies to use. A very useful strategy involves running our eyes very quickly over large chunks of a text. lt allows us to pick up some of the main ideas of the text without paying attention to detail. lt is a fast process. We do not actually read the text in total. We may read a few words of each paragraph, perhaps the first and last sentences, in order to get the main ideas of the text. The above definition refers to the following reading strategy: