‘Why am I reading?’ is the first question an effective reader asks himself or herself, because how you read depends on your purpose. You may read to locate specific information, to understand reasons and facts and to learn, to enjoy words and descriptions, as in poetry and some prose, etc.
As soon as the effective reader defines the purpose of his/her reading, s/he asks another question 'How should I read?' In other words what reading technique or techniques should s/he choose? Effective and efficient readers learn to use many different styles of reading for different purposes. Skimming, scanning and critical reading are considered to be the most important ones. Among others are previewing and predicting, guessing word meaning, recognizing the main idea, making inferences, summarizingandannotating.