Avant de lire un texte en détail, un bon lecteur ne se jette pas immédiatement dans le premier mot : il observe d'abord les indices visuels et formule des hypothèses sur le contenu probable du document. Cette compétence s'appelle predicting (la prédiction).
Predicting means using the title, the headline, the subtitle, the illustrations and the layout of a text to guess its topic and its purpose before reading it in detail.
Avant de lire un texte : 1) lire le titre et le sous-titre ; 2) observer les images et leurs légendes ; 3) repérer la source et la date ; 4) se demander : What type of text is this? What is it probably about? Who wrote it, and for whom?
Une fois les hypothèses posées, deux techniques de lecture rapide permettent de repérer l'essentiel sans tout lire mot à mot.
Skimming: reading a text quickly to get its general idea — the type of text, its main topic, and the main characters — without reading every word.
Scanning: reading a text quickly to find one specific piece of information (a date, a number, a name) while ignoring everything else.
En résumé : le skimming répond à la question « De quoi parle ce texte, en gros ? », tandis que le scanning répond à « Où se trouve exactement cette information précise ? »
Solar Power Reaches Malanga Village
For years, the small village of Malanga in northern Congo had no electricity. Children did their homework by candlelight, and shops closed at sunset. In March 2025, a local NGO installed forty solar panels on the roof of the health centre and the primary school. The project, funded by international donors, now supplies power to more than sixty families every evening. "We can finally watch the news and charge our phones," says Grace Mbemba, a shopkeeper. The village chief hopes the electricity will attract new businesses and encourage young people to stay instead of moving to the city. Engineers plan to add batteries next year so that the system can also work on cloudy days.
Skimming (idée générale) : le texte raconte comment un village congolais a obtenu l'électricité grâce à des panneaux solaires. Il n'est pas nécessaire de retenir chaque détail pour répondre à cette question.
Scanning (informations précises) : « How many solar panels were installed? » → forty. « Who is Grace Mbemba? » → a shopkeeper. Ces réponses se trouvent en cherchant directement le mot-clé dans le texte, sans tout relire.
Un message écrit ne se limite pas à un texte en prose : il peut prendre des formes très différentes, chacune demandant une stratégie de lecture adaptée.
| Type de support | Ce qu'il faut observer |
|---|---|
| Poem (poème) | Le titre, le rythme, les images poétiques, les mots répétés, les rimes. |
| Pictures / cartoons | Les expressions des personnages, les bulles de dialogue, les légendes, l'ironie ou l'humour. |
| Maps (cartes) | La légende (legend), l'échelle (scale), les points cardinaux, les noms de lieux. |
| Tables / charts | Les en-têtes de colonnes, les chiffres, les tendances (augmentation, baisse). |
| Prose (récit, article) | Le cadre (setting), les personnages, le narrateur, l'ordre chronologique des événements. |
Face à un tableau de chiffres, par exemple, il faut d'abord lire les titres de colonnes avant de comparer les valeurs ; face à une carte, il faut toujours consulter la légende avant d'interpréter les symboles.
Summarizing means restating, briefly and in your own words, the main idea and the essential information of a text (main characters, place, key actions) without copying the original sentences.
Pour le texte sur Malanga : "This text explains how solar panels brought electricity to a Congolese village, improving daily life for local families."
Pour comprendre un mot inconnu sans dictionnaire, deux outils sont précieux : les affixes (prefixes et suffixes) et les indices contextuels (contextual cues).
A prefix is added before a root word (e.g. un- + happy). A suffix is added after a root word (e.g. happy + -ness). Both can change the meaning or the grammatical category of a word. Contextual cues are hints in the surrounding sentence (synonyms, examples, contrast) that help guess a word's meaning.
| Affixe | Sens | Exemple |
|---|---|---|
| un- | not (négation) | unhappy, unable |
| dis- | not / opposite of | disagree, disappear |
| re- | again | rewrite, rebuild |
| mis- | wrongly | misunderstand |
| -less | without | hopeless, useless |
| -ful | full of | useful, careful |
| -ness | state / quality | happiness, darkness |
| -able / -ible | capable of being | readable, visible |
| -er / -or | person who does | teacher, actor |
| -tion / -sion | action / state | education, decision |
Face à un mot inconnu comme underfunded, décomposez-le : under- (insuffisamment) + fund (financer) + -ed → « qui manque de financement ». Vérifiez ensuite avec le contexte : la phrase parle-t-elle d'argent, de manque, de difficulté ?
Cohesive devices are linguistic tools that link ideas and sentences together so that a text reads as a coherent whole: personal pronouns (he, she, it, they), relative pronouns (who, which, that), and conjunctions (and, but, because, however, therefore).
"Mary works at the hospital. She is a nurse who helps children."
— She refers back to Mary (pronom personnel). Who refers back to nurse (pronom relatif).
Savoir identifier ce que remplace un pronom est une compétence essentielle en lecture : une mauvaise interprétation d'un pronom peut fausser la compréhension d'une phrase entière, surtout dans un texte long avec plusieurs personnages.
| Catégorie | Exemples | Fonction |
|---|---|---|
| Personal pronouns | he, she, it, they, him, them | Remplacent un nom déjà mentionné. |
| Relative pronouns | who, which, that, whose | Introduisent une information sur un nom. |
| Conjunctions | and, but, because, however, therefore, although | Relient deux idées (addition, opposition, cause, conséquence). |
Starting Monday, Lycée Moungali is introducing a new timetable. Classes will begin at seven o'clock instead of seven-thirty, and the lunch break will last one hour instead of forty-five minutes. The headmaster explained that the change was requested by teachers, who complained that the old schedule left too little time for lunch. Most students seem happy about the longer break, although a few say they will now have to wake up earlier. The new timetable starts next week, and a printed copy will be given to every class representative on Friday.
Last month, the city of Pointe-Noire launched a new bus line connecting the port to the university campus. Before this service began, students often waited more than an hour for a taxi, and many arrived late for their first class. Now, buses run every fifteen minutes between six in the morning and nine at night. Fatima Nkoua, a second-year student, says the buses have completely changed her daily routine: she no longer has to leave home before dawn. However, some drivers complain that the buses are already overcrowded during rush hour, and they are asking the company to add more vehicles soon.
Deforestation in the Likouala region has become a major concern. Trees are cut down illegally, and the forest, once full of rare birds and monkeys, is now dangerously empty in some areas. Local authorities have started an ambitious reforestation programme, planting thousands of young trees every year. Unfortunately, the programme remains underfunded, and many workers are unpaid volunteers. Environmentalists warn that if nothing changes quickly, the region could become useless for farming within twenty years, because the soil will lose its natural richness without tree roots to protect it.
Born in a small fishing village, Aminata Traoré never imagined she would one day address the United Nations. As a child, she walked six kilometres every day to attend the only primary school in the district, often arriving after her classmates because she had to fetch water first. Despite these difficulties, she finished top of her class and later won a scholarship to study engineering abroad. Today, she leads a foundation that has built wells and solar-powered schools in more than thirty villages across West Africa. When asked about her success, she simply replies that persistence, not talent, made the difference. Her story has inspired a new generation of young African women to pursue careers in science.
For decades, geographers have used the expression "the North/South divide" to describe the gap in wealth and development between the world's richer nations, mostly in the northern hemisphere, and poorer countries, mostly in the southern hemisphere. Congo-Brazzaville, like many nations of the Global South, still struggles with unequal access to electricity, clean water, and modern hospitals, especially outside the capital. Yet the picture is changing. Kevin Ossebi, a young civil engineer from Owando, decided against emigrating after his studies in France. Instead, he returned home to design low-cost bridges linking isolated villages to regional markets. "People always told me that opportunities only exist in the North," he explains, "but I wanted to prove that we can build our own future here." His projects have already reduced travel time for thousands of farmers who previously lost crops on impassable roads. Analysts argue that such local initiatives, multiplied across the continent, could gradually narrow the divide that has separated rich and poor nations for so long.
Skimming is best defined as…
Scanning is used when a reader wants to…
Read this short notice: "Ndoua Airport will close for three weeks in August for repairs to its main runway. Passengers travelling during this period will be redirected to Pointe-Noire airport, forty kilometres away." — Why is Ndoua Airport closing?
In the same notice, what does "redirected" mean?
A short practical notice like the one above (about the airport closing) is typically read by…
Which prefix means "not" or "the opposite of"?
The suffix "-less" in a word like "hopeless" means…
Which of these is a relative pronoun used to refer back to a person already mentioned?
Looking at the title, subtitle and illustrations to guess a text's content before reading it in detail is called…
Which sentence best illustrates good textual cohesion?
