"To get through the reading in this course (or in any course for that matter), you will need to skim some material. Contrary to popular belief, skimming is not a less engaged kind of reading; arguably, it requires even more concentration and focus. But if you skim effectively, if you direct your full attention to the parts of an assignment that deserve the most attention, you can spend less time reading and comprehend more of what you read. Some of the brief tips below are also discussed here by Timothy Burke, a history professor at Swarthmore College. I encourage you to read (or skim!) his advice as well.
All of these tips are based upon a fundamental idea, adapted from the book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace, by Joseph Williams. Williams argues that clear writing comes from thinking about how readers read. Conversely, clear-headed reading comes from thinking about how writers write. Your goal as a skimmer is to grasp as quickly as possible what a writer is trying to say. This means trying to sit in the writer’s chair. Here are some ideas about how to do that …
1. Always ‘pre-read’ by skimming the titles, both for the whole work and for sections. When authors choose titles, they are attempting to do your work as a skimmer for you. Titles, ideally, boil down crucial concepts into brief phrases, and they can give important clues about a work’s argument. You should therefore look for key words in the title. Then, while you are skimming, you can pay special attention to the parts of the work that bear directly on those key words….
Before skimming, you should look not only at the title of the whole work, but also at the titles of subsections. Scan the table of contents. Find other key words. Make a note of whether some of the title’s key words are repeated in the table of contents; if so, that means they will be doubly important. But also notice any new key words not contained in the title; those concepts will also be important in the book, but probably in a secondary way."
More at http://modeforcaleb.blogspot.com/2005/10/how-to-skim.html