Scanning and Skimming

Discover ancient Philippine literature and master reading skills!

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow. Limit your answer to 3 sentences 1 Long before the Spaniards came to the Philippines, the Filipinos already had their own culture. It was similar in some aspects to that of the Malays but was enriched through their contact with other Asians like the Chinese and the Japanese and with the people from India and some Arab countries.2 According to the early missionaries, the Filipinos had their own alphabet. The early Filipinos wrote on clay, barks of trees, bamboo tubes or palm leaves- materials that were easily destroyed, thus explaining the lack of written literature of the time. For pens, they used the point of the knife, a piece of iron, or any pointed instrument like bird’s quills. Soot and sap from certain trees were used for ink.3 Much of Philippine literature was oral. It consisted of folk narratives, riddles, proverbs, songs, rituals chants, and epics. The Literature was community-bound and sprang from the experiences and observations of the people.Source: Carbonell, Victoria L. Ribo, Lourdes M. LANGUAGE LITERATURE Philippine Literature. Kalamansi Street,Cor. First Avenue, Juna Subdivision, Matina, Davao City: Vibal Group Inc., 2016 What does ancient Philippine literature tell us about our ancestors and their society? Where do early Filipinos write their literary works? What did the early Filipinos use for pen and ink? Considering the kind of materials used during those times, how have they preserved their literature such that it lasted up to the present time? Choose one literary genre mentioned in the text and give at least one example of it. Scanning and skimming are two reading methods that go hand in hand. When you do scanning, you select specific information from the text (e.g. title of the text, main characters, setting, vocabulary, etc.) Meanwhile when you do skimming, you get the main idea or central point of the text (e.g. what the story is all about or what the theme is). In fact, the activity tells us about our ancestors and their society’s way of expressing through literature. You will know more about this topic when you come across the learning content part of this kit.