Practice Activities

Analytical Reading Skills Activities


Set aside 20 minutes a week for group activities that build analytical reading skills.


Schedule a Read-Around. Each week, set aside 20 minutes for group practice in analytical reading. Distribute a customer’s email. Ask everyone to make a list of the customer’s questions. Discuss any differences in their lists. Explain how many questions a close analytical reading would yield.


Reverse-engineer a customer’s email. Distribute copies of an email reply to one of your customers, but don’t show anyone the customer’s incoming email. Ask everyone to reverse-engineer the customer’s questions by looking at the reply. What was the customer asking? Did we answer the explicit and implicit questions? Then, share the customer’s email and ask for everyone’s opinion on how well we did.