Prediction is a process of making intellectual guesses about the contents of a research paper based on a brief skimming of important points and highlights.

The prediction process offers five benefits to academic readers.

Benefit 1: Enhances Comprehension

• Prediction activates the brain and increases focus, promoting thinking about the topic.

• It helps to grasp a few key points quickly and ponder over them. It increases active engagement and, thus, enhances comprehension.

Benefit 2: Fosters Critical Thinking

• Making predictions involves thinking about the ideas, and key arguments that the author might cover in the paper.

• The process of examination of arguments and evidence provided by the author helps in developing critical thinking.

Benefit 3: Promotes Active Reading

• Prediction follows the approach of:

From brief reading to Thinking/Predicting to Reading in detail to Reflection on prediction and argument structures

• It promotes better information recall and deeper understanding.

Benefit 4: Enhances Retention of Information

• It facilitates better memory retention by creating anticipated text frameworks in the reader's mind.

Benefit 5: Improves Reading Speed

• Readers make assumptions about what is given in the text. Therefore, one looks for the information that is presumed. If different information is given, one can compare it with already-known information.

• A reader can look for the information quickly in the mode of scanning to hypothesised information, therefore, increasing reading speed.