The restricted time allocated to courses and the immediate need to read literature in English necessitates the teaching of selective reading in many English as a foreign language contexts. This paper reports on one element of an expeditious (quick, effective, efficient and selective) reading course for learners in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) context. It details how postgraduate students of chemistry in a Tunisian university are taught to read titles of empirical research papers, as this becomes as important as reading abstracts for fast-tracking relevant data. Analysis of the literature in the field of technical writing identifies four types of titles. Based on this classification, the course component aims at raising the learners' awareness of the linguistic exponents that typify titles, and making them appreciate the importance of titles and their classification. The paper details how this single strategy fits into an expeditious approach to the teaching of reading.