Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Step 1: Prepare to Read Faster First, get comfy. If you are tired, do some quick calisthenics or breathing exercises to move oxygen to your brain. Whenever you read, you should have a few basic supplies within arm's reach. a clock or timer a note pad for taking notes a dictionary Get as far away from outside activity as possible. Your reading environment is important. It should include a bright light to shine directly on the reading material, a straight back chair, and a flat surface for the reading material. You do not want to hold a book in your hands; it will make you tired.

Step 2: Pick Up the Pace The first secret to reading faster is quite simple: read faster. Pick up the pace a little right now. People usually don't read as fast as they can or even close to it for fear that they might miss something. However, your mind can process material much more quickly than your eye can scan across the page. Don't worry; push yourself. Your mind will quickly get used to working harder and faster.

Step 3: Use Your Eyes and Hands to Read Faster When driving you use your eyes, hands, and feet to aid you in moving smoothly along the highway. In reading, you will use your eyes and hands to aid you in moving smoothly and quickly across and down the page. Eye Movements: When you read English, your eyes move from left to right across the page then sweep back to the beginning of the next line. The actual reading occurs when you stop the movement and focus on the words in front of you. You do this a number of times as you move across the line. The more times you stop to focus, the slower you read. If you stop to focus fewer times per line, you will absorb more words at each stop and read significantly faster. This simple concept forms the basis for most speed-reading training. As you are reading this paragraph, pay attention to your eye movement. Try to make the same number of stops in the same place on each line. Then try to decrease the number of stops. Notice how you must absorb more words. Try particularly hard to keep your eyes moving in a smooth pattern. Don't go back. Don't wander around the page. Move quickly to the next line. For a line of this length you will want to get down to only two stops. The number of stops on a line depends upon the number of words. Books with small print require more stops than single newspaper columns. Adjust yourself. There are computer programs available which will help you with this training. Look for them over the Internet or where you buy computer programs.

Hand Movements Besides setting the pace for your reading, using your hand as a guide will help prevent you from losing your place, reading lines twice, and other common positional problems in reading. Lay your writing hand flat on the page with your palm down. Move your hand until your long finger is pointing at the first line you are going to read. Start about one half inch from the left margin. Move your hand across the line in a smooth motion and follow it with your eyes. When you get to about one half inch from the end, sweep it back to the next line and repeat the movement. Keep this up until you have finished the page; then turn the page with your other hand and continue to the end. Do not stop until you have finished the passage, chapter, or section. Never stop in the middle of a paragraph or other unnatural stopping point or you will probably have to read it over again. This method is called the "S" movement. The faster you move your hand, the faster you will read. As you increase your skill, you can increase the motion of your hand to include two, three, four, or more lines in each motion. Again, the more lines per motion, the faster you will be reading.

Example Use the speed reading techniques you have just learned to read the following passage. Go to this site to time your reading: Tucker's Dream Car Preston Tucker tried to manufacture a dream car in the late 1940s. He failed because he was ahead of his time. He hoped to see a low, modern-looking automobile. He wanted it to have a one-piece windshield, an aluminum air-cooled engine, and safety features. These included such things as a collapsing steering column and a third headlight that turned with the wheels. He collected $25 million by selling stock and franchises. He bought a huge war plant in Chicago to use as his factory. He worked hard to gain support and publicity, but he ran into difficulties with government agencies as well as newspaper columnists who claimed he was a fake. Furthermore, some of his new ideas could not be carried out with the technology of those days. After building only about fifty Tucker cars, he had to close his plant. Today, the Tucker cars still in existence are rare collectors' items. —adapted from Eggers, Process and Practice with Readings, How did it feel? Was your rate faster than before? Were you paying attention to what you were reading? What was the article about? If you answered Preston Tucker's dream car and read the passage in less than a minute, you are moving in the right direction. Why was the project a failure? If you remembered that his idea was ahead of its time, you are reading both quickly and efficiently.

Model: Calculate Your Reading Rate If you want to improve your reading speed, it would be nice to first know your current reading rate so you can see where you stand and set goals for improvement. The average college freshman reads about 250 to 300 words per minute (w.p.m.). A reasonable goal would be 500 to 800 words per minute. To find out how fast you read you will need a clock or a timer, a reading passage, and a pencil and paper. Estimate the Word Count Count the number of words on any three complete lines on a page. Calculate the average number of words per line by dividing the total number (from step one) by three. Count the number of lines on a full page. Multiply the average in step two by the number of lines in step three to get the words on a page. Count the number of pages. Take pictures and partial pages into account. Multiply the number of words per page (in step four) by the number of pages to get the approximate number of words in the passage.

Determine your Reading Speed Check the time on the clock or set the timer. Read the passage. Check the time when you finish and calculate the time it took to the nearest 15-second interval. Convert the seconds to a decimal. (15 seconds =.25; 30 seconds =.5; 45 seconds =.75) Divide the time it took by the number of words. The answer is your reading rate in words per minute. If the passage was 200 words and you read it in 30 seconds, your reading time would be 400 w.p.m. It is best to use passages of 2,500 words or more to get an accurate reading rate.

Model: Phrasing Just like driving, reading is both a physical and a mental activity. Yet, have you ever noticed what happens when you think too much about every aspect of driving while you're on the road? You slow way down and even endanger other cars! In the same way, you can cause your progress across and down the page to come to a virtual halt by saying or hearing words as you read them. Avoid Subvocalizing Subvocalizing means that you read each word silently in your mind. By doing this you are limiting yourself to the speed at which you can say these words either vocally or mentally. This creates an almost impenetrable wall between you and speeds of 500 words per minute and beyond. You don't need to say the words; you have seen them all before. Learn to Store Images and Ideas Your mind doesn't process or store words; it stores images and ideas. It must convert all the words you read to images and ideas and this takes time. Why not read images and ideas directly rather than reading the words and then converting them? This can be a challenging concept to learn because it requires you to move away from the techniques that were drummed into you many years ago during phonics training. When you are reading material in story form, it is relatively easy to create images as you go along. Converting abstract material into ideas is much more difficult. There is a technique to make this task a little easier. It is called phrasing.

Phrasing Phrasing forces you to put words into their natural groupings. You absorb images and ideas rather than words. Here is how it works: Divide the passage into meaningful clusters. Usually you will be dividing lines into complete subjects, complete verbs, complements, and phrases. Following punctuation will help. Keep the lengths of the phrases close in size but don't expect to get them equal. Phrasing forces you / to put the words / in their natural groupings. / This way / you absorb images and ideas / rather than words. / Can you see how the groups of words form ideas? Now, if you combine the concept of phrasing with a determined effort not to say the words as you read them, your reading rate can increase to the speed at which your eyes can move across the page. At first, it will seem difficult and time consuming; but it will gradually become easier. After a while, you won't even think about it, and you will be reading twice as fast as you were before. Increasing the size of the phrases will increase the amount you absorb and thereby further increase your speed.