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Stretching your speed reading and comprehension

admin — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 07:00:44 +0000

I see developing your speed reading skills as being very similar to weight training for building bigger muscles. You wouldn’t expect some one who has never lifted very heavy weights before to start off lifting massive amounts of weight to start off with.

Instead what normally happens is you would start of with light weights and gradually increase the weights you lift over time as your muscles and strength increase.

Well speed reading is the same way, a person who is new to speed reading can not be expected to be able to read thousands of words a minute, but instead what happens is you start of with setting yourself small manageable amounts and over time push yourself to reading more and more in the same amount of time.

When I first started to do speed reading I would find that I would be reading fast and think I was making progress and felt real proud about how fast I was reading, but I was actually not able to comprehend very much if any of what I read because I was going so fast and not use to that speed and so unable to comprehend what I was reading.

Well after I discovered this problem I went to look for a solution and found a neat exercise for stretching your speed reading comprehension. Below are the basic steps you can use yourself to help improve your speed reading comprehension.

Stretching speed reading and comprehension

1)     Using a pacer read one page of a book as fast as you possibly can.

2)     Next stop and write down everything you can remember from the page.

3)     Read five pages like this everyday, while gradually increasing the number of pages you read before you stop and recall what you’ve read.

When I started out doing this I started off with reading matter I was familiar with, and as I got better started doing it with more complicated reading matter as my confidence grew. I would suggest you do the same.

Another big piece that is important to work on in order to become a fast speed reader, is to boost your speed reading stamina, your speed reading stamina is the amount of time you are able to read at speed for with good comprehension and recall. Boosting your speed reading stamina will help you to train and recondition your brain to reading at faster speeds and so will allow you to get all of the benefits of speed reading faster.

I have collected together all of the important things that you will have to do in order to boost your speed reading stamina, all of this information has been arranged into a 7 part e-course that you can take. To receive this valuable resource for boosting your speed reading stamina which will help you to increase your reading speed faster, simply visit my reading stamina web page and enter you name and a email address so that I can email it to you right away.

Thanks DAN!

Speed reading and pacers

admin — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 07:50:24 +0000

An effective technique for speed reading improvement is to use a pacer as you are reading.

Using a pacer while reading will help you to eliminate one of the main course of slow reading, that being that when we are taught to read we are told to read with our ears not our eyes. Meaning we are asked to sound out each word, so that the teacher can hear that we can read the word correctly and pronounces the word correctly.

Well what happens with a lot of people is they grow up and stop reading out loud but still feel they have to sound out all the words in there head to get an understanding of what they are reading. This really slows down how fast you can read because you can only read at about 250 words a minute when sounding out the words individually.

So to get over this you will have to learn to read with your eyes. And learn to stop sounding out the words to get the meaning. This is where using a pacer can be helpful.

A second factor that can slow down your speed reading are all of the distractions going on around you and on the page you are reading. Again a good solution to these issues is to use a pacer.

You can use almost anything far a pacer; here are a few examples of suitable pacers to help give you an idea of what can be used. You could simply use your finger. You could use a chopstick, pencil, pen, anything that is suitable for placing under the word and point can be used.

Using a pacer while speed reading as well as helping to stop theses two issues from slowing you down, will also help you remember more of what you read. This is because using a pacer is actual adding a kinesthetic (physical) element into your reading. Doing this will help you remember what you read more easily because of how the brain links senses with memories, which helps make it easier for you to recall them later.

The more senses you can use when reading will help to increase your memory of what you read and also what you can recall.

To use a pacer while reading is very simple all you have to do is choose your pacer then place the pacer on the first word of the line, then move it smoothly across the page to the end of the line, and repeat as you read down the page.

Another big piece that is important to work on in order to become a fast speed reader, is to boost your speed reading stamina, your speed reading stamina is the amount of time you are able to read at speed for with good comprehension and recall. Boosting your speed reading stamina will help you to train and recondition your brain to reading at faster speeds and so will allow you to get all of the benefits of speed reading faster.

I have collected together all of the important things that you will have to do in order to boost your speed reading stamina, all of this information has been arranged into a 7 part e-course that you can take. To receive this valuable resource for boosting your speed reading stamina which will help you to increase your reading speed faster, simply visit my reading stamina web page and enter you name and a email address so that I can email it to you right away.

Thanks DAN!

Is Speed Reading For Everyone?

admin — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:00:44 +0000

Below we set out some of the circumstances under which it may be beneficial to be able to speed read and other circumstances where it may not be so beneficial to be able to speed read:

When it is beneficial to speed read

Essentially, the great joy of being able to speed read is the ability to take in large volumes of data over as short a period as possible. Consequently, those of us who find ourselves in circumstances where we need to read excessive amount of information in a short period of time; and, importantly, to comprehend that material at the same time, will benefit from this skill. Such persons include:

School students:

School students are ideal candidates for speed reading skills because they are at an age where they can still absorb new concepts and ideas, whilst also having the need to have advanced reading skills in order to be able to read lots of school texts;

College students:

As with school students, college students need to be able to read lots of textbook material in a short space of time. Therefore, the ability to be able to speed read is an important and useful skill.

Work employees:

Those of us who are working “white-collar” clerical jobs certainly need to have the ability to speed read as this will cut-down on an otherwise very long day. With almost all of the world’s reading material being generated in offices, as faxes, memos, letters, reports, etc. being able to speed read becomes more important as time progresses, not less!

English language students:

As speed reading skills enable you to comprehend what you are reading better, English language students are an often quoted group of people who benefit from the ability to be able to speed read.

Pleasure:

With the amount of advertising in modern magazines, the ability to speed read is vital if you want to read this month’s magazine before next month’s issue! And, that’s nothing compared to Sunday’s edition of the newspaper. Can you image trying to read Sunday’s paper without speed reading skills? – Well, it simply cannot be done these days!

In short, it doesn’t really matter what stage of your life you are at, the ability to be able to speed read is an essential one.

Occasions when speed reading may not be beneficial

Having said that speed reading is an essential element no matter what stage you are at in your life, there are a number of circumstances under which it may not be overly beneficial to be able to speed read. These include:

If you have a reading problem:

Speed reading techniques use cluster methods. This is to say, the reader needs to group whole paragraphs together and skim read them. However, if a person has a reading disability that doesn’t allow them to be able to process the clustering of paragraphs easily, then this may result in a feeling of embarrassment, discomfort, or even slowness. In such circumstances, it is far better for the confidence of the reader if they resort to traditional methods of reading each word on the page word-by-word.

Age:

Care needs to be taken at what age a student starts to learn to speed read as certain clinical studies have shown that students who try to learn to speed read too early can be left with counterproductive problems – such as dyslexia. As such, it is not recommended that children below 10 learn to speed read.

Comprehension:

In certain circumstances some readers who speed read are left with a loss of comprehension of the reading material, rather than more. If this is the case, then invoking speed reading skill may be counterproductive.

To sum it up, like most things in life, the ability to speed read is something most of us should try to conquer, which is not to say that it is necessarily beneficial to all of us, nor that we should invoke it at all times.

Learn it and use it to your advantage, as and when is needed.