Read More Words At a Time
The human mind is capable of accomplishing wondrous feats. It only needs to be trained. You yourself are the only one that can train your mind. No one else can do it for you. Other people can only provide you with guidelines or tips. I’ll be doing just that today. I will teach you how to read large chunks of words simultaneously.
Most people have the habit of reading one word at a time. Reading like this is slow and unnecessary. There is no place for slow things in today’s world. By reading one word at a time, you are putting a severe limit on the processing power of your mind. Reading only one word at a time is the reason for boredom and distraction when reading. Your mind is capable of processing so much more. Once you begin practicing speed reading, you will be amazed at how much more fascinating books and information in general will become.
First, practice by widening your eye span on the page. This doesn’t mean just look at more words at a time, instead try to understand more words at a time. Most people have a very small focus point when reading. They take in one- or two-word-fragments of the line they're on - just enough for the reading to be smooth. Start by adding few words to your reading fragment and increase it daily. You will be surprised to find that the text you read will start to make more sense. Reading larger line fragments instead of word by word is more meaningful to the mind. People always tend to understand information more easily and quickly when the information is not presented extremely slowly.
If I were to speak extremely slowly to you, then by the time I finished my argument, you would forget how it began. The same is even more true for reading speed. When you read slowly, your comprehension suffers for more than just that reason.
The most popular question we speed reading teachers get is this: "how will reading large fragments increase my reading speed?" The answer is quite simple. I will demonstrate my explanation with a simple example. Just imagine that you read approximately three words at a time. At that rate, what happens is that your eyes read the first three words, then move on to the next three. They will stop here, read the words and then move on to the next three. If the text is 300 words long your will stop about 100 times.
Now, what if you had the habit of reading six words at a time? Your eyes would read the first six words, then move on to the next six. They would stop there, read the words, and move on to the next six, thus stopping only 50 times in a 300 hundred word text. Just 3 more words at a time halves the amount of stops. Less stops means more fluidity. For your brain, this fluidity is extremely useful.
Too many fragments has the same effect of listening to someone with an incomprehensible stutter. With reading, this problem has a very clear and very simple solution; simply increase the amount of words you intake at a time.
Most people have the habit of reading one word at a time. Reading like this is slow and unnecessary. There is no place for slow things in today’s world. By reading one word at a time, you are putting a severe limit on the processing power of your mind. Reading only one word at a time is the reason for boredom and distraction when reading. Your mind is capable of processing so much more. Once you begin practicing speed reading, you will be amazed at how much more fascinating books and information in general will become.
First, practice by widening your eye span on the page. This doesn’t mean just look at more words at a time, instead try to understand more words at a time. Most people have a very small focus point when reading. They take in one- or two-word-fragments of the line they're on - just enough for the reading to be smooth. Start by adding few words to your reading fragment and increase it daily. You will be surprised to find that the text you read will start to make more sense. Reading larger line fragments instead of word by word is more meaningful to the mind. People always tend to understand information more easily and quickly when the information is not presented extremely slowly.
If I were to speak extremely slowly to you, then by the time I finished my argument, you would forget how it began. The same is even more true for reading speed. When you read slowly, your comprehension suffers for more than just that reason.
The most popular question we speed reading teachers get is this: "how will reading large fragments increase my reading speed?" The answer is quite simple. I will demonstrate my explanation with a simple example. Just imagine that you read approximately three words at a time. At that rate, what happens is that your eyes read the first three words, then move on to the next three. They will stop here, read the words and then move on to the next three. If the text is 300 words long your will stop about 100 times.
Now, what if you had the habit of reading six words at a time? Your eyes would read the first six words, then move on to the next six. They would stop there, read the words, and move on to the next six, thus stopping only 50 times in a 300 hundred word text. Just 3 more words at a time halves the amount of stops. Less stops means more fluidity. For your brain, this fluidity is extremely useful.
Too many fragments has the same effect of listening to someone with an incomprehensible stutter. With reading, this problem has a very clear and very simple solution; simply increase the amount of words you intake at a time.
Labels: how to speed read, read faster, speed read, speed reading
posted by Adam Harley at
3:28 PM
1 Comments:
Great article Adam. I especially like the line:
"If I were to speak extremely slowly to you, then by the time I finished my argument, you would forget how it began. The same is even more true for reading speed. When you read slowly, your comprehension suffers for more than just that reason."
I found all through university that I was reading too slowly (one word at a time) and by the end of sections of an article I would have forgotten the point the author was trying to make or the facts they were alluding to.
I have since developed a very interesting web application that incorporates a number of the key concepts of speed reading into a few key algorithms. I would love to show you the application and get some of your feedback. My email address is dave@spreedinc.com .
Keep up the great blogging and I hope to hear from you soon!
Cheers
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