Monday, October 10, 2016

Decrease You Reading Time With These Speed Reading Tips

By Christopher Phillips


With the amount of information that people need to process everyday, increased rate for absorbing and understanding information is a must. Documents, emails, books and other materials are piling up. It would be nice to bump up the average words per minute from 200 to 1000.

By default, people read with an inner voice narrating the text that is seen on the material. This process is called subvocalization, which also includes mouthing out the words. The goal of speed reading is to take out these unnecessary defaults to quicken the intake of information.

A general rule to studying text fast is to minimize the number and duration of getting fixated on a line of text. Speed readers do not read in a straight line, contrary to what was taught in schools. One method is taking snapshots of the text in the area of focus. This is a better way of viewing text than moving from one word to another. The goal is to decrease the amount of time one fixates on a word which is on average at . 25 seconds.

This works because constantly reading trains our brain to recognize the shape of text and translates it into something comprehensible. A more popular study method is skimming. Skimming is very useful, especially for material that do not require our full attention. But really, it just teaches people to know which parts can be done away with.

A common bad habit of studying is back skipping. This is the subconscious rereading of what has already been read. Meta guiding, a method of reading quickly, strives to eliminate this weakness by using a pointer to make processing lines and words without going back to what has been read already. This prevents the reader from getting distracted with other visual elements.

Perceptual expansion is another technique widely used. This is with the help of peripheral vision. Using peripheral vision while looking at text helps cover more area than locking on one word then on to the next. The brain can process visual information, in this case the text, when it is not focused on one line. Remember that there is no time to sound out the words inside your head.

Disruption of focus and daydreaming can also slow down the processing of a given material. Overall this increases study time and is a very bad habit. This all requires a lot of focus and destroys these bad habits. This whole new method is not natural and will lower down comprehension but with enough practice, it should get better.

Increasing speed in absorbing text seems like a very useful skill, but there will always be counter arguments to an idea that says it is possible to read a 1000 wmp without comprehension being compromised. It does really seem unlikely, but nonetheless it helps to giving it a shot. Admittedly, it should be very useful for material that is not very important.

Think twice about using this newly acquired skill on things that need to be studied. Speed of absorbing certain information is indirectly proportional to comprehension. The faster one might read, the lesser one might understand. It just makes sense that way. To understand the given information is really the main purpose of reading and nothing else.




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