How to Improve Reading Speed by Seeing Images and Not Words

Internet searches produce countless speed-reading courses and books offering secrets to quick and painless reading speed improvement - - for a small fee, of course. You may have wondered about the validity of these products' claims to double your reading speed. One speed reading trick is to see images, not words, when reading. This means seeing several words together, instead of focusing on one word at a time and then moving on to the next, which slows you down.

Instructions

    • 1

      Glance at the title once. Instead of reading one word of the title at a time from left to right, see the title as a whole image, instead of individual words. Reading the title tells you what the text will be about, which will aid in your comprehension.

    • 2

      View whole phrases at a time, instead of individual words. You can find certain words commonly grouped together, such as "take your turn." See the whole phrase at once, instead of reading "take," then "your," then "turn." The University of Texas calls this "increasing your eye span," also known as "chunking." Try chunking longer and longer phrases, until you can chunk entire sentences at a time. Break longer sentences down into two chunks, if necessary.

    • 3

      Continue reading even when you come to a large word that does not appear to be part of a larger phrase. Stopping at such a word is called "fixating," and limits a reader to only seeing one to three words at a time. Gauge your fixation rate by using a pencil to mark off the number of words you fixate on while reading. Practice seeing more words at a time until it becomes more natural.

    • 4

      Test your comprehension of a text you have speed read by asking yourself what the purpose of the section was. Ask yourself if the text was trying to inform or persuade; if the former, find the topic sentence and rephrase it in your own words. If the text was trying to persuade, reword the writer's argument in your head or even out loud. If you read a historical text, determine who, what, when, where and why of the major event in the text.

EduJourney © www.0685.com All Rights Reserved