Increase your reading speed and comprehension
A Guide to Reading Comprehension Strategies
Almost every student has had some experience like this: One teacher gave you 800 pages to read, and another teacher gave you 900 pages to read, all of which are to be read by the next class on the same day. In addition to the 1,700 pages of reading assignments, both teachers also assigned other tasks, such as writing down the content of those 1,700 pages. Now, you are left in a dilemma because there is no way you can read every word in all 1700 pages and still do the rest of your homework.
One of the most precious skills a graduate student can learn is how to read effectively but quickly. Many graduate students ask, how can I improve my reading speed without losing important information? This is because some students mistakenly believe that speed reading will hurt their understanding of what they have read, but the opposite is true. The average reader will read at about 250 words per minute but think at about 500 words per minute; the difference between reading and thinking speeds often leads to distracting thoughts. This forces readers to go back and reread, making it difficult to effectively understand and recall information. Learning to speed read actually improves comprehension because the brain has to focus and work harder to understand what the eyes have seen. The following are some reading comprehension strategies that will also help improve your reading speed:
Understand the organization before you start reading.
Review tables of contents, summaries, introductions, conclusions, and headings before you start reading so your brain can anticipate the information you’ll need to process (instead of forcing your brain to process information on the spot). Understand where important information is usually found in basic writing structures, at the beginning and end of chapters, paragraphs, and sentences, and review this information before you begin reading. Take the time to define any words that are new to you, either in meaning or in use.
Identify your subvocalizations and inner speech.
Subvocalizations are the auditory sounds we use to pronounce words, and inner speech is the subconscious images and senses we use to visualize what we are reading or hearing. Inner speech is often related to internal monologue. Subvocalizations and inner speech can sometimes help us understand difficult passages of text, but they can also slow us down when trying to read and understand quickly. To suppress your subvocalizations, you can practice counting out loud as you read. Once you’ve mastered this skill, you can allow your inner speech to reign supreme by engaging all of your senses in imagining what you’re reading. After you identify your inner speech by allowing it to reign supreme as you read, you will be better able to suppress your inner speech and recognize words as concepts without having to rely on visualizations to understand the concepts. Practice reading with and without subvocalizations and inner speech, and eventually you’ll be able to use or suppress those features as needed.
Refocus your eye movements as you read.
Most people read by focusing their eyes on the left side of a page and fixing their eyes on each word from left to right as they read. Some readers may move their eyes slightly forward or backward from the text they are currently reading to remember what they have already read or to anticipate what they will read next. Not only does this method of reading reduce reading speed, but it also reduces reading comprehension because this method only engages one hemisphere of the brain at a time. To increase your reading speed and comprehension and to engage both hemispheres of your brain, you need to focus your eye in the middle of a line of text and use your peripheral vision to anticipate words at the beginning or end of a line of text; only refocus your eyes on the beginning or end of a line of text if the actual words don’t match what you anticipate based on the text in the middle of the line. If this seems difficult at first, you can use a visual guide or a pointer (for example, a note card, your finger, a pencil) to help you keep the focus in the middle of the line of text. Instead of moving the visual guide or pointer from left to right, move it up and down, constantly placing it in the middle of a line of text.
Active speed reading.
How do you learn to read fast? As with any newly learned skill, practice is necessary to break old habits. For most students, speed reading is a new technique that will seem awkward at first. Set aside time every day to practice power reading, even if you must practice on the newspaper you read over coffee every morning. Determine how many words are in a particular selection of text and see how many of those words you can read in a given number of minutes. Practice reading that selection of text until you can reduce the number of minutes it takes to read the entire selection. You can even use a metronome to help you read at a constant speed.
