Read faster, read smarter
Internet is a new continent where maps are
constantly changing. What was a small stream becomes a
roaring river. What was a desert turns into a lush green
Valley.
To keep up with the changing Internet landscape
must read And the best place to read about new
What’s new on the Internet can be found in Newsletters or
journals.
But you may not be reading efficiently.
Did you know that most of us use only 4% to 10% of our
Mental abilities?
Speed reading isn’t just about reading faster; it is
about learning to use much more than extraordinary
mind powers.
When you read, are you aware of an inner voice that
follows the words as their eyes move across the page or
the computer screen? This inner voice is called
‘subvocalization’. You probably experience it as a
slight movement in the region of the tongue or throat. ace
while subvocalizing, you limit your reading to the
normal speech rate, at about 300 words per minute
The Mind is capable of thinking much faster than that.
So when you subvocalize, you’re literally holding yourself back.
your mind.
Try this exercise:
As you read, count silently to yourself from one to
ten. Or repeat the sound ‘Eee’, ‘Eee’, ‘Eee’. Will
be impossible to do this at the same time as
subvocalize, so this is a great way to break up
the habit of subvocalization.
By doing this exercise, you will realize that
you are no longer processing the words in the
tongue/throat region but in an area called ‘thought
current’ that you experience at the top of your head.
Thought stream moves much faster than subvocalization.
And that’s why people who subvocalize often have
understanding of problems.
There is a mismatch between reading speed and thinking
speed. The mind constantly runs ahead of the
inner voice and that’s why he gets bored. do you experience this
as an inability to keep your attention on what is
reading. You have to go back words or read the same
line twice.
As your reading speed catches up with your thinking
speed, reading becomes much less tiring and your
comprehension improves.
Once you get the feeling to read in ‘thought
stream’, the next thing to do is speed up your eye
movements. This will also help break the habit of
sub-vocalization, as your eyes will move
faster than you can possibly subvocalize.
Your eyes move across the written page in a series of
quick jumps. Between each jump there is a stop that lasts
a fraction of a second, called “fixation”. Tea
fixation is when the eye really catches what is written
word.
The untrained eye takes about a quarter of a second to
each posting, and take in 2 or 3 words per posting.
By speeding up your eye movements, you’ll learn to do
fewer fixations per line and capture more words per
fixation.
Try this exercise:
If you use an ‘anti-glare’ glass screen, draw 2
vertical lines in felt-tip pen, 5 cm apart, so that
have a 5 cm wide strip located over the middle of the
text you are reading.
Now move your eyes in a ‘Z’ pattern through this center
pulls, at a faster speed slightly faster than it is
comfortable.
Because your Mind is not reading every word, it is
forced to ‘fill in the gaps’. This hooks much more
of the Mind, since it has to build associations and
patterns in written material. This in turn leads
to a greater understanding and a greater memory of what
It was read.
This technique takes advantage of the fact that much
of written English is very redundant; a lot of words
can be omitted without loss of meaning.
When your eyes run over a central strip of text,
you also engage your peripheral vision much more.
And that in turn brings the right hemisphere of the
brain in the reading process. You make much more use
of the right brain’s ability to synthesize and build
relationships within the material.
So speed reading isn’t just about reading faster; it’s
it also allows you to access much more of the brain and
thus increasing your understanding and creativity.
For a great free speed reading course, visit:
– The Speed Reading Course
[http://www.trans4mind.u-net.com/speed_reading/index.html]
Here are some free speed reading sites:
– Study Hall’s free speed reading programs
http://www.studyhall.com/sread.htm
– Way home from reading [http://www.roadtoreading.org/]
– University of Texas Speed Reading
[http://www.utexas.edu/student/lsc/sprdg.html]
– Quick reading links
http://www.readingsoft.com/flinks.html
– ReadRace: free Java application for speed reading
[http://supershareware.co.uk/Apps/8080.asp]
– WannaLearn.com: Personal Enrichment: Speed Reading
http://www.wannalearn.com/Personal_Enrichment/Speed_Reading/
