Reading Speed and Reading Purpose
Most people, who develop multiple reading speeds actually perform better at various tasks.
What speed do you read? Do you read everything at the same speed or do you vary speeds based on what you're reading?
Most people develop three basic reading speeds.
Slow Reading: The first is a very slow, ponderous speed that is usually reserved for technical work, textbooks, and topics that you don't have a lot of experience with. You can expect this type of reading to take quite a bit of time.
We will be teaching you techniques to improve your speed with this type of reading, but it will still be relatively slow.
Medium Speed: For those of you who read novels, light magazine articles, and reading for pleasure, you have probably developed a faster pace than the reading speed you use when working on technical material. This, too, can be increased.
Fast Speed: This is what I call the scanning mode of reading. Many people never actually learn to read this way, but when you are quickly looking for material, a word, a number, etc. learning to scan is a very beneficial skill. It is all a matter of learning to see "patterns" of words. This is a skill that can be taught, and it will be your homework between this lesson and the next lesson. It should be added to your daily reading exercises.
Speedreading Technique
This technique is one that will help you with your speedreading abilities. As you have just learned, it is desirable to have several reading speeds for various reading materials.
A speedreading technique that can be learned with some practice will help you when you need to find information quickly and easily in any written material.
Take out the telephone book. Write down a three-number sequence. For example, we will start with 123.
Open the telephone book, place your finger at the top of the first column of phone numbers; when you start the timer, you will begin running your finger from the top of the list to the bottom. This method trains your brain to look for the number sequence 123.
Start your timer and begin looking for a telephone number that has the string of numbers in order, 123.
Naturally, some of this will be luck, but by practicing in this way for 20 minutes you will begin to teach your brain to search for a specific pattern.
Once you find the number sequence 123, write the time it took you to locate that next to the numbers 123. Continue on down the list. Once you have completed the three-digit numbers, move on to the four-digit numbers. Each day, open the telephone book to a different page.
After day one, you can cut back to ten minutes a day of speedreading, and continue reading for an additional 10 minutes every day, for a total of 20 minutes of reading practice daily.
| 123 | 321 | 456 | 654 | 357 | 753 |
| 1234 | 4321 | 4567 | 7654 | 3579 | 9753 |
You can continue to use the numbers on these tables for your daily practice, or you can choose numbers yourself. You might try to find your own telephone number prefix or suffix, or your favorite numbers. Just make a list of the numbers you will be looking for every day, and note how long it took you to find them. Try to practice for at least 10 minutes a day on this technique.
Eventually you will be able to look for full seven-digit phone numbers in a hurry, but for this first week, practice looking for three- and four-number sequences. Each day, try to increase the speed at which your finger moves down the column of numbers. Initially it will be pretty slow going as your brain reads each number in sequence. However, you will find that by practicing every day, your brain suddenly understands that you are looking for a pattern, and it will not need to read each number. It will begin looking for the pattern of numbers you desire.
Finding patterns is a key skill in reading speed and comprehension. The key is to move through the columns of numbers as quickly, but as accurately as possible. You do not want to miss the first occurrence of the pattern you are looking for. If you do, that means you are moving too fast and your brain cannot keep up.
Remember, we're looking for speed and accuracy.
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