Reading (and remembering) at high speed is possible!
18 January 2011
Read by 1805 persons
You can read twice as fast while understanding more. The secret: learn to let go to better concentrate. The method: simple exercises, adapted to paper and screen. It's your turn.
An excellent reader can devour a 200-page book in less than an hour, which assumes a rate of 800 words per minute, three times the average. Will they retain anything? Yes, because reading faster doesn't mean remembering less well. Tests have shown that a trained individual assimilates 80% of the topics covered, compared to 60% for an ordinary reader.
The explanation is simple: speed reading requires an active attitude. You must be focused, which, in the end, helps to better memorize. To know your level, read a text in Word format (not aloud, you would be slowed down) while timing yourself. Then see how many words it contains (using the "Statistics" function, in the "Tools" menu) and divide the number indicated by the reading time, to obtain a ratio per minute. From 400, you are among the good readers. Below that, you have room for improvement.
Don't be afraid!
The first bad habit to eliminate: the one consisting of multiplying the returns backwards. Refrain if you stumble on a word or an idea, from rereading the passage in question. You will increase your speed by 20% by accepting not to understand and continuing to move forward. Know that two quick readings of the same text are preferable to a slow reading with back-and-forths.
Are you afraid of missing information? Rest assured, it is the context that establishes the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. To convince yourself, practice the following trial run: read a text quickly and note what you have retained. Repeat the exercise, slowly this time, and see if you missed important information. In 95% of cases, you will see that you have memorized the essentials.
Mental resonance
Another habit that slows down reading without contributing to comprehension: subvocalization, or the act of pronouncing in one's head what one is reading. If it is difficult to completely suppress this mental resonance, you can reduce it by trying to pay less attention to it. Readers who reach 800 words per minute have managed to free themselves from it. In them, it only appears at times, on parts of sentences, and allows them to memorize an idea.
To further accelerate the pace, you will also have to accept not to read everything. An active reader makes choices, adopts different rhythms depending on the interest given to a given passage, takes the risk of skimming certain pages. Trust your brain! It works intuitively, makes hypotheses, and processes information without your knowledge. This is called "overdetermination". However, slow reading inhibits this process and ends up hindering comprehension. In fact, to read better and faster, you have to learn to let go.
You will succeed by practicing expanding your field of vision or "span". By embracing five or six letters at once (the average length of a word in French), we are in our comfort zone. The goal of the exercise is therefore to read all the words at the same speed regardless of their length. To do this, don't read them from left to right anymore but only fix the central part. The eye then naturally assimilates the first and last letters.
Theory of blocks
Second stage of the exercise: learn to jump from group of words to group of words. When you browse a text, you have the impression that your eyes glide over the words, continuously. In reality, they fix on a block to allow the brain to decipher it and then jump to the next. A fast reader manages to "fix" blocks of five or six words. The objective is to adopt this rhythm, even if some words seem blurry: your brain will be able to understand the whole sentence.
Third stage: use the same technique to read diagonally. Make jumps from left to right, but going down one notch each time. Again, your brain will integrate the lines it is reading, while taking up the previous ones and already exploring those to come. Last tip to maintain a sustained speed in case of fatigue, move a pen along the text and force yourself to follow it.
Scanner operation
It is, of course, necessary to adapt your strategy to the goal. If you are looking for specific data in a text (a name, a number, a date, a keyword...), opt for the spotting technique. Mentally visualize the information and then scan the text with your eyes. Scan it as a computer would. If you remain attentive, the data sought will appear at a glance.
From beginning to end
When you want to understand a problem in a document of several pages, start by relying on the outline to highlight the essential ideas. Then, for each paragraph, focus on the beginning (this allows you to grasp the author's intention) and the end. If it is a professional book, first consult the back cover, the table of contents and the bibliography, which can give you keys to understanding. Another tip, to better memorize what you read, summarize each paragraph in one word in the margin. Then mentally reformulate the main lines of the text five minutes after reading it, then two hours later and once again the next day.
On screen too. Finally, know how to adapt to the media. We read much slower on screen than on paper. It is, indeed, more difficult to skim the document or to have a global vision because it is often necessary to scroll the text using the mouse. The solution: reduce the characters to have an overview, focus on the layout (titles, headings, subheadings), display the table of contents to find your way around more easily, and scroll the text continuously to force yourself to read quickly.
Also feel free to open several windows, to switch from one document to another. With emails, focus on the subject of the message, then on the first sentence, which is supposed to present the subject in detail, as well as on the last one, which normally indicates what is expected of you (a response, an action...). The rest can be read diagonally.
Keep in mind that certain media, depending on their nature, have different entry keys. In company reports, technical reports or even press articles, the problem appears at the beginning. Unlike legal or scientific reports, in which it only emerges at the end. This is the principle of reasoning by demonstration. It is better to know this to guide your reading and be more effective.
Published January 17, 2011
Posted online January 18, 2011
capital.fr
An excellent reader can devour a 200-page book in less than an hour, which assumes a rate of 800 words per minute, three times the average. Will they retain anything? Yes, because reading faster doesn't mean remembering less well. Tests have shown that a trained individual assimilates 80% of the topics covered, compared to 60% for an ordinary reader.
The explanation is simple: speed reading requires an active attitude. You must be focused, which, in the end, helps to better memorize. To know your level, read a text in Word format (not aloud, you would be slowed down) while timing yourself. Then see how many words it contains (using the "Statistics" function, in the "Tools" menu) and divide the number indicated by the reading time, to obtain a ratio per minute. From 400, you are among the good readers. Below that, you have room for improvement.
Don't be afraid!
The first bad habit to eliminate: the one consisting of multiplying the returns backwards. Refrain if you stumble on a word or an idea, from rereading the passage in question. You will increase your speed by 20% by accepting not to understand and continuing to move forward. Know that two quick readings of the same text are preferable to a slow reading with back-and-forths.
Are you afraid of missing information? Rest assured, it is the context that establishes the meaning of a sentence or paragraph. To convince yourself, practice the following trial run: read a text quickly and note what you have retained. Repeat the exercise, slowly this time, and see if you missed important information. In 95% of cases, you will see that you have memorized the essentials.
Mental resonance
Another habit that slows down reading without contributing to comprehension: subvocalization, or the act of pronouncing in one's head what one is reading. If it is difficult to completely suppress this mental resonance, you can reduce it by trying to pay less attention to it. Readers who reach 800 words per minute have managed to free themselves from it. In them, it only appears at times, on parts of sentences, and allows them to memorize an idea.
To further accelerate the pace, you will also have to accept not to read everything. An active reader makes choices, adopts different rhythms depending on the interest given to a given passage, takes the risk of skimming certain pages. Trust your brain! It works intuitively, makes hypotheses, and processes information without your knowledge. This is called "overdetermination". However, slow reading inhibits this process and ends up hindering comprehension. In fact, to read better and faster, you have to learn to let go.
You will succeed by practicing expanding your field of vision or "span". By embracing five or six letters at once (the average length of a word in French), we are in our comfort zone. The goal of the exercise is therefore to read all the words at the same speed regardless of their length. To do this, don't read them from left to right anymore but only fix the central part. The eye then naturally assimilates the first and last letters.
Theory of blocks
Second stage of the exercise: learn to jump from group of words to group of words. When you browse a text, you have the impression that your eyes glide over the words, continuously. In reality, they fix on a block to allow the brain to decipher it and then jump to the next. A fast reader manages to "fix" blocks of five or six words. The objective is to adopt this rhythm, even if some words seem blurry: your brain will be able to understand the whole sentence.
Third stage: use the same technique to read diagonally. Make jumps from left to right, but going down one notch each time. Again, your brain will integrate the lines it is reading, while taking up the previous ones and already exploring those to come. Last tip to maintain a sustained speed in case of fatigue, move a pen along the text and force yourself to follow it.
Scanner operation
It is, of course, necessary to adapt your strategy to the goal. If you are looking for specific data in a text (a name, a number, a date, a keyword...), opt for the spotting technique. Mentally visualize the information and then scan the text with your eyes. Scan it as a computer would. If you remain attentive, the data sought will appear at a glance.
From beginning to end
When you want to understand a problem in a document of several pages, start by relying on the outline to highlight the essential ideas. Then, for each paragraph, focus on the beginning (this allows you to grasp the author's intention) and the end. If it is a professional book, first consult the back cover, the table of contents and the bibliography, which can give you keys to understanding. Another tip, to better memorize what you read, summarize each paragraph in one word in the margin. Then mentally reformulate the main lines of the text five minutes after reading it, then two hours later and once again the next day.
On screen too. Finally, know how to adapt to the media. We read much slower on screen than on paper. It is, indeed, more difficult to skim the document or to have a global vision because it is often necessary to scroll the text using the mouse. The solution: reduce the characters to have an overview, focus on the layout (titles, headings, subheadings), display the table of contents to find your way around more easily, and scroll the text continuously to force yourself to read quickly.
Also feel free to open several windows, to switch from one document to another. With emails, focus on the subject of the message, then on the first sentence, which is supposed to present the subject in detail, as well as on the last one, which normally indicates what is expected of you (a response, an action...). The rest can be read diagonally.
Keep in mind that certain media, depending on their nature, have different entry keys. In company reports, technical reports or even press articles, the problem appears at the beginning. Unlike legal or scientific reports, in which it only emerges at the end. This is the principle of reasoning by demonstration. It is better to know this to guide your reading and be more effective.
Published January 17, 2011
Posted online January 18, 2011
capital.fr
