One of the most important human needs is the need for new knowledge and self-improvement. Therefore, people learn foreign languages, go in for sports, master musical instruments. The development of each skill is based on obtaining information. The speed of learning something new depends on how quickly a person reads.
Speed reading is an incredibly useful skill that does not require special talents to master. If you have a desire, perseverance and a little time, you can easily learn speed reading at home.
Why read fast
Who will benefit from the development of speed reading? The answer to this question is extremely simple. To everyone who seeks to learn new things, this skill will be useful. Having learned how to learn speed reading, and spending several months to master this technique in practice, you can subsequently save a huge amount of time.
In turn, slow reading is not always justified. Most people do not read the books to the end precisely because of the large amount of time. Also, reading slowly, there is a good chance of losing interest in the plot and again abandoning the book without reading it.
For some specialists, reading thematic literature is part of their job responsibilities, giving them the opportunity to grow, develop and become an expert in their field. For these people, mastering the speed reading technique is a professional necessity.
What is speed reading?
Let's determine what speed reading is and how fast you need to read.
A perception speed of 150–250 words per minute is considered standard. At the same time, 1-3 minutes are spent on the page of the printed text. Speed reading means mastering the ability to read from 500 to 3000 words at the same time. True, in this case, the term “read” is not entirely appropriate. Speed reading in essence is the analysis of the text and the choice of the main thing. That is, some of the information is simply ignored. The goal is to learn how to focus on those sentences and phrases that have a maximum of meaning, and to let through "water" that does not affect understanding of the essence.
The secret of great people
Surprisingly, the speed reading technique appeared back in the Middle Ages and was familiar to many famous people.
For example, Joseph Stalin was the owner of a huge library. Reading was a daily activity for him. He read five hundred pages of text at a time, while he liked to highlight the main thoughts with pencils.
American President Theodore Roosevelt was proud to have speed reading. It was not a problem for him to read an entire book at a time.
Honore de Balzac boasted of his ability to read up to eight sentences at the same time and choose the most important of them.
Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin read very quickly. In addition, we are aware of his phenomenal memory. He could reproduce biographies almost verbatim by heart with all significant dates.
Karl Marx, Napoleon Bonaparte, John F. Kennedy, Adolf Hitler also owned speed reading techniques. Maybe it was because of this that they achieved success in their field.
When the speed reading method will be useful
If we talk about high-speed reading, then you need to take into account one more thing. This method is used mainly for reading scientific and technical literature, reports, Internet articles, news reports in newspapers, that is, material that brings new knowledge.
Poems and fiction are for completely different purposes. In fiction, we do not look for answers to the questions posed, but simply enjoy the reading process. The whole value of literary texts lies in their effect on the emotions, feelings of a person and the use of his imagination. Read such literature quickly is possible, but absolutely pointless.
Is it possible to master speed reading at home
Nowadays, there are many specialized courses that "for little money" promise to teach everyone to read at a speed of up to 3000 words per minute. Training sessions last from a month to three. But is it worth the time and money to attend such courses, if you can develop speed reading at home without any investment? Such self-study even has its advantages:
- Free choice of time for classes makes it possible to conduct training at those hours when it will be the most convenient and fruitful.
- Methods of teaching speed reading and descriptions of exercises are publicly available information that can be found in special manuals sold at any bookstore.
- Lack of distractions.
- Opportunity, choosing the duration of classes, to control the training time.
Someone might be interested in the opinions of people who took courses to learn speed reading. Feedback on their effectiveness is not always positive. Often, to achieve noticeable results, at the end requires additional independent practice. But about the skill of speed reading speak only with praise. None of those who mastered this ability regretted the time and effort spent.
Learning to read fast. What is needed for that?
To learn speed reading at home, you need to familiarize yourself with the basic principles of this skill.
The first rule is not to “jump” while reading. You need to look through the text from beginning to end, without stopping or rereading incomprehensible fragments. You will see when you read the paragraph or page to the end, everything that was unclear will become clear without re-reading.
The second rule is to highlight a few key words in each of the sentences. It is not necessary to read the entire sentence or paragraph from beginning to end, it is important to catch and remember only keywords.
The third rule is not to be distracted. Speed reading will not produce any results if you do not concentrate on what you read. The reader should be completely immersed in the process, because it is important not only to read, but also to record useful information in the memory.
Why do we read slowly
Everyone who wonders how to develop speed reading will find it useful to find out what prevents us from reading fast.
1. Reading indiscriminately. Reading, we pay attention to everything in a row. To get acquainted with the main idea, we spend as much time as reading lyrical digressions that do not carry any semantic load and do not contain useful information. As already mentioned, to save time, the speed reading technique involves defining the main idea and ignoring the “water” in the text.
2. Repeat read. Each of us has a bad habit from childhood - to look back at the sentence we have just read. When a child develops vocabulary, such repetitions are useful. But in adulthood, we do it just out of habit.
3. Reading to yourself. Reading aloud, we can do it faster or slower depending on the pace of reading and diction. When we read to ourselves, our brain, as it were, conducts a monologue, "pronouncing" the information that we get acquainted with. The speed of text perception cannot be higher than the speed of this internal monologue. Therefore, if you decide to master the speed reading method, the first thing you need is to "drown out the internal speaker" and learn how to perceive information without speaking it to yourself.
4. Field of view. Significantly slow the reading process can narrow field of view. If a person has well-developed lateral vision, he uses it in the perception of the text, which is displayed at the speed of reading. For those who want to learn speed reading on their own, exercises to expand the field of view are required.
5. Broken attention. Inattention can be a problem at any speed. Inability to concentrate on the reading process is the main reason that information is not remembered, at whatever pace you read. The speed reading technique involves the parallel development of the ability to abstract from external stimuli and focus on the text.
Exercises to Increase Reading Speed
Where to start to learn speed reading? Exercise is the key to success. The regular implementation of simple practical tasks contributes to the development of the qualities necessary for the rapid assimilation of information.
Eliminating Inner Speech
It was previously mentioned that internal articulation is one of the main reasons for the low reading speed. There are methods to combat it:
- Count to yourself from ten to one. Try, without coming true from the account, to understand any text.
- Do the same, but instead of counting, hum a song that you know by heart.
- Tap any rhythm while reading.
The principle of this exercise is to "take your inner speaker" and learn to perceive the text without his participation.
Develop peripheral vision
If lateral vision is developed at the proper level, a person may not waste time moving his eyes along one line from left to right, but cover him with his gaze immediately. This type of reading is called vertical. Moreover, having developed peripheral vision, whole paragraphs or blocks of text can be read at a glance.
At this stage, Schulte tables will come to the rescue . A square is drawn on the sheet, the length of the sides of which is 20 cm. It is divided into five horizontal lines and five vertical lines. Thus, we get 25 cells, each of which contains numbers from 1 to 25 in random order. The finished square is placed at eye level (distance 25-30 cm).
3 | eight | fourteen | 18 | ten |
7 | eleven | 21 | 4 | 23 |
13 | 16 | 2 | 24 | fifteen |
25 | 22 | 6 | 17 | 19 |
20 | 1 | 12 | nine | 5 |
The exercise itself is that, concentrating only on the middle square, using lateral vision, find the location of all the numbers from 1 to 25, and then in the reverse order.
Another exercise that helps you achieve the same goal is called the Triangle. You need to select the text and print it so that each line is wider than the previous one. For example, in the first line one word, in the second - two, in the third - three and so on. As a result, we get a triangle consisting of text. When reading it, move your gaze only from top to bottom. Use lateral vision to see the beginning and end of long lines.
Similar exercises can be performed in everyday life, without spending special time for classes. For example, sitting at work, concentrate on a subject and try to see what is happening around. This will simultaneously be a charge to relieve tension from the eyes, and an effective method to develop lateral vision effortlessly.
Learning to guess
Speed reading implies selective perception of the text. So that in the end you get holistic useful information, you need to learn logic and conjecture.
To perform the exercises of this block, an assistant is needed. Immediately you need to select an unfamiliar text and print it. The assistant dims some parts of the text with a black marker, and while reading it you are trying to catch the point. First, you can select simple texts to read. But over time, in order to train a skill, it is better to choose unfamiliar topics and completely new terminology. The amount of hidden text should also gradually increase.
You can take a book and close a part of the text with a vertical strip of 5 cm wide, and then read the rest. Strip over time to do wider.
It is worthwhile to devote one hour 3-4 times a week to the implementation of this practice, and in a month speed reading will begin to develop. Exercise is affordable for everyone, although at the very beginning it may seem difficult.
From what age can children be taught speed reading
The vocabulary of a child is much less than that of an adult. When reading, he reflects, comprehends the material he has read, and spends much more time for this. Even by ear, children perceive quick speech much worse. Therefore, children can be taught speed reading only after they learn to fully fully understand the text they have read. This occurs at the age of approximately 14-15 years.
As you can see, developing speed reading at home is not such a difficult task. Not only superheroes, but also ordinary people are capable of reading at a speed of more than 500 words per minute. Try it and you will learn how to do this and make sure of the value of such a skill by your example.