A Few Speed Reading Exercises
Speed reading exercises have for a goal to increase the speed of reading without adversely changing the memory of understanding of the text. There are numerous ways of speed reading but the main idea is to maintain a balance between comprehension and the speed of reading. It must be noted that this process requires a lot of practice.
There exists a few different ways to speed read like not pronouncing all of the words, speeding up word recognition so that focus on every individual letter is not necessary and generally scanning over the text. Different ways will come naturally to different people and these will reveal themselves with time and practice. As a general idea, getting your eyes to accelerate their movement and speeding up word recognition.
Skimming through the text is a method a reader uses to scan across a text for a general idea of the essence of the article. In the case of informational texts that are very dense, this is not necessarily the best method to use because comprehension tends to be less. Of course, this is a good method for a brief idea of the text and understanding its general meaning.
Meta guiding is another way of speed reading and may be the most popular to speed up your reading process. In meta guiding, the reader has to guide the eyes along the lines of text by following a pointer in the form of a pen or a finger. This following forces the eyes to speed up and discourages subvocalization.
There is a basic speed reading exercise associated with this method that consists of pacing yourself with your finger and going through a text while accelerating the speed at which you’d normally read across a line. The reader should gradually accelerate the movement of the finger and force the eyes to distinguish words quickly and increase the speed at which one reads.
Another exercise to try to attempt to learn a speed reading technique consists of quickly scanning through the material to look for key words attached to the essential meaning of the sentences. In essence, this is reading in blocks and is also done in other exercises which can become more complicated.
The third exercise demands some additional setup time and small cards are necessary. The cards themselves need to have a few words written on each of them; blocks, phrases or pieces of sentences. In practicality will be to read the words on the index cards instead of reading a full text. During a few minutes, the reader must flip the cards and try to recognize the words written on each card. This will work on recognizing words to try to accelerate the process of recognizing a block of words.
All speed reading exercises require a certain time investment in order to be effective. It is generally a good idea to be well rested to have the best possible level of concentration while doing these exercises. It will take time and effective practice before a reader can see results. It is possible to read really fast and still achieve a good retention and comprehension rate.
Speed reading can be a great tool for the academic or the professional world alike. It is fairly easy to learn and doesn’t cost a thing. All that is needed is a few speed reading exercises, some patience and a little determination.
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