As babies we learned to speak by hearing the spoken word; and in as many languages or dialects to which we were exposed. Are we not equally capable of reading by being exposed to the written word?
Whether aware of it or not, you “read” everything you see. You walk into a room of fifteen people and unwittingly scan the room – from left to right. Suppose that you are only in the room for a few seconds and leave. You meet someone going into the room that asks, “Who is here?”
How many can you name? When you scanned the faces they automatically registered as familiar or unfamiliar. Current faces were mind-matched with familiar pictures and given a conclusion. New input needed was alerted and left for more learning. Although you did not start from left to right and say each person’s name aloud (or even mentally), in reality you “read the room”.
You already are a speed-reader more than you give yourself credit for. What about billboards that you understand even as you speed by without deliberately paying attention. You instantly grasp the meaning without sounding out every word. Reading faster and for more comprehension is obtainable through recognizing the phenomenon of the eye being smart. Embrace it and expand upon your eye knowledge.
Information enters the brain through one of the five senses - see, hear, smell, taste and touch – and is stored in the mind. The more senses involved, the greater the comprehension; seeing, hearing and doing holds onto more information – and thus stores into long-term memory - than hearing alone.
Everything has a learning curve. Familiarity with the alphabet necessitated the mechanics of observing the shapes, drawing the letters, hearing how the symbol sounds and the placement of letters to form words. We meticulously read aloud and were graded on our ability to do so. We decoded the symbols.
As we moved from grade to grade and quit reading aloud, although our lips were stilled, did we continue to read word-for-word in our mind? What about comprehension? If one’s mental reading speed is in the 200 word-per-minute range, more than likely you are silently reading word for word to yourself.
Eye-movement accounts for only 5% of reading time. The remaining 95% involves the mental association of one’s past knowledge with present information. Speed reading/learning is about thinking meaning, seeing pictures (for comprehension) and recognizing symbols as familiar friends.
- See it as a fun challenge and a new adventure in learning.
- Predetermine why you are reading the material. Information? Entertainment? Obtain skills? Testing? This will set you up for the depth of attention needed to obtain desired comprehension results.
- Learn as much as you can before delving into the text.
- Set yourself up for greater comprehension by looking at pictures and reading the info under then, notice what has been marked for emphasis, scan for new words and define them, go to a map and determine the world-location in which the event takes place, take the end-of-chapter comprehension test first.
- Become a reading detective. From news articles to fairy tales, look for who, what, when, where, why and how. Is the information clearly given or inferred?
- Focus on bunching words together, rather than word-for-word mental recitation. Remember the billboard?
Speed-reading is a lot like learning a second language. Not to worry, the eye is just as smart as the ear. A mark of intelligence does not only know the answers but also where to go to obtain what is still needed.
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