Some people might think they do not need to try to read faster. Some of them think they are fast enough as they can swallow the book in two hours. Others would say that fast reading kills the joy of reading and leaves the reader with only half of good impressions experienced in a rush. And guess what? All of them will be at least a little bit wrong. Fast reading allows us to read effectively, managing to remember all the important facts and details. It cannot substitute slow reading during a rainy evening with a cup of tea and a cat cuddled on your knees, but it will help you move though the tons of new information and get what you need from it faster, so you will save some time for more pleasant activities.
Excited?
Let us not wait any longer!
Wide View
The vital reason of our slow reading is a bad development of our peripheral vision. That is why the person spends more time on one line than it is needed. We are reading the line in small parts and not as a whole, at once, because we cannot survey it at once. This kind of reading is called horizontal because you are moving from the left to the right while reading a line. If you develop peripheral vision, you may learn how to read and save your time. You will learn to read vertically. The person will be able to see the whole text just by looking at the middle of the line and reading vertically. It will be possible to move from one line to another really fast. Moreover, with one view reader will be able to survey and read complete parts of text.
Exercise Squares with Numbers
It is called a Shulte table. You can find its versions on the Internet, in AppStore or make it by yourself. In order to make it just take a piece of paper, draw a square on it (20 centimeter wide). Divide the square into 25 cells and randomly write down numbers from 1 to 25 into them. Prepare for yourself 10 different tables. In order to work with one of them, place it 25-30 centimeters away from you. Then, by looking only in the central square without moving your eyes in order to peep into another squares, try to find the numbers in the right order. Begin with one minute and then shorten the time for working with table to 20-30 seconds.
The Guess of Sense
It is a skill you should develop to save your time in the process of reading. The gist is easy to be explained using an example. For instance, if you meet in the text the phrase "to keep body in the good...", then you will guess that the following word is "shape". It means that you can skip this word and read the next one. This is the easiest example of saving your time. If you train, you may learn how to skip longer expressions or even some parts in text. You will skip them, but still understand what is going on in the text.
Exercises:
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- Cunning Text
Here you will need someone else to give you a hand. Let them take a small part of the text (about 6000 signs) and either to mark several words in black at the beginning and the end of each sentence or to mark black all the words that bear a secondary meaning, leaving only key ones visible. After that they should give this text to the reader, meaning you. Your task is to reconstruct missed words and tell what the text was about.
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- Working with Metronome
It helps to increase the reading speed if you are reading with the ticking of metronome. You can download a special program from Internet to get this sound. Any book will work well for this exercise. The rules are easy: just switch on your metronome on the speed of 60 knocks per minute and with every other knock just carry your look over to the next line. Concentrate on the text maximally. This exercise develops a skill of vertical reading and teaches your brain to perceive the information faster. After every 3-5 minutes increase the speed of metronome. Take it up to 150 knocks while training. It's better to devote 45-50 minutes every day for this exercise.
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- Mirror Reading
It is a great exercise for those who like a bit of a challenge, as it makes our brain work in an absolutely different way, trying to read fast the text that does not even look like something readable!
Check this out:
?yek eht teg uoy diD ?egnellahc on htiw txet siht daer uoy naC
This is an example or the mirrored text. This sentence should be read not in the direction from the left to the right, but as an exact opposite, from the right to the left. Now when you know the secret, try to read the sentence above and find or create more of such texts. If you manage to read this text faster, imagine how faster can become the speed of your “normal” reading!