speed reading tips, techniques and how-to

Speed Reading Comprehension - Advance Your Word Recognition

Word reading is the habit of looking at each individual word and dwelling too intently upon its own separate meaning. This is likely to result from one of two tendencies: either some childhood difficulty at the time when one learned to read or else, in adult years, to the habit of reading very technical, hard work calling for the closest concentration.

The childhood difficulty is hard to over - come, just as is any other defect of early education or early nature. It can be conquered with effort, though, unless it is caused by some eye defect or poor intelligence. As nobody who studies this book will suffer from poor intelligence, I shall consider as the one possibility slow eye perception. You can easily test yourself for this.

A normal adult eye takes in four or five ordinary words at a glance. The finest eye in the world cannot take in more than seven. And the worst eye takes in only one, as did a student who once came under my observation. I am speaking, of course, about continued reading. Not about a single act. In some of the tests which follow, you may take in at a glance seven or eight words. But you will be utterly unable to maintain any such rate in actual reading.

If you take in two or three words at once, as you read, you are surely a word reader and will have to do something drastic to improve yourself, if this is at all possible. First of all, have your eyes examined by an oculist. They may not be receiving a clear image of more than two words at once.

After this possibility has been eliminated, there remains the other one: perhaps you simply have formed a bad habit of looking at words instead of at longer phrases. To test yourself in this respect, work on the exercises which follow. And be very careful about timing yourself well.

Back to Speed Reading Tips