Many speed reading courses currently available operate by changing a student's motivation and by the suggestion that the course will be successful. With focused conscious intention, reading speed can be increased by about ten percent per session, and it may sometimes be doubled during a course of 10-20 sessions. However, this is the absolute limit for this type of approach. The length of time it takes to make a fixation and the number of words fixated are changed but little, most of the improvement has occurred because there is less mind wandering and back-skipping. The gains from this type of reading course are seldom stable, because the underlying problem of perception remains unhandled.
In contrast, by turning pages as fast as possible and attempting to see as many words per page as one can, perception and the will are conditioned into much more rapid and efficient reading practices. This high speed conditioning can be compared to driving along a motorway at 100 miles per hour. Imagine that you have been driving for an hour at this speed. Suddenly you come to a road sign saying 'Slow down to 30 m.p.h.' Now imagine that your speedometer is not working; what speed would you actually slow down to? The answer would probably be 50-60 m.p.h.
The reason for this is that your perceptions have become conditioned to a much higher speed, which becomes 'normal'. There is a ratchet effect by which previous 'normals' are more or less forgotten as the result of the perceptual conditioning. The same principle applies to reading; after high speed practice, you will often find yourself reading at twice the speed, without even feeling
the difference.
Speed Perception
1. Point with your index finger or a pen to the words you are reading. Try and move your finger faster, this will aid you in establishing a smooth and rhythmical reading habit.
2. As you move your finger along the line that you are reading, try and take in more than one word at a time.
3. When you have reached the limits of the previous exercise, then take some light reading material and try to read more than one line at the same time. Magazine articles are good for this purpose because many magazines have narrow columns of about 5 or 6 words, and often the material is light reading.
4. Various patterns of visual guiding should be experimented with. These include diagonal, curving, and straight-down-the-page movements. Exercise your eye movements over the page, moving your eyes on horizontal and vertical planes and diagonally from the upper left of the page to the lower right and finally, from the upper right to the lower left. Try to speed-up gradually day by day. The purpose of this exercise is to train your eyes to function more accurately and independently.
5. Practice reading as fast as you can for one minute, without worrying about comprehension. Don't worry about your comprehension this is an exercise of perceptual speed.
6. For this exercise you are concerned primarily with speed, although at the same time you are reading for as much comprehension as possible. Reading should continue from the last point reached. Do this for one minute and then calculate your reading speed (see Test) - call this your highest normal speed.
7. Practice reading (with comprehension) for one minute at approximately 100 w.p.m. faster than your highest normal speed.
8. When you can do that, continue increasing your speed in approximately 100 w.p.m. increments. If you calculate how many words there are on an average line, then it is easy to convert w.p.m. into lines per minute. E.g. if a line has 10 words and you are reading at one line per second, then you are reading at 600 w.p.m.
9. Start from the beginning of a chapter and practice reading three lines at a time, with a visual aid (such as a card) and at a fast reading speed, for 5 minutes.
10. Read on from this point, aiming for comprehension at the highest speed possible. Do this for five minutes, then calculate and record your reading speed in w.p.m.
11. Take an easy book and start of the beginning of a chapter. Skim for one minute using a visual guide at 4 seconds per page.
12. Return to the beginning of the chapter and practice reading at your minimum speed for five minutes.
From: Ebook Speed Reading
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