“Quick-Fix Workshop”
Communications Centre
Essential Skill
• Speed Reading helps you read and
understand text more quickly.
• It is an essential skill in any environment
where you have to understand a large
amount of information quickly (every fastmoving professional environment).
Improving Reading Speed:
• Everyone can double their speed of reading
while maintaining equal or even higher
comprehension.
Words Per Minute
• The average college student reads between
250 and 350 words per minute on fiction and
non-technical materials.
• A "good" reading speed is around 500 to 700
words per minute, but some people can read
a thousand words per minute or even faster.
What makes the difference?
• There are three main factors involved in
improving reading speed:
(1) the desire to improve
(2) the willingness to try new techniques
(3) the motivation to practice.
What You Need First
• necessary vocabulary
• comprehension skills
If you understand college-level materials, you
are ready for speed reading practice
Relationship between Rate
and Comprehension
An increase in rate has been paralleled by an
increase in comprehension.
Don’t ‘Plod’
“Although there is at present little statistical
evidence, it seems that plodding word-byword (or word reading) inhibits
understanding”.
You Need the Right Method
In order to increase your reading rate and
increase your comprehension you need to
adopt the right method.
Don’t simply start reading more rapidly – this
won’t improve your basic reading habits.
In fact, it usually results in lowered
comprehension.
Factors that Reduce Reading
Rate
(a) word-by-word reading
(b) slowness of recognition and slow
response to the material
(c) vocalization, including the need to
vocalize in order to achieve comprehension
(d) faulty eye movements
(e) regression, (habitual or lack of
concentration)
Factors…
(f) faulty processes of retention
(g) lack of practice in reading due to time
constraints or lack of interest in reading
(h) fear of losing comprehension,
myth: if you spend more time on individual
words, comprehension will increase
(i) habitual slow reading (he has always read
slowly)
Factors…
• (j) poor evaluation (which aspects are
important and which are unimportant)
• (k) the effort to remember everything rather
than to remember selectively
Basic Conditions for Increased
Reading Rate
A well planned program designed to
maximize your reading rate must
involve ‘necessary conditions’.
Four basic conditions include:
Condition One
• Before embarking on a speed reading
program, have your eyes checked
• Often, very slow reading is related to
uncorrected eye defects.
Condition Two
• Eliminate the habit of pronouncing words as you
read.
• You can read only as fast as you can read aloud.
You should be able to read most materials at least
two or three times faster silently than orally.
• Try to concentrate on key words and meaningful
ideas as you force yourself to read faster.
Condition Three
• Avoid regressing (rereading).
The average student reading at 250 words
per minute regresses or rereads about 20
times per page.
• Rereading words and phrases is a habit that will
slow your reading speed down to a snail's pace.
Condition Three…
Usually, it is unnecessary to reread words, for
the ideas you want are explained and
elaborated more fully in later contexts.
Furthermore, the slowest reader usually
regresses most frequently because his mind
has time to wander.
Condition Four
• Develop a wider eye-span:
This will help you read more than one word at
a glance. Since written material is less
meaningful if read word by word, this will help
you learn to read by phrases or thought units.
Rate Adjustment
The effective reader adjusts his rate; the
ineffective reader uses the same rate for all
types of material.
What Do You Want from this
Document?
The most important trick about speed reading
is to know what information you want from a
document before you start reading it
Outline vs. Thorough
Understanding
• If you only want an outline of the issue that
the document discusses, then you can skim
the document very quickly and extract only
the essential facts.
• If you need to understand the real detail of
the document, then you need to read it slowly
enough to fully understand it.
Test Yourself
http://www.readingsoft.com/
A Skilled Reader
• reads many words in each block and
dwells on each block for an instant
• rarely skips back to a previous block of
words
• this reduces the amount of work that the
reader's eyes have to do
• increases the volume of information that
can be examined in a period of time
A Poor Reader
• is overwhelmed, spends a lot of time reading
small blocks of words
• skips back often, loses the flow and structure
of the text and overall understanding of the
subject
• has irregular eye movements, which makes
reading tiring
• dislikes reading, and may find it harder to
concentrate and understand written
information
Increase, Reduce, Reduce
Speed reading aims to improve reading skills
by:
1. increasing the number of words read in
each block
2. reducing the length of time spent
reading each block, and
3. reducing the number of times your eyes
skip back to a previous sentence
Increasing the number of
words in each block:
• conscious effort
• try to expand the number of words that you
read at a time
• practice will help you to read faster
• you may also find that you can increase the
number of words read by holding the text a
little further from your eyes
• the more words you can read in each block,
the faster you will read!
Reducing Fixation Time:
• The minimum length of time needed to read
each block: a quarter of a second.
• Push yourself to reduce the time you take!
• And…you will get better at picking up
information quickly.
• Practice and Confidence!
Reducing Skip-Back:
• To reduce the number of times that your eyes
skip back to a previous sentence, run a
pointer along the line as you read.
your eyes will follow
Experiment Using these
Techniques
• Previewing
• Skimming
• Clustering
Previewing
• Previewing: Read the entire two paragraphs
and the first sentence of each successive
paragraph and then read the entire last two
paragraphs.
• Previewing doesn’t give you all of the details,
but it does keep you from spending time on
unnecessary information.
Skimming
• Think of your eyes as magnets; force
them to move fast. Sweep them across
each and every line.
• Skimming can give you a general
impression of a text in less than half the
time it would take you to read every
word.
Clustering
• Train your eyes to see all the words in
clusters of up to three or four words at a
glance.
• Clustering trains you to look at groups of
words and ideas instead of at one at a time.
This will increase your speed and
comprehension enormously.
Summary of Tips
•
•
•
•
Make fewer fixations per line.
Concentrate on key words.
Break sentences into logical thought groups.
Eliminate bad reading habits – don’t regress.
Most Importantly:
• Read regularly – practice is important – make
reading habitual.
• Improve your vocabulary. Strange words
interfere with understanding – become
familiar with a new word everyday.
Suggestions
• Join a book club.
• Read every night before you go to bed.
• Purchase a newspaper and/or magazine
subscription (or visit the library everyday).
• Turn off the TV.