Anyone can learn speed reading, it’s not just for geeks or students. Due to the amount of words we all have to process every day — email, text, banners, streams along the bottom of your television screen, etc., not to mention what we have to process at work or school, speed reading is almost a necessity these days.
Speed reading can be an effective, and efficient, way to make better use of your time. It’s not always bad to take short-cuts, and this is one that has a great deal of benefits. It involves not only learning to read faster, but with more comprehension, and allows you to remember more of what you read. With this, you will have more time to pursue other activities.
The majority of people waste a great deal of their day reading something and then having to go over it and read it again. They skim over a page or newspaper just to get the highlights, and only stop to read something that catches the eye. You have to admit you miss a lot when you do this.
You do basically the same thing with speed-reading. While you skim over a story you are able to take out the important things your want to remember. You are able to skim over a lot more material, while understanding more of what you read. It’s not rocket science. Speed-reading can improve our grades, help in doing research, and aid you in reading a lot more material to help you on your job. It’s a tool that will simply make your life easier.
Speed reading classes teach a few easy ways to help a person concentrate better and pay attention to what they are reading. Your eye is drawn to motion, and speed-reading will teach you to use motion to keep you eyes on the page.
You will learn chunking, which is taking items and putting them into smaller and manageable pieces. It also eliminates the need to vocalize what you read, which is a practice we all learned when we first studied how to read, and most people still use this. Subvocalizing is a waste of your brain power, since you read the word and then speak it. With this your brain has to work overtime processing an unnecessary step.
There are various ways to learn speed reading, but all of them utilize the same basic concepts – identifying words without focusing on each letter; not sounding out all words; not sub-vocalizing; or spending less time on some phrases than others; and skimming small sections. Different types of speed reading courses call for different speed and comprehension rates. By practicing your skills as you learn them you will get better, faster, and comprehend more.
The many available speed reading training programs include books, videos, software, and seminars. You can find an very good speed reading program at Brain Athlete, along with other memory improvement products.
About the author:
Ron White is a two-time USA Memory Champion and memory expert. As a memory speaker he travels the world to speak before large groups or small company seminars, demonstrating his memory skills and teaching others how to improve their memory, and how important a good memory is in all phases of your life. His CDs and memory products are also available online at BrainAthlete.com.
Sources:
The Literacy Company Expands their line of Speed Reading Products with the Release of Speed Reading For Dummies: http://www.brainathlete.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1407&action=edit
