2. Planning How to Tackle the Text
If you think about how you are going to read a text and plan for it, you can improve your ability to digest the content significantly. The first thing to ask yourself is what you are wanting to learn by reading the text. Write down a few questions that you are hoping the writing will answer for you by the time you reach the end.
The next step is to work out what the author was hoping to achieve by writing the text. If the full text contains sections that don’t answer your questions, avoid them. Also, if the book is more extensive or scientific, plan what passages you should read slower that require more careful attention.
3. Focus and Concentration
To be able to read text faster, you need to have excellent concentration and focus. To aid this, remove or at least minimize any distractions, noise, and possible interruptions. If your thoughts start to wander while you are reading, use your mindfulness skills to bring you back to the text. If you plan and approach text with the proper attention, you will be able to recognize if there is something you don’t understand more quickly, which will save you time. Otherwise, people tend to go back and read sentences over and over and still don’t grasp what’s right in front of their eyes.
4. Never Read Each Word
We are taught from a young age to read each word, when, in fact, by paying attention to how your eyes can scan the material, you can increase your rate. For most people, they can scan text in chunks of about 1.5 inches, usually three to five words, depending on the type of text and the size of the letters.
Instead of reading every word, scan the text in chunks of three to five words, then move on to the next piece. To increase your speed, at the beginning and end of each line, focus on fragments rather than the words at the start and finish of the line.
To help you scan in chunks, you can use a pen or your finger to point at each piece. This will help you teach your eyes to scan faster. Also, it will stop you from saying each word in your mind as you are reading, which slows down your speed considerably.
5. Choose Sections
Students are often taught to read each section of an article or textbook,
but this is unnecessary and should fall into the category of ‘myths.’
Unless what you are reading is incredibly complex, leave out the sections that are not relevant. By choosing parts relevant and less relevant, it becomes easier to digest the critical information from the text without having to read the whole thing.
6. Summarize
Once you have finished reading the text, don’t make the mistake of thinking that your task is completed. Instead, write down a summary of what you remember; it only has to be a few sentences. Then take a look at the questions you were wanting to answer by reading the text and determine if you learned what you needed to answer those questions. If you spend a bit of time after the lecture to contemplate what you have read, the information will be stored more efficiently in your brain. This will also make it much easier to recall it at a later date.
For those who learn visually, instead of writing a summary, draw it. A mind map is a great way to summarize and helps visual learners immensely. Alternatively, if you are a verbal learner, find someone to talk to and tell them what you have learned from the text. By repeating it, you are helping it to solidify as a memory.
Practice and Timing
To perfect any new skill, you need to practice, not just occasionally but regularly, and faster reading is no different. You need to put some time aside for practicing as often as you can. Once you are starting to get the hang of it, try using a timer to see how many pages or words you can achieve in a minute. This will give you a reading speed, which you
can improve on as you practice more. Make sure you can comprehend what you are reading at the same time; otherwise, you are not learning.
Timing your speed each day will help you improve as you can see your rate gets faster and faster, which inspires you to continue to practice.
To calculate your words per minute:
Count how many words are on the page.
Alternatively, count how many words are in one line then multiply it by the number of lines on the page.
Set the alarm or time for ten minutes and see how much you can read through before the time is up.
Next, multiply how many pages you were able to read by the numbers of words that are on the page.
Divide that number by ten to work out your words per minute reading speed.
It’s a good idea to set goals for yourself to achieve, as this will encourage practice. Within a matter of weeks, most people can double their words per minute. Don’t despair if you’re not quite there, though, for some. It can take a little more time. To help with your goal setting, here are the expected speeds:
Expected speed age twelve to older - 200-250 words per minute.
The average student at college - 300 words per minute.
A college student that is skimming text - 450 words per minute.
College student scanning for words - 600-700 words per
minute.
Champion speed reader - 1,000 + words per minute.
Comprehending Comprehension
We all know that to comprehend means to understand, but have you ever thought of what skills are needed to have good comprehension?
We do so many things without even thinking about what they are, so it’s a good idea to have a look at comprehension and how it relates to our goals.
To comprehend, there needs to be an ability to process what is being read, understand what it means, and integrate that with information the reader has previously known. He/she must know what words mean, how to use context to understand the meaning of the words, the ability to follow how the material is written, and be able to determine the contents of a written passage. They also need to be able to identify the main content, answer questions relating to the content, and determine the mood and tone of the writing. It all sounds complicated, but you are doing this every day! Even while you are reading this book!
There are two comprehension levels in reading, which are low-level (shallow) and high-level (deep) processing of the information. Low-level processing involves recognizing the structure and the process of the sentences and words. High-level uses semantic processing, which involved encoding what the word means and relating it to other similar expressions.
To study comprehension levels, researchers used neuroimaging techniques, including functional magnetic resonance imaging. The
study was to compare brain activity during sentence-level comprehension and narrative-level comprehension. It was discovered that there was less activity during the sentence-level comprehension.
