I’m ruined on reading. My reading speed and style are hampered by reading (really studying not reading) massive amounts of theological material. I’ve always been leary of gimmicky speed reading courses. They seem to work for a few people. Most of these schemes fail to explain how and why they work in concrete terms.
I’d love to hear any thoughts from the textkit folks on becoming a better reader. Its not ability to read difficult material or comprehend that troubles me, but that anything I pick up I “study” rather than read, and I need to be reading more material.
When reading, stop saying the words in your internal monologue.
That alone will get you much faster, but it’ll be hard to do at first. Replace the spoken words with visualizations of what is going on. If your reading some fiction or something, just make up what people look like and imagine the environment with the constraints given to you by the text.
After a few months of this, you’ll find your reading speed increasing dramatically. However, there is a side effect. The side effect is that you won’t be able to recall anything unless you have a seed piece of knowledge. This shows up in me in that I can read a thousand page book in about 12 hours, but if you asked me to recite anything in it, I couldn’t do it. However, if you seed the knowledge with a sentance from anywhere in the book, then I can give you pages either way of what was going on.
In a sense, you give up your ability to synthesize the knowledge and can only do recall, for which the detail will fade after a few weeks leaving only scenes that had a lot of emotional content in them.
If I read technical books this way, I only succeed in creating a index of the knowledge inside of it as it relates to context, but the actual technical details are lost for purposes of synthesis.
Why would you want to spoil a good book by reading it fast? I only read for pleasure, and I do it very slowly. Many times I read several times a sentence or a paragraph that I like, to enjoy the writer’s art. I read a lot of poetry, and a good thing about good poetry is that it only gets better with every reading; in fact, that’s my measure for good poetry: the one that I never tire of reading (hearing) again.
That’s how I became a dilettante bard, as a way to always have my favorite poems with me. I never get bored!
For me, speed reading only works at all when you’re reading text which is based on some general template you’ve read many times before. I can’t speed read a novel.
While still at law school I had a job where I had to read, summarise and annotate legal judgments for a commercial legal database, 1 case per hour no matter the length, for a few years. Because so many judgments follow a standard pattern, you learn to just read the grammar rather than the words, i.e. you can look at a page and instantly see “blathering on, blathering on” and then later “important bit read this”, then “blathering on again” &c.
Similarly now I have to review all the time some new legal agreement &c. Having seen many examples of Aust, UK and US drafting you can usually compare a new draft to one you’ve reviewed closely and “speed read” the new one.
This isn’t a skill to try to cultivate to read the classics: people get it just by necessity to get through reading for work I think. I can’t speed read the classics of course
I suppose part of the problem is the need to read different types of material in different ways. I usually read cautiously or skim for the information I need them read slowly. Either way is not good for digesting something both informational and stimulating (biographies, well written histories).
I’ve stopped reading fiction for this reason, but I suppose that if I just begin reading fiction and make a conscious effort to read quickly these skills will come back.
I don’t have problems with maths. I just copy all from the blackboard and the night before the exam I read all the stuff twice. But I do had problems with, let’s say, biology. The teacher didn’t just want me to learn over 80 pages from some books every time, some more diagrams, and pictures with lots of explanations, but he puts the grades as he wishes.
As a natural speed reader it has always been a bit difficult to analyse the process I use (it’s like walking - you just do it). When I started on greek I had to go back to learning to read all over again. I agree with psilord, you have to stop “reading aloud” to yourself and try to start connecting directly. I actually seem to read “lumps” of text at a time, in fact when someone checked my eye movements when reading they don’t just scan left to right but seem to go back over the whole paragraph as though I was looking at a diagram rather than words (and that’s how it sometimes feels to me). But I do take everything in because I can pick up printer’s errors - except in my own typing!!! And if you have problems reading text, try sight reading music at speed - it’s like reading a book while juggling!
“… studying … massive amounts of theological material.” (Geoff)
My imagination has been running wild today, Geoff. I envisioned you going to Divinity School*, eventually becoming a pastor, one day someone in your flock coming to you for guidance concerning a life-or-death theological conundrum, and you answering “Hmm, I’m afraid I sped-read through that part…”
Are you sure that speed reading through those books is a good idea?
Divinity School is kind of a seminary for heretics.
I’m not into “divinity School” it has no practical use really. Hey, did you call me a hairy tick?
Its not the theological material I want to speed read, nor do I even really want to speed read. Its just that I skim to find information or else I scrutinize rather than soak up.
The thing is that kind of “reading” has invaded other readings I want to do. Fiction, biography etc. I was looking for tips on how to speed up reading and get out of this skim or scrutinize rut.
For my third year of Greek I knew that I would have to read large amounts of material, take notes on it, and turn in a binder at the end of the semester over what I had read. The summer before the class, I picked up The Evelyn Wood Seven Day Speed Reading and Learning Program. It only cost $5 in the markdown rack at Barnes and Nobles, and I figured it would be worth a shot. It worked pretty welll for me. I can still read at fairly high speeds and digest a lot of technical info. When I have to push through an Expository Hermenutics, or Interpreting Pauline Epistles, or a number of other things I find that I have gotten very good at weeding out the “noise” and getting to the quick of things (much like chad mentioned). However…when I read for me, I usually read slowly and enjoy the ride (much like Bardo), unless I want to burn through a portion and get to the good part (I zipped through quite a few pages in the new Harry Potter book to get the the interesting stuff), although I try not to do that, and I refuse to do that with a good book.
BTW…we did a poll in my 3rd year Greek class and every student there (all 6 of us) had done some sort of speed reading program to prepare for the class. We had to read on average 70 pages per day and take notes (for a stinkin Jr. Level Greek course in an undergrad program!) I did learn a bunch though
I recently went through the experience of Required Summer Reading (with Notes). The book was Wuthering Heights. It’s not a bad book, but about a third of the way through the books subconsciously labelled 30% of it “blathering on” (60% if it was Heathcliffe), which sped me up. Even writing the notes became mechanical (so much for trying to make us think about the book). Fortunately the teacher has a reputation of grading on doing it rather than doing it well.
The thing which slows me down while reading the most is simply blanking out. Naturally, this is more likely to happen with boring material. But if it’s something I want to soak, it’s a problem. My best soulution to this is to portion my reading (enough that it makes sense, but not so much that I blank out) or to simply wait/create a sharp mood.
Is your real problem speed-reading, or absorption of material?
Not sure if this is an option, but why not read out loud? That way you aren’t skimming the text and as you just keep on reading it out you don’t tend to go back and analyse certain sentences, you just keep on going…
