Key to Becoming a Fast Reader: An introduction .
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WELCOME LETTER
Dear Student, Welcome to the Iris Organization! We teach advanced level reading skills to improve reading speed, comprehension and recall. At nearly every level of education it is assumed that students know how to read well. But when was the last time you really learned how to read? Most students rarely receive additional instruction beyond the grade school level. We are thus forced to read advanced material with the basic reading skills that we learned as children. We need advanced reading skills to approach material that is intellectually demanding. Basic skills will not suffice. The aim of the Iris Organization is to teach these advanced reading skills by focusing on speed, comprehension and recall. These skills will allow any reader to absorb more information in less time with better retention. What you are about to embark upon is not a remedial reading program of any sort. You will be guided through a process of change that will revolutionize your perception of the printed page. With an open mind and a commitment to making the change, you will see drastic results in your reading abilities. We commend you on taking the initiative of improving your reading abilities, as they will serve you well throughout your life. Sincerely,
The Iris Organization
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BENEFITS
Whether you like to read or not, there are many benefits to becoming a faster and more efficient reader. If you don’t like to read, you’ll be able to complete your required reading in less time. If you enjoy reading, you’ll be able to read all those dusty books on your shelf that you haven’t found time for yet. Being a faster reader allows you to: Read more in less time. As a fast reader, you will be able to complete assignments and projects quickly, leaving you plenty of time to enjoy other things. Understand and remember more information. Studies show that faster readers are more focused while reading. Reading at faster rates actually diminishes the incidence of mind wandering, increases concentration, and improves comprehension. Gain confidence as a reader. A confident reader can tackle material that may seem intimidating at first. Be a flexible reader. As a flexible reader, you will be able to adjust your reading speed and reading style based on your purpose and the type of reading material you plan to approach. Enjoy reading. Many people dislike reading because of the time involved. You may find reading to be more enjoyable once you are able to read faster with better comprehension, focus and recall. Stand out among other qualified job applicants. Including your reading speed on a resume is sure to catch someone’s attention. A faster reader is a more efficient employee. The ability to absorb information quickly will save you time at work and make you more successful in your career. Score higher on standardized reading tests. Most people find it difficult to finish standardized tests. As a faster reader, you will be able to finish the test with ease allowing enough time to go back and check your answers. Browse the Internet more efficiently. As a faster reader, you will be able to absorb information from webpages more efficiently.
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Gaining Title Over Complex Material Bartholomae and Petrosky in the introduction to "Ways of Reading,' illustrate the correlations a reader has with the information that is being conceived. This means one should be guided by his own impressions as they read, without asking for other opinions as confirmation. The reader should belittle the idea of seeking "experts' to resolve the issue of what the ...
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Spend less time reading emails. The average employee who uses email spends approximately two hours of his or her day reading and writing emails.
HOW FAST DO YOU READ? Before you begin improving our reading speed, it’s important to know your starting point. How fast do you currently read? Reading speed is measured by words per minute (wpm).
We’re going to test reading speed in just a moment, but before we begin make sure that you have a timer. You’re going to set it to countdown from one minute. The material you will be reading is on the next page. Make sure that you are reading at your regular reading speed (not too fast and not too slow) for full comprehension. Set your timer for one minute and start reading the material on the next page when you are ready.
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We live in curious times. It’s called the Age of Information, but in another light it can be called the Age of Distraction. While humanity has never been free of distraction – from swatting those bothersome gnats around the fireplace to dealing with piles of paper mail and ringing telephones – never have the distractions been so voluminous, so overwhelming, so intense, so persistent as they are now. Ringing phones are one thing, but email notifications, Twitter and Facebook messages, an array of browser tabs open, and mobile devices that are always on and always beeping are quite another. More and more, we are connected, we are up to our necks in the stream of information, we are in the crossfire of the battle for our attention, and we are engaged in a harrying blur of multitasking activity. When we’re working, we have distractions coming from every direction. In front of us is the computer, with email notifications and other notifications of all kinds. Then there’s the addicting lure of the browser, which contains not only an endless amount of reading material that can be a black hole into which we never escape, but unlimited opportunities for shopping, for chatting with other people, for gossip and news and lurid photos and so much more.
All the while, several new emails have come in, waiting for a quick response. Several programs are open at once, each of them with tasks to complete. Several people would like to chat, dividing our attention even further. And that’s just in front of us. From the sides come a ringing desk phone, a ringing mobile device, music from several different coworkers, a colleague coming to our desk asking a question, incoming papers needing attention, other papers scattered across our desks, someone calling a meeting, another offering up food. With so much competing for our attention, and so little time to focus on real work, it’s a wonder we get anything done at all. And then we leave work, but the attack on our attention doesn’t end. We bring the mobile device, with incoming text and email messages, all needing a reply, with incoming calls that can’t be ignored. We have reading material, either in paper form or on the mobile device, to keep our attention occupied. We are bombarded from all sides by advertising, asking for not only attention but our desires. We get home, and there’s the television, constantly blaring, with 500 channels all asking for yet more attention, with 500,000 ads asking for yet more desires.
Reading And Writing Children Read Literate
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There’s our home computer, asking us to do more work, sending us more messages, more distractions, social networks and shopping and reading. There are kids or spouses or roommates or friends, there’s the home phone, and still the mobile device is going off. This is unprecedented, and it’s alarming. We’ve come into this Age without being aware that it was happening, or realizing its consequences. Sure, we knew that the Internet was proliferating, and we were excited about that. We knew that mobile devices were becoming more and more ubiquitous, and maybe some people harrumphed and others welcomed the connectivity. But while the opportunities offered by this online world are a good thing, the constant distractions, the increasingly urgent pull on our attention, the stress of multitasking at an ever-finer granular level, the erosion of our free time and our ability to live with a modicum of peace … perhaps we didn’t realize how much this would change our lives.
WPM 17 31 44 56 70 82 96 113 129 136 150 163 177 193 206 221 236 249 250 267 279 290 301 318 336 349 363 378 391 395 408 422 436 449 464 477 491 504 515 525 538 551 568 581
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How fast did you read the material above?
_____________ WPM
*During the one minute of reading you just did on the previous page look at the line where you stopped reading. The number you see on the right is the total number of words you read during that minute (WPM).
Write that number on the line above. THE AVERAGE READING SPEED So – how does your reading speed compare with the average? If your reading speed was somewhere in the ballpark of 150-250 words per minute (wpm), then you are reading at average speed. Most people read 150-250 words per minute. If your reading speed was below the average, don’t feel discouraged! The improvements that you’re about to make in reading speed and comprehension are significant enough that they’ll land you far above the average, no matter where you start out. If you happen to be reading faster than average, be sure to keep in mind that you can still continue making improvements in your reading speed. And remember that our goal will not only be to improve speed, but also comprehension and retention. Although we just mentioned that the average reading speed is 150 – 250 wpm, there are a few things to keep in mind about this average. First, it’s based on medium-level material. Generally, that means the material is not too easy and not too hard. If you’re reading something more challenging, like a textbook, your reading speed will probably slow down. Alternatively, if you were reading something simple, like a children’s book, you would probably read a little faster. So it’s best to think of your reading speed as more of a range. You might read medium-level material at 200 wpm, technical material at 100 wpm and easy material at 300 wpm. So in this scenario, your reading range is between 100 and 300 wpm. Our goal is simply to move this range higher. It’s also important to keep in mind that your reading speed fluctuates based on a variety of scenarios. For example, if you only slept for three hours last night, you’ll probably be reading more slowly (or you may just fall asleep in your book).
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Reading comprehension is defined as the level of understanding of a text/message. This understanding comes from the interaction between the words that are written and how they trigger knowledge outside the text/message. Proficient reading depends on the ability to recognize words quickly and effortlessly. If word recognition is difficult, students use too much of their processing capacity to read ...
Your reading speed will also fluctuate based on your level of focus. If you feel extremely distracted, you’ll definitely be reading more slowly than usual.
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Another important thing to realize about the average reading speed (150 – 250 wpm) is that it’s based on one minute. Why? Because researchers like to compare apples to apples. So whenever we and other researchers measure reading speed, they do it based on one minute. Although it’s good to keep the experiment consistent, the problem here is that most people don’t read in one minute spurts. Most people read for extended periods of time. If you’re reading a magazine or newspaper article it could be just a few minutes. And if you’re reading a long textbook chapter it might take you 30 minutes or an hour. What do you think happens to your reading speed when you read for an extended period of time? The longer you read, the more likely your reading speed will begin to slow down. If you read for an extended period of time, it’s very likely that your reading speed would be markedly slower during the last few minutes of reading than the first few minutes. Like many statistics, the average reading speed (150 – 250 wpm) is a little flawed because it doesn’t take into account reading for more than a minute, or reading more challenging material. If we took into account, realistic reading conditions, the average reading speed is probably lower than the generally accepted 150 – 250 wpm average.
The Research paper on Reading Comprehension
INTRODUCTION English is the national language of numerous sovereign states and a second language or a foreign language in other countries which is of common knowledge that improving the teaching of English in our schools is a universal effort. The concept of Reading Comprehension is that comprehension is directly related to the surface of our language process. Reading Comprehension is the ability ...
The reading speed that you just measured for yourself does NOT represent how fast you read at every moment—it’s only an indication of how fast you read medium-level material in THIS moment, with whatever level of focus you brought to the exercise. An interesting thing to note about the average reading speed is that it used to be higher. In the 1960s, the average reading speed was significantly higher: 250 – 350 words per minute. Although we could probably make a number of arguments as to why this has happened, it’s more important to think about the tremendous capacity for improvement that you may not be aware of. Taking advantage of this natural, built-in capacity for improvement is our aim.
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COMPREHENSION Let’s take a moment to discuss comprehension. Comprehension is what you understand while you’re reading the material. This is very different from what you remember. Many people think comprehension and retention are one in the same. They are actually two separate skills. Comprehension is based on your understanding of the material in the present moment. Retention is what you remember later on. It could be one minute later, it could be a day later or a whole year later. Most people would agree, that sometimes you can have great comprehension, in that you understand what you read in the present moment, but then later forget the material. This is very common among readers. It’s a retention problem, not a comprehension problem. In our effort to improve our overall reading efficiency we will work on both comprehension and retention. We just need to understand at the outset that they are two different skills. What is the best way to objectively measure comprehension? It’s a question I hear often. Unfortunately, there is no perfect way to measure comprehension. Remember those standardized tests you had to take in the past? Remember reading a passage and then having to answer question based on the passage? Many people assume that those tests measure comprehension when in fact they don’t.
The Dissertation on The Effect of Using Kwl (Know, Want, Learned) Strategy on Efl Students’ Reading Comprehension Achievement
... might do to improve their students’ reading comprehension achievement. The students can read words with lack of understanding of what they read. Without comprehension, reading for pleasure or ... Rochler, Dole, and Duffy (1992) on “Developing expertise in reading comprehension”, a good reader usually uses these following skills and strategies: (1) use ...
Doesn’t the test ask you to remember what you read? That’s a little different than what you were able to comprehend. Additionally, the test also grades you on how quickly you can find the answer to a question. Sometimes, a standardized test can give you a false impression of someone’s comprehension. My organization, Iris Reading, does a lot of work with high schools throughout the U.S. Very often we’re asked to work with high school students that are below average readers. I remember asking a principal how they determined which students were considered “below average.” He confidently told me that they tested “comprehension” through a standardized test. He showed me one particular students score. The student answered 19 questions correctly out of 38 questions. His “comprehension” score was 50 percent according the principal, which meant he was a below average reader. However, after looking at the students test I noticed that he had only answered 20 questions. Out of the 20 questions he answered, 19 were correct. He just didn’t finish the test and ran out of time, like many students do. Would anyone consider 19 out of 20 “below average” comprehension? This is one of many instances where a standardized reading test fails to accurately measure comprehension.
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Although it would be nice to have an objective measure of comprehension, it is something that is absolutely impossible to measure perfectly. The very nature of comprehension makes it hard to measure. For example, it can easily be argued that no two people ever have the same comprehension. Let’s take for example George Orwell’s classic novel, Animal Farm. If you’ve read it and are aware of the historical context in which this book was written, you would easily be able to make connections between the story and what is happening in history at the time. But what if you asked a child to read this book? With a limited knowledge of history, would a child be able to make the same historical connections? Probably not. The child would still comprehend Animal Farm, but the comprehension would be very different from an adult who is more familiar with history. If two people have a different understanding of the same book, how would you go about measuring comprehension objectively? You can easily see that comprehension by its very nature is impossible to measure objectively. Although comprehension is impossible to measure objectively, we will still focus on improving it. Later in this book we’ll present various tips and strategies to help you attain better comprehension at faster reading rates.
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READING MYTHS Most readers labor under a set of mistaken beliefs about the nature of reading. These mistaken beliefs hold us back from reading quickly and efficiently. If we want to become faster, flexible and active readers, we need to untangle ourselves from these reading myths. Most of us haven’t questioned the nature of our reading ability. We accept the fact that we’re either faster or slower readers, and that in general reading takes a lot of time—especially if we want to get solid comprehension. Most of us regard reading just as we regard any other skill learned in early childhood—it’s just like walking, or eating; something that we can all do with relative adequacy, to function normally in society. Because many of us haven’t considered reading to be a skill that involves techniques that can be easily honed and improved, we haven’t improved our reading abilities. The first step in improving reading ability is recognizing that reading is a learned skill, not an inborn talent. While some people may demonstrate a natural aptitude for reading, everyone can significantly improve their reading speed and comprehension level with practice. The key to realizing our potential as fast, efficient readers is recognizing that the old reading habits that most of us unconsciously practice are actually unhelpful, misinformed myths that inhibit our ability to read quickly.
We have to disengage ourselves from these habits if we want to improve our speed. MYTH 1: “The faster I read, the worse my comprehension gets. I will understand more if I slow down.” Although there are some instances when slower reading is a good idea— like when you’re reading dense, technical material, or poetry—usually it’s just a sign of poor concentration, NOT of better comprehension. Slower readers have weak concentration, and this results in poor comprehension. Faster readers have sharper focus, and get through material quickly and with better comprehension because they have maintain a high level of
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concentration while reading. Cultivating your concentration will allow you to read faster while maintaining—and probably improving—your comprehension.
MYTH 2: “I have to read every single word on the page.” Not true. Many of the words that you read express no meaning at all; they exist for grammatical purposes only. These words are like the scaffolding of the sentence structure—they hold the sentence up so it can express something, but they are unimportant in and of themselves. Spending time conceptualizing these meaningless words impedes your reading speed and even your comprehension, as they grab focus from the meaningful words in the sentence and detract from a streamlined processing of important information. Breaking our allegiance to this myth will involve focusing on the big picture, and untangling ourselves from the notion that in order to really ‘get’ the material, we need to spend time on each individual word on the page. Developing an intuitive sense of which words merit deeper attention and which words require only a brief glance of recognition is part of becoming a faster and more efficient reader, and it’s a skill that we’ll start to build by recognizing that not all words need to be read carefully. In fact, the most effective readers know that some words should be read lightly, with less attention paid to them. If we’re going to significantly improve our reading speed and maintain good comprehension while doing so, we’re going have to change our perception of what reading is. We are no longer going to be reading for words; from now on, we’ll be reading for IDEAS. For most people, reading means going word by word by word, and if we want to be more flexible, active and efficient readers, we have to change our approach. Getting caught in the details is one of the biggest stumbling blocks to faster reading. MYTH 3: “I have poor comprehension because I can’t remember what I just read.” Being able to remember what you just read is a recall problem—not a comprehension problem. The nature of comprehension relates to what you understand at the present moment, while reading. Recall refers to what you
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can remember after reading—whether it’s a month, a year, or a moment afterwards. Most people have great comprehension and poor recall. Concentration facilitates recall, but the most effective tool in improving recall is repetition. Multiple exposures to the material that you want to remember—whether these exposure include actually revisiting the material, or simply challenging yourself to recite the material or creating a mind map or note—is the most effective way to improve recall. MYTH 4: “I should understand and remember everything the first time through.” If this were possible, it would be fantastic. Unfortunately, even for the most committed, focused readers, this expectation is completely unrealistic. Regardless of your reading speed, you will never comprehend and recall everything the first time you read. Recall is a function of repetition, which involves repeated exposures to the material you intend to learn. Good comprehension can be achieved during the first read, but it’s also likely that, even with solid concentration, you’ll need to revisit the material to ensure that you are fully familiar with any new information or concepts presented. Good notes, lectures, seminars and/or group discussion sessions reinforce the information you gained through reading, and unfortunately, there is no quicker or more efficient way around them.
MYTH 5: “There’s no need for me to improve my reading ability, I already read well.” Reading is a skill like any other, and there is still room for improvement in those who have a natural aptitude for it. Because there is no fixed limit for how fast you can read, above-average readers stand to make significant improvements in their speed and comprehension through practice. Research shows that certain drills that utilize quick eye movement can dramatically increase a person’s reading speed. What most readers accept as normal, or even fast, reading speed is a function of being held back by a set of myths about the nature of reading. Most readers who identify as fast are probably on the higher end of the average reading speed scale, and even the higher numbers on this scale represent relatively slow reading rates. Once readers learn that their expectations of how fast they can read have been dragged down by a set of mistaken beliefs about the nature of how reading works, they become open to new possibilities in reading achievement. The vast majority of readers are not aware of their potential
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for improvement. Once they gain confidence in this potential to improve, they make significant strides, starting from wherever they’re at. If you start from a faster place, all the better. MYTH 6: “Speed reading is not a skill that can be learned; some people are just born with it.” This statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Reading is not an innate talent, but a learned skill that can be improved with practice. We tend to think of it as an innate skill because we aren’t instructed in it beyond our early education, but this is simply a mistake, and our students immediately realize the flaw of treating reading as an inborn talent, rather than a skill, when they see how easy it is (with committed practice) to improve their speed and comprehension. John F. Kennedy was a speed reader. He was not a natural speed reader; the skills were privately taught to him by an instructor. Perhaps the most entrenched and unhelpful myth is that reading is simply an innate talent; that you’re either born with it, or you’re not. Although you might not have personal experience to substantiate this claim just yet, take our word for it now: reading is like any other skill: the more you practice, the more you will improve. When we begin doing drills, you’ll enjoy firsthand experience supporting the fact that reading is a skill that everyone has the capacity to improve upon.
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PART FIVE: THE THREE BAD HABITS What do we have to do if we want to improve? We have to change the way we read. In order to do so, we must distance ourselves from those mistaken, unhelpful reading myths discussed earlier, and directly address the three bad habits that drag down our reading speeds. If we want to improve our speed and comprehension, there are three main things we need to change:
FIXATION Fixation is the habit of looking at every single word on the page. This is something that your eyes do when you’re reading— they stop and go every time they see a new word. This manner of reading—making brief visual fixations on each word—feels comfortable and intuitive for a few reasons. First of all, since we read to understand what’s on the page, it makes sense that our first approach is to read every word on it. We don’t want to miss anything vital. Reading every word on the page appears to be the only way to thoroughly review written material. Fortunately, this is NOT the case—but given our reading training, it makes sense that fixation is our first, and trusted, approach. The second and main reason that accounts for our tendency to fixate on each word relates to how we were taught to read during our early education. When was the last time you learned how to read? For most people, the first time they learned how to read was the last time that they were taught how to read, and they were taught to read on a word-by-word basis, sounding out each word as they read. This technique was well suited to our capabilities as beginning readers, but it doesn’t match our abilities or
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needs as adults. In fact, fixation isn’t simply an ineffective aide, but an active roadblock to efficient reading. We can save time and bolster reading speed by cutting down on fixations by taking in groups of words at a glance. We use our peripheral vision constantly—while driving, playing sports, or just walking down the street—but we tend to drop this ability when we read, instead adopting an unhelpful ‘tunnel-vision’ approach in which we zoom in on one word and then zoom in on the next. This habit of locking our eyes on each individual word often makes reading physically uncomfortable. If you’ve ever had the experience of having to look away from the page after reading awhile because your eyes feel achy or uncomfortable, you’ve experienced a physical sensation of discomfort caused by the herky-jerky movement your eyes make as they read. You don’t feel this discomfort while walking down the street, playing sports or driving because during these—and indeed, almost all—activities, you’re using your peripheral vision and NOT the herkyjerky fixation approach. The average reader makes eight to nine fixations per line, which is nearly every word on the page. Fixating word by word is an unhelpful and unnecessary visual habit that must change if we want to become faster, more efficient readers. Luckily, with committed practice, this bad habit is easily unraveled.
REGRESSION This is the habit of going back and re-reading passages that we’ve already read. The average person spends a third of their reading time going back and re-reading passages where their minds wandered. This means that for every hour we spend reading, twenty minutes was spent re-reading—because onethird of the time, we weren’t paying attention to what we were reading well enough to understand it. If we want to cut down on our regressions—and to become faster, efficient
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readers we’ll endeavor to do it—we’ll need to improve our concentration. Like fixation, the roots of regression can be traced back to when we first learned how to read. In our early—and only—reading education, we were taught to read word-by-word and to go back and read a word again if you mispronounced it the first time. While you probably have little trouble pronouncing the words that you read now, remnants of this habit remain. Most readers will go back and re-read material if they felt even slightly confused about its meaning. It’s important to understand that just because something isn’t clear initially doesn’t mean that it won’t be clarified later. We want to encourage readers to have the instinct to move forward in their material, and trust that the murky areas will be clarified later—knowing, of course, that they always have the safety net of the text to go back to for clarification if needed. Besides a lack of concentration or poor comprehension, regression happens for other reasons, like gaps in readers’ vocabulary or an author’s poor presentation of ideas. You will never eliminate all regressions. Inevitably, your concentration will waver, or you’ll encounter a complicated or poorly described concept or foreign vocabulary, and you’ll go back and re-read. A little regressing is a good thing when it is calculated. You will often want to go back to reread something of special interest, to clarify something, or to correct a first impression. Discouraging you from regressions entirely is not our aim; we just want to reduce the number of regressions that you make because of poor concentration or a fear that you have to be 100% clear on a sentence before moving on. Calculated regressions, made for the sake of understanding and verification, are in most cases a good investment of time. One thing is certain: practice will reduce regressions, save you time in reading, and improve your comprehension.
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AUDITORY REASSURANCE The last and most disruptive habit is auditory reassurance. This is the habit of sounding out the words in your head as you read. Of the three bad reading habits, it’s the most difficult break. Why are most people tied down by this habit? Again, the origins of our attachment to auditory reassurance stem from our first, and last, reading education. You were taught to read word-by-word, as we mentioned earlier, and you were also taught to read by pronouncing the words out loud. After you reached a certain level of proficiency, you were taught to read the words silently in your head. After all these years, you are still saying all the words silently in your head.
READ OUT LOUD EXPERIMENT Before moving on to drills, let’s do an experiment. Starting from the line where you left off during our first minute of reading, read again for another minute. This time, read out loud. Mark the line where you leave off at the end of the minute. Calculate your WPM by multiplying the number of lines that you read by 10. Record your WPM here: When you read out loud, there are two things going on in your brain. Part of your brain is trying to comprehend the text, the main ideas and the details, while another part of your brain is focused on executing speech. These two disparate brain functions aren’t necessarily complementary. Saying the words out loud doesn’t really help you understand them any better. If you’ve ever had this experience, you have first-hand evidence that reading out loud can actually get in the way of comprehension. Hopefully, the last time this happened to you was in high school:
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You’re asked to read a passage out loud in class. You read it, then sit back, expecting that your role in class participation was dutifully fulfilled. Just then, your teacher asks you to comment on the passage. To your chagrin, you realize that you have no idea what you read— your mind was a total blank while reading. The problem with the habit of hearing your voice in your head as you read is that it prevents you from reading any faster than you talk. The average person talks in the range of 150-250 words per minute. Not surprisingly, the average reading speed is exactly the same. If auditory reassurance slows our reading and doesn’t help with comprehension, why do we keep doing it? Habit. Many readers aren’t even conscious that they sound the words out in their head, and once they recognize that they do, they simply assume that that’s what reading entails. Once they realize they’re doing it, most people believe that it is absolutely necessary to say the words silently in their head in order to understand the material. However, this is a completely pointless task. The brain can recognize and comprehend words the moment they become part of the visual field. When you see stop sign, do you sound out the word ‘stop’ in your head, or do you simply see the word and process its meaning, without any auditory reassurance? When you see brand marquees—Barnes and Nobles, Walgreen’s, Starbucks—do you hear these words as you read them, or just register their meaning? Although road signs and brand marquees are often presented with a memorable visual image, you still read the word on the sign and have the experience of NOT hearing it sounded out in your head. Recognizing that you’ve already had the experience of seeing a word and instantly comprehending it–without sounding it out–is useful in that it helps you warm to the idea that auditory reassurance is NOT necessary for comprehension. Our goal is to significantly reduce the number of times that you sound words out in your head. Now, no one has perfect vocabulary, and if you don’t know a word, you might resort to sounding it out. As long as you make a significant reduction of your auditory reassurance, you’ll see dramatic increases in speed.
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RECALL STRATEGIES Recall involves mentally sorting through material and flagging the pieces that you want to remember. A primary challenge to good recall lies in knowing which material to pay deep attention to while reading, and which material to mentally dispense with. Your brain’s capacity for acquiring new information is inexhaustible. According to scientific study, you have never taxed the brain to its fullest extent; possibly only to 10 or 15% of its capacity. Even so, Dr. Ralph W. Gerard, former neurophysiologist at the University of Michigan, estimated that after seventy years of activity the brain may contain as many as 15 trillion separate bits of information. Amazingly, the wealth of information stored in your brain represents only a fraction of the information that you’ve been exposed to in your lifetime. Fortunately, the nature of memory stipulates that you can’t retain everything that you read: endeavoring to do this would crowd your brain with miles of useless information, making it harder for you to access the information that is meaningful to you. The point of recall is to retain the information that is important to remember and to organize it well enough so that it is available for later use. To do this you must make intelligent use of your selective faculty and effectively employ your powers of comprehension. Determining why you are reading a particular piece of material and what your goals are for that material aids significantly in recall, as it alerts your mind to what is important in a text—effectively raising red flags around important bits of information. According to the psychologist Dr. George A. Miller, English sentences are about 75% redundant; that is, they are about four times as long as they need be. This does not mean that 75% of the ideas expressed in the sentences could be deleted. It means the ideas may be buried in long, overwritten sentences and it’s they—the ideas—that count in determining what you get out of your reading. Becoming an active reader means knowing where to pay close attention in any given piece of material. If you’re able to anticipate an author’s redundancies and actively search out the new ideas, you’ll spend your time more effectively. You should endeavor to always be aware of the author’s habit of restating material, and actively search for the new ideas in the material.
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Solid comprehension does not automatically mean solid retention. Comprehension concerns your understanding of what you are reading at the moment you are reading it. Retention is the measure of your ability to remember at some later time what you have read with reasonable precision. Good comprehension is, however, required for good retention, so it’s important to maintain a high level of concentration while reading. Concentration aids enormously in comprehension, and determining your purpose before reading and setting goals enhances concentration. Psychologists have been studying the enigma of human memory for decades. Their research yielded results that suggest people forget nearly one-half of what they have learned within one hour after they learned it, and forget two-thirds within a single day. It has been determined that remembering—and forgetting—depends on several factors: Presentation—Rational, logical material is more easily recalled than unorganized material or unrelated pieces of information. Making connections between the information that you read, as you’re reading it, aids in recall: creating a mental mind-map of relationships between the information that you’re reading imposes a rational, logical structure on material that is lacking one, or reinforces the structure already there, to aid in retention. Time—We recall best what is freshest in our mind. The longer we are away from the material, the fuzzier the details become. Motivation and interest—the more important a subject is to us, the more intricately we will remember it. A subject that we have a natural interest in will be easier to retain than one that we deliberately “memorize”—natural interest accounts for automatic motivation.
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CONCLUSION: WHAT NOW
Thank you for reading “Key to Becoming a Fast Reader: An Introduction”.
Now you can go and watch our free YouTube videos that contain drills and extra tips for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmQiOEC8UnM Or you can go ahead and register for one of our classes at http://www.irisreading.com/ We wish you the best of luck and we look forward to seeing you at any of our future events. Happy reading! The Iris Organization
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