I must say I have been quite good at doing my speed-reading exercises, except for the paragraph exercise where you are supposed to find the topic on as many paragraphs as possible in five minutes and note it down. I find that incredibly boring a stressful. I have been doing the other ones though, and yesterday I read the book "The Evilyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading Program”. I think these two books are excellent together. You can read the second one through quickly and pick up a lot of things that you also find in the first book, but the first book is more structured like a course that you follow by doing this and that every day. Today I am going to start trying out some of the hand movements from the second book. Wide reading it yesterday, I read perhaps half of it, or a third, by reading two lines at once. I'm not sure if this is quicker or not, but I intend to do some tests today. Like all techniques, this one also needs practicing, and I haven't done that much practicing with it yet, so it may still be slower.
New records? I have managed Swedish fiction at a good recall rate of 740 words a minute (833 as well, but then I wasn't satisfied with my recall) , and somehow English nonfiction at 884... O_o I think I am rather comfortable with 500 now.
You roused my curiosity. I will need to try it too now.
ReplyDeleteHey Rebecka, good to see it working for you too. Halabund, give it a go. It's a nifty skill to have I think.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering, do you need to exert a continuous effort to keep a 500 wpm speed, or does it come naturally now?
ReplyDeleteIt looks like I can only read around 250 words per minute on a computer screen (English text, non-fiction).
I'm not sure I would have to make a conscious effort, I don't really want to try to read slowly now, I want to get in to the habit of always pushing ahead. I just read some Swedish fiction at a thousand words a minute with the same kind of sloppy comprehension I thought I got from 500 words a minute a week ago. However, these are tests of one minute or two, I'm not sure for how long I could keep it up. In the book it also says that really fast readers have to continually "work out" to maintain their top speed. So I don't think it becomes really natural to read at more than a thousand words a minute, but it is possible.
ReplyDeleteAnd I really think you should give it a try. Isn't it stupid to not improve a very useful skill when you have the possibility of doing so? ;)
I find that as you really try hard to push yourself faster, your "easy" speed also goes way up. I seem to remember that several of the techniques of speedreading are actually just about unlearning bad habits, so once you've unlearned those then you become faster without trying.
ReplyDeleteYes, I totally agree with that!
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