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Speed Reading Technique
In the modern world, a person perceives a lot of information through the organs of vision: reading magazines and newspapers, articles and books, articles, etc.
It is impossible to imagine even for a moment that books, magazines, newspapers would disappear, that a person could not write, read. After all, all the achievements of people, for millions of years of human existence, are recorded in books. To deprive a person of books means to leave him without his roots, without the present, past and future. It is known from history that when the troops of the cruel conqueror Tamerlane entered Armenia, first of all they began to take away handwritten scrolls and books. The Armenians offered an exchange - for one book they gave two captured soldiers. This is how the Armenians highly appreciated their memory and historical heritage in the fourteenth century.
Alexander Ivanovich Herzen said: “The whole life of mankind consistently settled in the book: tribes, people, states disappeared, but the book remained. It grew together with humanity, all the teachings that shocked the minds and all the passions that shook the hearts crystallized into it.
Each generation of people aspired to master the world of teachings that shook minds and the world of passions that shook hearts through the book. But doing so is far from easy.
In his youth, Academician O.Yu. Schmidt made a list of books that he would like to read and calculated how much time he would need for this, the result exceeded all expectations, in order to fulfill the plan, the young man would need not much, not less - a thousand years. Having fairly shortened the list, Schmidt received an equally impressive figure - two hundred and fifty years.
The abundance of books and the inability to read them all worried humanity for a long time and at the same time, people thought about how to simplify the task of the reader. Nicolas Grollier de Servier, who lived in the seventeenth century, invented a machine to speed up the reading of books. By design, the machine for speeding up reading resembled a mill wheel, where instead of blades, bookends were installed. Several identical books were placed on these stands at the same time, open on the pages required for reading.
The English physicist Thomson wrote about the decrease in the knowledge of one person, compared with the increase in the knowledge of the entire human society. The amount of human knowledge has increased too rapidly, scientists have calculated that by the end of the twentieth century, the amount of knowledge around the world will double, and the amount of information will increase more than 30 times.
Of course, the wider the flow of information, the more selectively a person treats it, the more demanding he is.
A person who wants to learn something new, unknown, must overcome the conflict between his abilities and the amount of information that he can get from books, television and other communications. The task that will be before him is not easy, but very doable.
With the development of thinking techniques, language improvement, ways of working with text, each generation of readers reads faster than the previous one. This is a great merit of the progressive people of every era. As early as the seventeenth century, people began to think about the importance of speed reading. Jan Amos Komensky, the founder of the theory of learning, at the opening of the Pataky Higher School in the Czech Republic, delivered a speech "On the skillful use of the book - the first tool for the culture of natural talents."
The topic of "speed reading" remains one of the most incomprehensible and mysterious so far. The word “soon” means quickly, but this does not mean that you just need to run your eyes over the lines of the text, but it means that you need to quickly highlight the main thoughts from the text and remember the meaning of the text, spending as little time as possible. In short, speed reading is reading with a high rate of assimilation of the material read and minimal effort and time.
Our brain processes information coming from outside at four times the speed of slow reading. If it takes the average person two minutes to read one page, then our brain processes it in half a minute, and involuntary associations are created for the remaining one and a half minutes. For example, read about mountains. The eyes continue to move along the lines, and a chain of involuntary associations appears on the inner screen: alpine meadows, a flock of sheep, mountains with snow-covered peaks, blue - blue sky and a white lazy cloud on it. With such reading, the information is not remembered well, it is not perceived as a whole. It happens that after reading a whole page, you can find that not a single word was remembered.
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky, a Soviet psychologist and founder of the research tradition, wrote about this: “It is usually thought that understanding is higher with slow reading; however, in reality, with fast reading, understanding turns out to be better, because different processes are performed at different speeds and the speed of understanding corresponds to a faster pace of reading.
Scientists who study people's ability to read have identified five methods of reading:
1. Deep reading. This is when a person carefully and scrupulously analyzes and evaluates what he has read, pays special attention to details.
2. Fast reading. It is a fast reading that pays attention to detail and takes on the characteristics of in-depth reading.
3. Selective reading. Such reading can be called repeated. When a person reads individual parts of the text.
4. Reading - viewing. This is a preliminary reading "diagonally". When the subject of a book, article, etc. is determined and its value for the reader is determined.
5. Reading - scanning. This is reading, in order to identify familiar surnames, dates, topics in the text, i.e., quickly scanning the text in order to search for specific data.
Speed reading memory training is certainly important, but it will only be effective if there are four indispensable conditions: the belief that you need to improve your memory; constant interest in it; the ability to work independently and correctly use the features of your memory.
When considering memorization while reading, we can draw conclusions:
1. Fast reading promotes memory training without overloading it, and also activates the processes of thinking and memorization.
2. The most effective is involuntary memorization with positive emotions. Speed reading provides just such memorization. If a goal is clearly set and you read with positive emotions and a mood for a good result, then the right thing is remembered by itself.
3. Meaningful memorization is based on recoding the information read into the language of one's thoughts, ten times more productive than mechanical memorization. After reading the text, immediately repeat it.
4. The American psychologist J. Miller created a human memorization formula, which states that a person remembers firmly, deeply, for a long time if the incoming information is distributed into blocks, the number of which is not more than seven.
Depending on what goal the reader pursues by taking this or that book or article, it is necessary to choose the appropriate reading mode.
At the very beginning, when the child is just learning to read, the outlines of the letter are unfamiliar to him. A small person hardly distinguishes one letter from another; instead of reading the word “mother”, he reads “m-a-m-a”. Gradually recognition and recognition of letters becomes automatic and the speed of reading increases. The next step for the baby is reading in syllables and sentences. "Mum". "Ma-ma we-la Ra-mu." "Mom washed the frame." The angle of view is getting bigger and bigger every time. A narrow angle of view allows you to see only a part of the page, and maybe even just a piece of the word.
In the modern world, we need to be able to quickly navigate the flow of information and in any intellectual activity we have to read a lot. The wider your angle of view, the more information you can capture in one glance at the text.
Used to practice speed reading. Schulte tables. It is believed that when the eye moves, the greatest visual acuity occurs in the central zone of the retina. Everything that lies outside the so-called zone of clear vision is seen dimly, as if in a fog. A wide angle of view can reduce the search for the desired information. As experiments have shown, Schulte tables help to increase the angle of view. Schulte tables help increase peripheral vision and increase reading speed.
The reader's maximum vision zone is thirty degrees, and the clear vision zone is fourteen degrees. The 100% vision area is only 1.4 degrees.
1. Focus your eyes on the center point of the table.
2. Try to see all the numbers on the field. Look with an absent-minded gaze, as if through a piece of paper.
3. Without taking your eyes off the center point of the table, determine where the numbers from 1 to 25 are.
4. Finding the numbers is required by a silent account in ascending order. Preferably with maximum speed, without saying the number either to yourself or out loud. It is very important to look for numbers only with peripheral vision.
5. The reading time of such a table should be no more than 30 seconds.
6. The time of classes is chosen so as not to get tired. Usually no more than ten tables per day. Horizontal eye movements on the table are not allowed.
7. The distance from the eyes to the Schulte table, as usual when reading books, that is, about 30-35 centimeters.
By training according to the table every day, after two to three weeks you will achieve amazing results, it will become clear that your angle of view has increased significantly. You can make such tables yourself by arranging the numbers in an arbitrary order and finding them in turn. The Schulte table is a piece of paper with a drawn square with sides of twenty centimeters. The square is divided into twenty-five cells. As you develop your skills in reading Schulte tables, move on to more complex tables, increasing the number of cells 6x6, 7x7, 8x8 and, accordingly, increasing the size of the square: 24x24, 28x28, 32x32 centimeters.
The most important thing when working with Schulte tables is attention. Instead of numbers, you can randomly arrange other objects, the main thing is not to flicker with your eyes on the table, and when you look at the center of the Schulte table, you can clearly see, along with the central number, both the upper left and right, as well as the lower left and right numbers.
Tony Buzan noted that computer programs and Schulte tables should be treated with the utmost care, since the gaze involuntarily follows the mouse cursor, which does not contribute to the expansion of the angle of view.
If an elementary school student can read syllables and letters, then a high school student is required to carefully read everything that is in the textbook. A student of a higher educational institution is exposed to a stream of various information and information, he needs to use scientific literature, various reference books, find the necessary information in library catalogs and a huge library of scientific literature. Students learn to selectively read what they need, he himself forms a selective search for the necessary information.
In the course of his production or scientific activity, a person uses various specialized literature, which is sometimes poorly structured, and he has to process it himself. Neither the strategy of studying the material by a schoolboy (from cover to cover) nor the strategy of compiling an algorithm for searching for the necessary information by a student is suitable here.
To absorb such information and fish out a rational grain from it, the skill of high-speed reading is required, that is, reading only the necessary texts, searching for key words and phrases necessary for this particular activity.
1. It is necessary to suppress the desire to pronounce the text.
2. Be able to highlight only the most important things in the text. Have a wide field of view.
3. Psychologically tune in to an instantaneous grasp of the meaning of the text.
4. Apply effective strategies for remembering information.
Each person has undiscovered opportunities and internal reserves, which are much greater than he suspects. You can increase the speed of reading by getting rid of the factors that reduce the speed of reading:
1. Lack of a clear purpose for what you need it.
2. Inability to distinguish the necessary information from the unnecessary.
3. Distracted attention.
4. Slow reading strategy where words are perceived, not the meaning of those words.
Reading speed largely depends on the reader's interest in the material, his understanding and his familiarity with the subject.
The issue of reading speed is of interest, first of all, because it means greater productivity, and therefore easier achievement of the goal.
People spend a lot of time reading books, many people, despite the fact that they are very capable and because of their work they are forced to read a lot, still use the same reading techniques that they used in childhood.
In real life, the techniques, goals and types of reading can be extremely diverse. In one case, reading literature requires a complete and deep understanding of the meaning, in another case, the reader must decide whether it is worth reading this material at all and what the material will give him. In the third case, the reader only needs to extract the information he needs from the text. The same material can be read from different points of view and each time the same material will be perceived differently.
If we proceed from the fact that Speed Reading is a learning process, then it should be borne in mind that your brain cannot absorb more information than it should. If the reader increases the speed of reading the text four times what he can learn, then he will learn only a quarter of what he read. If you do not have the opportunity to increase the speed of information processing by the brain, then you need to increase the productivity of reading, try to avoid unnecessary expenditure of energy and effort, by increasing your capabilities. As it is revealed that the most capable people are the most unproductive readers.
The writer expresses his holistic thought in the form of a chain of words. The reader sees this chain of words in the form of symbols and must extract from them the complete and integral thought that the writer wanted to convey to him. With close contact between the writer and the reader, as a result of their oral communication, no difficulties arise, since the listener finds a hint in gestures, facial expressions and at any time can interrupt the speaker and ask him questions of interest. The reader sees printed letters in front of him, he has no clue in the form of facial expressions and gestures, tone of voice and posture of the speaker. Therefore, he tries to concentrate on the words, remember them, while losing the meaning of the text. It turns out that the reader is wasting his energy and wasting his strength in vain, instead of understanding and using the importance of the writer's word as a means of understanding the author's idea.
Such readers do not trust their perception and read very meticulously, working out every word, every phrase, every paragraph in detail, returning to it again and again if they do not catch the meaning of the text.
It is also paradoxical that as a result of such meticulous reading, the understanding of the material and the speed of reading are reduced, since people, trying to understand, lose the thread of the text and do not see its main idea. Such readers are so fixated on their desire to grasp and understand the content of the page that they pay attention to even the most insignificant comma, every insignificant detail, instead of moving forward in search of the main ideas of the author of the text.
Such readers often go back, reread minor words and phrases that they could have ignored and moved on. Returns violate the harmonious integrity of perception, reduce the speed of reading and reduce concentration.
Since the speed at which the brain is able to process information is limited, the reader must constantly change the speed of reading. More difficult to understand text is read more slowly than easy and understandable. An incorrectly calculated reading speed, the speed of perception, also leads to a waste of the reader's strength.
Trying to simply memorize the material, without delving into its essence, the reader simply stores the words he has read in his brain, not being able to replenish his knowledge. It turns out that the reader spends his abilities in vain. An experienced reader tries to assimilate the material being read and connect it with old knowledge.
In the process of fast reading, a person gets used to quickly capturing the essence of the text contained in the keywords. A person quickly grasps the main idea that forms the basis of knowledge. Such reading does not tire the eyes as much as ordinary slow reading.
There are additional factors that affect the speed of reading - this is the vocabulary of the reader. People who read fast and a lot have a large vocabulary. People who read slowly have a limited vocabulary, many words that are found in the new text are incomprehensible to them, and in order to understand the meaning of what they read, they need to unravel the meaning of these words. People who have read a lot in their lives can rely on knowledge and accumulated experience; they do not have to read each new text as completely unfamiliar. A good and experienced reader experiences real pleasure from reading, it allows him to satisfy his feeling of intellectual hunger, for a bad reader, reading is a routine duty.
If you suspect that you are not a very good reader and you have habits that prevent you from reading quickly and effectively, then you can get rid of them in a relatively short time. By constantly working on developing good reading habits and getting rid of bad ones, you will increase your reading speed and efficiency. You will not only want to achieve your goal, but its implementation will become a necessity for you. In this regard, Columbia University professor Dr. James Mursel says: “The simple desire to learn is vague and non-specific, the need to learn something takes on a concentrated and concrete form. The desire to learn means that we repeat something over and over in the hope that something will happen. The need to learn means that we delve into the subject and analyze it, considering it from different angles; we are trying to identify cause-and-effect relationships, to find what is right and what is wrong, and what needs to be changed so that the wrong becomes true. Consider an analogy: a person may have a desire to become physically fitter and stronger. His desire to improve his health becomes a necessity only when he knows exactly what he must do to become healthier and stronger. His desire to improve his health becomes a necessity only when he knows exactly what he must do to become healthier, and then does it; analyzes its results and tries to direct actions in such a way as to achieve maximum effect. Thus, the need to learn means the intellectual perseverance in the search for methods of solution and the intellectual perseverance in this direction.
When eradicating bad habits, you can study the material being studied too quickly and aggressively, which will increase reading speed, comprehension speed and concentration; you can miss unimportant words and details by learning to highlight the main idea of the author; you can train the speed of your visual perception; you can learn to move quickly through the text, picking out the main ideas from a lot of words and phrases and making up a big picture of the text; you can stimulate your intellectual curiosity by increasing your vocabulary; you can get rid of regressions (returns), articulation, inner speech.
The main problem with fast reading of the text is the pronunciation (articulation) of words. When articulating, the eyes linger on one word longer than expected (although during this time they are able to scan entire groups of words). With articulation, the speed of reading is tied to the speed of the speech organs (no more than three hundred words per minute), a person hears it before he sees the text, although the eyes can perceive and transmit information to the brain ten thousand times faster than the ears.
When pronouncing the text, the reader rather listens to the spoken words than listens to thoughts. It has long been proven that information from the eyes can be transmitted directly to the brain, bypassing speech and hearing.
Of course, it’s easy to say that you can’t do this, but here’s how to get rid of this habit. Of course, if you read silently, do not move your lips, do not move your tongue while reading, this does not mean that you have got rid of this habit, does not mean that you are reading without using the part of the brain that is responsible for speaking. In humans, different areas of the brain are responsible for pronouncing words and understanding them: Broca's area and Wernicke's area. During reading aloud, both of these zones are involved. Words are first converted into sound images, and then converted into semantic ones. Most people first represent words as sound images, and then they are converted into semantic or visual images. The articulation of words consists of two stages, first there is the pronunciation of words, which is performed by the mechanical movements of "devices" (organs of speech): mumbling, moving the tongue, moving the lips. The second stage is the pronunciation of words to oneself, when the reader does not use the organs of speech, but the words are heard by an inner voice. During such silent reading, the area of the brain responsible for the pronunciation of words also works, interfering with the speed perception of the text.
In order not to pronounce the words while reading, do the exercises.
Exercise 11. Place your finger on your lips.
2. Keep your lips from moving.
Exercise 21. Clamp a pencil or any stick with your teeth.
2. Hold the pencil with your teeth only, lips and tongue should not touch it.
Exercise 31. Press your tongue against your teeth.
Exercise 41. Read the text with your eyes.
2. While reading, say out loud sound combinations (tra-la-la, tram-ta-ram).
3. You can say individual words (mom, dad, mom, dad, etc.)
4. While reading, say a short text. It is good to pronounce tongue twisters (Karl stole corals from Clara, etc.)
But almost no one succeeds in this exercise if the spoken words and the read text are different. You can master this exercise only if, when reading the text, the eyes are ahead of the movements of the lips and scan those words that the lips have yet to pronounce. Gradually, the speed of scanning the text increases, and the speed of pronunciation decreases. Over time, speaking completely disappears.
Exercise 51. Read the text with your eyes
2. While reading, keep counting from one to ten and back.
Exercise 61. Read the text with your eyes.
2. Listen to soothing relaxing music while reading. Handel and Vivaldi are best suited. As practice shows, such music increases the speed of memorization and enhances a person's ability to learn.
3. Follow the development of the melody.
Exercise 71. Move your index finger quickly along a column of text.
3. Do not try to delve deeply into the meaning of the text you are reading.
4. Read simple texts.
5. Concentrate on reading.
6. Do not return to the read part of the text (the concentration of attention falls when returning to the read text). Your brain begins to think that at any moment you can return and the information is not absorbed. Therefore, read each new text with the thought that it is impossible to return.
7. Even if you do not understand something, do not go back to what you have already read.
8. Do not reduce the achieved level of speed reading, do not stray from the given rhythm, and the level of understanding of the text will increase.
Exercise 81. Find a poem with short lines.
letter by letter,
Pauses, dots.
Word for word
Short lines.
On the white pages
From pure linen
Grows covered
Snow covered country. (Dmitry Fenko)
2. Read one line at a time.
3. Focus your eyes on the extreme words.
4. In the process of mastering, move on to poems with longer lines.
In the midst of a great war cruel,
From what - I will not apply my mind,
I feel sorry for that distant fate,
As if dead, alone
Like I'm lying
Frozen, small, dead
In that war, not famous,
Forgotten, small, lying. (Twardowski)
Exercise 91. Take a newspaper and accompany the reading of the column with a quick movement of four fingers from top to bottom.
2. Repeat this paragraph of the exercise with three, two, one fingers.
Exercise 101. Go to the window.
2. Look for five minutes at the view before your eyes.
3. Transfer your gaze to the text, catching the beginning and end of the lines with your eyes.
4. Look out the window again and again at the text. Repeat the exercise five to six times.
Exercise 111. Turn on the music.
2. Take a newspaper or any book.
3. Quickly read the first and last word in each line.
Exercise 121. Write the numbers from 0 to 40 with your eyes
2. Write the letters of the alphabet from A to Z with your eyes.
3. Write the views of words, phrases, sentences.
Exercise 131. Use any free time.
2. Walking down the street, take pictures of the numbers of cars with your eyes.
3. Fix your eyes on the inscriptions on signs and announcements.
Exercise 14Make complex movements with your fingers. At the same time, finger movements should not be arbitrary, automatic or light. Finger movements should be such that the brain constantly monitors their implementation. For example, with each blow with the right hand, alternately with the fingers of the left hand try to touch the temporal part of the face. A significant part of the brain responsible for movement is responsible for the movement of the fingers.
Exercise 15The reader must use his hand to beat out such a measure that it does not coincide with the speech. The reading of the material should take place under the simultaneous tapping of the measure. At first it will be very difficult, but gradually the reading will speed up, and the inner voice will become thinner and muffled until it disappears completely. To completely get rid of pronunciation, it will take about twenty hours of reading with simultaneous tapping of the beat.
Exercise 16 Considering that a person’s speech is at the fingertips, one should tap a certain rhythm with fingers when reading (two-stroke tapping with four percussive elements in the first measure and two in the second with a significant increase in impact on the first measure and two in the second with a significant increase in impact on the first element each bar):Rice. Notation of rhythm
Rice. Average knock rate
Right-handers should tap the rhythm with a pencil or pen on the table, with the fingers of the right hand brought together. Left-handers should tap out the rhythm simultaneously with the fingers of both the left and right hands, while both right-handers and left-handers should work not only with the hand, but with the whole arm. At the same time, it is necessary that the rhythm is tapped out correctly, a complete understanding of the text is not necessary.
The fingers will be busy and the speech center will automatically be blocked. The centers of the brain responsible for the movement of the hands and for the pronunciation of words are nearby, so if you occupy the center of the brain responsible for the movement with work, then at the same time a partial blocking of the speech center will occur.
Repeat the exercise daily for 1-1.5 hours. You can take breaks if you are tired. In total, this exercise should be devoted to twenty hours. Then, with fast reading, the exercise should be repeated at least once a week, devoting thirty minutes of your time to it.
During the exercise, four stages go through:
1. The stage of persuasion. This is possible and I can.
2. Stage of execution. The exercise is obtained, but it is difficult to understand what is read.
3. Stage of understanding. The exercise is obtained, what is read is understood, but it is not possible to remember.
4. Stage of assimilation. The exercise is easily and freely performed, what is read is understood, the rhythm does not slow down, the read text is easily remembered.
Reading speed
Below is a table about reading speed. The table is compiled on the basis of reading the English text, where articles and verb particles are considered words. Therefore, it is rather difficult to establish correspondence in reading with Russian and English. Speed standards were established as a result of long-term observations and measurements of the speed of reading popular science and technical texts.
Reading Speed Chart (wpm)
Reading speed is the amount of text read per unit of time. The volume of text can be defined in different ways (pages, characters, words, syllables). Time is measured in hours, minutes, seconds. Most often, reading speed is defined as the number of words read per minute. Reading at a speed of three hundred words per minute is considered normal, more than three hundred words per minute - accelerated. The limit of continuous reading is the speed of a thousand words per minute (according to other sources, eight hundred words per minute).
You can determine the reading speed by the formula: V = (Q / T) * K, where V is the reading speed, (Q is the number of characters in the text, T is the time spent reading this text in minutes, K is the comprehension coefficient. Under the number characters should count each letter and each number in the text, ignoring spaces and punctuation marks.
In some books, there is a measurement of reading speed in words. Knowing the relationship between units of text volume, one can easily switch from one system to another.
Given that, on average, each word in Russian consists of an average of six letters, and if your reading speed is 1200 characters per minute, then your reading speed in words will be 1200:6 = 200 words per minute. Reading time can be measured by a watch with a second hand.
What is the comprehension ratio? The comprehension coefficient is determined based on the answers to ten control questions on the read text. After all, it is known that fast reading is meaningful reading with deep assimilation of the material read. If all answers to ten control questions are correct, then the coefficient is 1; if seven questions are answered correctly, then the coefficient is 0.7; if one question is answered, then the coefficient is 0.1. A good coefficient of understanding and assimilation of the text is 0.7 or 70%.
The learning rate is the amount of learned text content. It consists of understanding and memorizing the text. It is measured in percentages or fractions of a unit and is defined as the ratio of the assimilated material to the total content of the material, taken as one hundred percent or one.
Take some text, count the number of characters, prepare a stopwatch, a notebook and a pen. Write down the time you started reading or turn on a stopwatch. At the end of reading, write down the time and turn off the stopwatch.
Below is a table for converting the number of seconds to decimal fractions of a minute
Articulation Suppression Experiments While Reading
American scientists conducted experiments during which the participants in the experiment were allowed to read the text and at the same time talked to them on abstract topics that were not related to the text being read. At first, the participants did not perceive the readable text, but in the course of further training, the ability to perceive the readable text returned to them.
During the experiments, it was also found that if speech centers are damaged in people who speak several languages, then speech recovery usually goes through four stages: understanding the speech of the main language, recovering the ability to use the native language, understanding the speech of a foreign language, and restoring the ability to use it. language. People who have a broken Broca's area understand what they are told, but are not able to pronounce anything themselves. When Broca's area is affected, not only spontaneous speech suffers, but other motor functions are also disturbed, primarily those in which people exchange information with each other. Even the most simple movements, with which the participant of the experiment could convey information to another, were inaccessible to him. The subject forgot with what gesture he could beckon his partner in the experiment, how to say goodbye to him or greet him. The servicemen could not bring their hand to the cap (a gesture of military salute). In addition, the subject himself did not understand the gestures of his partners; for him, a friendly handshake and a threat gesture did not differ from one another. Phonetic hearing with the defeat of Broca's area does not suffer, and there are no gross errors when writing.
Scientists, using special equipment, conducted experiments to analyze the intensity of internal pronunciation during reading. The following facts were revealed:
1. Muscular tension of the reading organs is minimal when reading a text in the native language.
2. When reading foreign words found in the text of the native language, the intensity of pronunciation increased sharply.
3. Pronunciation of words to oneself, mechanical fixation of the tongue and lips does not increase the speed of reading the text, it only slows down the peripheral part of the speech motor apparatus.
4. A person perceives the familiar graphic symbolism of letters through visual and spatial images, schemes.
It was found that in children the speech areas of the brain are partially formed under the influence of impulses coming from the fingers. And if children at an early age (five to six months) are given special exercises to develop finger motor skills, then they begin to pronounce complex words much earlier.
Reading
Reading is a visual process. Vision is a purely symbolic process of seeing a symbol or object and translating it into an image. Images are formed into a complete thought. The process of obtaining visual information and translating it into a thought process takes place, as scientists believe, at a speed exceeding the speed of light. If you come to understand this process, then you can understand that the speed of reading is practically unlimited, you can read a book faster than turning pages. We have developed instinctive reading skills. Reading for us is the transfer of thoughts and concepts from one person to another. The intuitive process allows us to enter into a communicative relationship with the author, since each of us has an imagination and an intuitive mindset, then reading is just a connection - between the intuitive mind of one person and the intuition of another.
On our planet, not only a person has the ability to read, many animals and plants can read information about the time of day, and the time when you need to go to distant countries (migratory birds), about the danger and its absence, about the start time of the spring games and about many other things. friend. Even trees feel and read the information that there comes a time when it is necessary to drop leaves or a time when grass should appear and bloom. Animals and plants intuitively feel when it is necessary to perform this or that action, so a person does not need to learn intuition - he has it. All it takes for good speed reading is to get rid of the old techniques that you have followed since childhood and that you have been taught so that you believe in yourself.
Reading is a process of transferring energy from the author to the reader and speed reading is no exception, when you get acquainted with a new thought, with a new concept that is interesting to you, you get a powerful burst of energy. Speed reading will be such a source that radiates this energy.
Reading is a deeply personal and individually presented process by each person. If one and the same article is given to be read by different people, then the interpretation of the article for each person will be completely different.
Reading through intuition introduces the reader to a world without boundaries, where human possibilities are endless.
Very often people confuse good and bad reading with fluent reading. Fluent reading cannot be called either fast or slow - it is a special method of reading. People often get confused as the emphasis is only on reading speed and not on productivity.
For daily needs and urgent tasks, the most important thing is to develop a strategy in reading, and this is impossible if you do not have fluent reading skills. It is just as important to read fast as it is to read slowly. These two types of reading actively support each other. Reading is a complex process in which both slow and fast reading play an important role.
Mastering the method of speed reading is not at all difficult, by doing just a few simple exercises, you can master it.
Fluent reading is, first of all, the reader's ability to grasp the very essence of a book, article, report, that is, its main idea.
Fluent reading is faster than speed reading, since the reader sees even what lies outside the area of printed text he is viewing.
If the reader needs to find some particular sign among the text page, he will not read the entire text, he will look at the whole page with a face and try to make out it. If you need to find a word, he will quickly scan the page from top to bottom.
When reading fluently, the reader must associate words and signs, as well as the information received by him with the information already available, since words cannot be deposited in memory just like that, without being attached to anything.
A person who reads fluently can be compared to a person who waits for the return of a ship on shore. This person knows what the ship should look like and which side it will appear from. Similarly, a reader looking for specific information and skimming through the text knows what he wants to find in the text.
The process of obtaining general information when reading a text fluently is a difficult and time-consuming process.
If you run your eyes over a completely unfamiliar text and meet a lot of new and unfamiliar words, then the process of obtaining information may be delayed, although, of course, you will learn what you wanted to know in the time allotted to you. But it will be information that you will not be able to interpret. If you know this topic perfectly and the pages of the new publication are saturated with familiar words and terms, then it will not be difficult for you to learn new information.
Here are two completely opposite cases. But usually the text is replete with meaningful words that are constantly repeated and the reader pays attention to them. Certain ideas about the text are formed if you try a cursory review of passages of the text. The clearer your understanding of the text, the easier it will be for you to read the text fluently.
Fluent reading can be used for both slow and fast reading and high speeds can be achieved. With the help of fluent reading, the flexibility of reading increases. Sometimes the meaning of the text becomes clear so quickly that all other sentences can simply be skipped or skimmed through. Sometimes you can skim page after page, paragraph after paragraph, to know when to start reading the text carefully. The art of such reading allows you to quickly read and skim through page after page, skipping what is not necessary, and at the same time not losing the meaning of the text.
With the right use of fluent text, the reader can focus their attention where they need it and get rid of unnecessary work and unnecessary information. Fluent reading helps you absorb information faster and more accurately.
When reading fluently, you can take full advantage of vertical text. Vertical reading covers up to five lines of printed text, in normal reading you can see very blurry and vaguely two to three lines below and above the line you are reading. The normal field of view can be depicted as a flattened ellipse. If you focus on a few words of printed text, you will be left with a very vague idea of the lines above and below the line you were reading.
If you try to keep six or more lines in your field of vision, you will notice a difference in the distribution of your attention.
Start Reading
1. Take a book and open it. Check out the content if there is one. Skim through the content quickly to familiarize yourself with it and get the general idea of the book.
2. To expand your understanding of the main idea of the book, read the preface.
3. Look through the first few pages (two to four) to get the initial idea of the book.
4. To understand where and how the book ends, look at the last two to four pages.
5. Try to intuitively imagine in your memory a preliminary picture of events.
6. Return to the beginning and complete in detail what you have already received as a result of the preview of the book.
8. Read quickly and trust that you capture the main ideas of the author and the general understanding of the text.
9. Never go back, even if you feel like you don't understand a concept. Just go forward.
Types of reading
The speed of reading depends on the skill, goals, nature of the text. Some texts have to be read slowly, thoughtfully. They require deep thought. Such texts require repeated reading, not because their meaning is incomprehensible or thoughts are not accurate enough, but so that the ideas expressed in the text become part of your personality. The text, as it were, is a stimulant that allows you to put in order all the information you received earlier.
Some texts deserve only a cursory glance in order to get acquainted with the main ideas and facts presented by the author in this text.
For each text, you should choose your own, individual way of reading. There are many different theories about strategies and ways of reading. One of these options is the option of L. G. Kashkurevich.
...
1. Assignment. These are texts that contain too many unfamiliar words and terms. These texts include texts in an insufficiently mastered foreign language. The main goal of reading such texts is understanding, so that later you can use the concepts and terms found in the text. The speed of reading such texts is from twenty to four hundred words per minute.
2. Filtering. These are texts of moderate novelty. The level of development of the reader is comparable to the level of the author. There are practically no unfamiliar words and terms in the texts. This is what professionals in the field read. Such texts include specialty magazines and the press. Reading the text goes on the main keywords and terms. The main purpose of reading is to discover new facts. The rest of the information is immediately forgotten. The selected material is immediately fixed in memory and joins the knowledge accumulated earlier and when used, it is often paraphrased. The main semantic unit of such a text is an idea, a sentence or a phrase, as well as whole statements. Blocks of information in the text are perceived as a whole. The average speed of reading such texts is a thousand words per minute, in some cases it can reach up to three thousand. If you need to remember a quote, the reading speed is reduced to four hundred words per minute.
3. Panoramic reading. Reading texts that contain little necessary information. The purpose of reading in such cases is to get acquainted with the content, evaluate, identify the main ideas and topics, search for the necessary information. Reading speed - two thousand words per minute or more.
4. Reading is empathy. Such texts include fiction, popular science magazines, entertainment publications, etc. The purpose of reading is: understanding, relaxation, entertainment, taking free time, having fun. The main semantic units are words and phrases. The speed of reading such texts is usually seven hundred words per minute, sometimes it can reach up to a thousand words per minute.
Speed reading and angle of view
The field of best vision in humans is 1.4 degrees, the zone of clear vision is 15 degrees, the maximum zone of vision of the human eye is 35 degrees.
Considering some object, the human eye makes movements along its contour with jumps and stops at a frequency of up to five times per second. For readers, both for a fast reader and a slow reader, spasmodic movements are made at the same speed - four times per second. The only difference is that during the pause, the eyes of a fast reader can capture much more information than the eye of a slow reader. Prolonged pauses of the eye occur during a meeting with hard-to-read words, with incomprehensible terms and typos in the text. To increase the speed of reading, it is necessary to expand the angle of coverage of the text and increase the recognition of the text.
Recognition of the text is trained by constant and methodical reading. A certain base of words and terms, verbal stamps is constantly created in long-term memory. By instantly retrieving familiar words and terms from memory, the reader spends less time recognizing words in the text.
In fluent reading, the angle of view is wide open, so the reader makes extensive use of his ability to read the text vertically.
In this case, the rule applies, you will only see vertically if your eyes are motionless. It will take only a few pauses, during each of which you will cover five to six lines of new text and quickly cover the area of \u200b\u200beach page. And it will take you a few seconds to skim the page of the book.
When the field of view is wide, many of the words that are in the field of view become semi-conscious information. In such a short time, the reader does not have time to understand all the possibilities of the knowledge he has received, the only thing he can do is to establish contact of new words with the old knowledge he has. When reading fluently, there is no correct order for eye movements. Interestingly, many of the readers, who have never heard of skimming and eye movement before, begin to move their eyes down when they skim a page. Others begin to zigzag along the page, others read vertically, and the fourth help themselves with a finger, leading them in the middle of the page from top to bottom, the fifth look immediately at the middle of the page, the sixth readers scan the text vertically from bottom to top in the right margin. But, the eyes themselves know what to do and they do not obey the guidelines that readers try to impose on them, otherwise, the choice of suspensions would be extremely small, and fluent reading would be impossible.
It is possible to expand the angle of vision when performing exercises to train peripheral vision.
Exercise 1 "Choose an object"
1. Choose any object from your environment.
2. Focus your eyes only on him.
3. Try not to notice anything else other than the chosen subject.
4. With peripheral vision, look at what surrounds the selected object. Try to see everything.
5. Again focus all your attention on the center of the selected subject.
6. Analyze your feelings. Try to understand what is happening with your eyes.
7. How much the sharpness of the selected subject that is in the center of your attention changes. How you see the objects surrounding the selected object.
Exercise 2 "Pyramid"
1. Read the numbers written on the three guides of the pyramid from top to bottom.
2. Focus your attention on the numbers in the middle.
3. Try to see the numbers that are on the left and on the right.
Rice. Pyramid Exercise 3 "Panorama"
1. Go to the window. Look at the opening panorama.
2. Now look at the text in the book with the same eyes. Adjust the eyes to the edges of the lines of text.
3. The sector of the gaze is constantly narrowing and it must be constantly expanded.
4. Look out the window again and again at the text in the book.
5. Repeat several times.
Exercise 4 "Complex pyramid"1. Look at the pyramids.
2. Read them from left to right and from right to left.
3. Focus your eyes on the numbers in the middle rows.
4. Simultaneously try to see the numbers above and below.
Exercise "Striped Columns"1. Take any newspaper. Select any column of text.
2. Draw the text of the newspaper column with horizontal lines every two lines.
3. Read every two lines per eye fixation.
4. Draw the text of the newspaper column with horizontal lines every three lines.
5. Read every three lines in one fixation of the eyes.
6. Draw the text of the newspaper column with horizontal lines through four, five lines or more. Repeat the exercise.
Rice. complex pyramid Exercise "Digital columns"
1. Read each of the columns provided to you in one fixation of the eyes.
2. Adjust your gaze to see the top and bottom number in the column at the same time.
3. Make up several similar digital columns and practice on them.
Exercise "Expansion"1. Take three deep breaths.
2. Lower your head below the level of your heart and hold your breath for a few seconds.
3. Make the table so that the distance to all four corners is the same.
Rice. Extension
4. Read the table.
5. Record the time it took you to read the table.
Fluent Reading Techniques
1. Do not control eye movement.
2. Focus on the entire width of the page.
3. Do not move your eyes from left to right, trying to cover the entire horizontal line of text.
4. As words draw the attention of the reader, the eyes move in a chaotic direction.
5. If the word has caught the reader's attention, then the eyes are actively exploring the area around it.
6. The speed of fluent reading can be different, from five seconds to twenty per page.
7. When skimming the text, fluent reading is combined with reading individual paragraphs of the text at random.
8. With a clear and meaningful text, the reader reads fluently and does not feel remorse and doubt from skipping some entire paragraphs of the text, unless he begins to enjoy reading the text and reads everything.
9. It is sometimes enough for the reader to read the first few lines of the text, if he is sure that he will understand the content of the printed text.
10. A series of turns helps the reader to identify the beginning of the thesis and antithesis. For example: “It can be assumed”, “While”, “In response to this”.
After reading
1. Relax your body and recall the images from the reading material that have been created in your memory.
2. Answer a few questions for yourself: “How much did my level improve after reading?”, “What attracted me to this material?”, “What did I learn from this book?”, “How does this material differ from materials already known to me on similar topics? “Do I want to read more by this author?” "What attracted me to them?" What did I not like about them and why?
Factors hindering speed reading
You can increase your reading speed not only by acquiring speed reading skills and progressive reading strategies, but also by getting rid of factors that reduce reading speed, including:
1. Inability to distinguish the necessary information from the unnecessary.
2. Uncertainty in their strengths and their abilities. Maintain close contact with those who can really help you overcome inner fears and doubts.
3. Distracted attention. Your mind wanders and gets confused, because your brain is designed to process information quickly and read quickly. The left hemisphere is busy searching for meaning to the received signal from the organs of perception and verbally transmitted, and the right side of the brain does this search much faster. The brain maintains your speed and makes sure that you do not stray.
4. Reading strategies that involve the perception of words and reading, but not the meaning of the text.
5. Stress factors and external stimuli (home, work, family, friends, etc.). It is impossible to live in a vacuum and it is natural that the external environment influences a person. An unpleasant and nervous environment greatly complicates speed reading. In a stressful situation, Speed Reading can become simply impossible.
6. Lack of a clear purpose for reading.
7. Reading the same phrase more than once. If you find yourself reading the same phrase several times, then this means that you are still under the impression of "school reading", when you were forced to pronounce each word correctly and read the text aloud. The teachers made you go back and reread the word you mispronounced.
In the process of speed reading, a person gets used to extracting from the text the main thoughts contained in key words. A person determines the main idea contained in the text in order to acquire new knowledge using thinking. Fast reading strains the eyes much less than normal slow reading.
From the publisher
In his new book, the famous writer and psychologist Gerasim Avsharyan offers an original method for teaching speed reading. The reader will learn what the speed reading formula is and study each of its terms in detail. In addition, he will read three fascinating love stories at the same time, excerpts from which will serve to train speed reading.
The book is conditionally divided into two parts - theoretical and practical. It is necessary to read it sequentially, completing all the tasks of the author and not looking ahead. Already in the first part, the reader will get acquainted with a number of simple exercises that allow you to strengthen the eye muscles, expand the field of view and speed up the perception of both text and information in general. Following the recommendations of G. Avsharyan, a reader of any age will not only learn to read much faster, but will also become more observant, take a fresh look at the world around him and acquire a solid baggage of interesting knowledge in various sciences.
Instead of a preface
Reading is the best teaching.
A. S. Pushkin
After all, Pushkin is right - see the epigraph! To this day (despite the development of electronics and all kinds of storage media), reading remains the best teaching. And only thanks to reading we achieve serious results in studies and in any intellectual field. Therefore, I would call reading (that is, the ability to read productively, quickly and a lot) a solid foundation for future success. We will talk about this skill later.
Now to business.
My speed reading method is quite simple. There is neither frightening bulkiness in it (it is destructive from a pedagogical point of view), nor vagueness and vagueness of content (in this case, the reader, having read the book, does not understand what he needs to do now). No, I write briefly and in each chapter I talk about what should be done. The reader only has to start applying all this in order to properly form his speed reading skill. So I could rightfully give my book the title What Is to Be Done?, but Chernyshevsky with his novel What Is to Be Done? ahead of me, so I had to look for another.
A few words about how the book is arranged. It consists of two parts - theoretical and practical. However, this distinction is not too strict, because speed reading is a practical exercise. But at the same time, it is also a psychological phenomenon. And this is already knowledge, including from the field psychology of speed.
We need to understand what speed is. We know this, however, but now we need to understand it somehow in a new way and directly apply this knowledge in order to develop a speed skill. It is also important to get acquainted with the most optimal ways of developing a speed skill (in our case, the skill of speed reading). In a word, in the theoretical part, we will become good speed psychologists and then let's get to practice. I think this is enough to introduce. Now we can move on to the essence of my method. But first, try to quickly read the following passage from the found manuscript:
A few months ago, a wonderful event happened in my life. And I should have continued this story. Yes, laziness got in the way ...
What do I want to talk about? I want to tell you about the one I fell in love with...
Reading the found common notebook, I thought: who is this lover? And how to find it? After all, he will be glad to have his manuscript back. And I will thank him for using her fragments.
However, we do not waste time and move on to the theoretical part of the book, where we learn a lot of new things not only about speed reading, but also about the found manuscript. And a little later we will get acquainted with the correspondence of the greatest scientists - Sophia Kovalevskaya and Karl Weierstrass. And one more thing - let's read excerpts from the biography of one of my students; I taught her on the "triangular model of success", after which she achieved such results that I became jealous: is the student really going to surpass the teacher!
So there are three stories intertwined in the book. And this is not accidental: it is very useful for the mind to simultaneously follow these three plots, their development. In a word, we work in a multidimensional intellectual space. This is important, since, starting from the school bench, we are forced to be diversified (because already at school we simultaneously learn a variety of sciences).
However, when reading, it is advisable not to get ahead of yourself in order to find out the continuation of the stories. If you can patiently read to the next passage, it will be an excellent exercise in the development of the will (and the will plays one of the most important roles in our lives).
By letters.
And then - by syllables.
Then - according to the words: we perceive the whole word - and so word by word. Once a word, two words - and the sentence is read.
But you can go further: perceive two or more words at once in the same way as we used to read one word. But more on that later. I will only add that the writer Honore de Balzac perceived several lines at once (we chop on our noses that we need to read a lot: this is one of the best speed reading exercises).
Try reading this passage quickly. Just rush, ride on time. And then again, slower. And then fix the difference (approximately) between the full understanding of the text in normal reading and what was understood in frenzied reading ... Sorry, I wanted to say, in speed reading. So let's fly!
She came up to me and said:
- Can I be your student?
I thought I misheard. He looked at her questioningly.
And then I realized that everything was in order with the hearing.
I looked at her, eighth grader. I thought: to draw her portrait.
“So what do you want to learn?”
– I want to… study well…
- And how is your studies now?
- So-so…
I thought a little. He himself was once a teacher. School ... Longing seized me ...
Something connected with the school appeared ... Not something, but someone. A schoolgirl, not to draw a portrait of which would be a crime of the century. We must agree.
- No I do not agree.
She was doused with ice water. And the look - female - silently asked "why?"
I looked at her with reproach and displeasure.
“I haven’t painted portraits for a long time,” I say, “I don’t have enough time. And you have to draw...
She answered with rounded eyes. We chatted a little for decency and ...
Separated.
Somehow it didn't feel right. Why refused?
Houses. I'm sitting on the sofa. Reading... Or just turning pages... Or reading diagonally. Thoughts on my strange treatment of that eighth grader.
Hours passed.
The phone rang. Picked up the phone. She is. Hello.
Maybe you've changed your mind...
Of course, I changed my mind. If only she could guess how much I want to teach her a lot of what I know.
- But I said: I don’t feel like taking up a pencil now ...
- I want too.
- Draw.
- Well, then draw.
- I can not.
- Don't have a pencil?
- …I do not know how.
Silence.
- Well, okay, let's meet if I've done my homework. And I'll give you a riddle.
What other riddle?
Reading selective- this is fluent, without memorization, without analysis and conclusions reading ... Research activity. Vocabulary
I; cf. 1. to Read (1 5 characters). A cursory part of the drawings. Adopt the law in the second reading (after discussion for the second time). Speak with the reading of classical works (engage in recitation). 2. What they read, readable text (usually about ... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
reading- I; cf. 1) to read 1), 2), 3), 4), 5) Fluent reading. Reading / drawings. Adopt a law in the second reading (after discussion for the second time) Perform a reading of classical works (engage in recitation) 2) What is read, a readable text ... ... Dictionary of many expressions
I, cf. 1. Action by value. vb. read. Fluent reading. Reading drawings. □ I began to read [books] voraciously, and soon I was completely engrossed in reading. Dostoevsky, Netochka Nezvanova. It was an artist reciter who performed in Moscow ... ... Small Academic Dictionary
runaway, runaway, runaway. 1. On the run, fleeing. Runaway convict. 2. in value noun runaway, runaway, male, runaway, runaway, female A person who arbitrarily, secretly fled from his place of residence (obsolete). 3. Not too attentive and ... ... Explanatory Dictionary of Ushakov
Aya, oh. ◊ cursor reading ped. fluent reading, without detailed analysis (when teaching foreign languages). [From lat. cursorius running fast] … Small Academic Dictionary
Aya, oh. 1. Escaped from where l. And he was not a runaway soldier of the Austrian powder squads. Pushkin, My genealogy. | in meaning noun runaway, wow, m .; runaway, wow. Well, he says, Dosekin, so I disappeared, because I, he says, is a brother, a fugitive, from a soldier ... Small Academic Dictionary
FLUENT, oh, oh; fugitive 1. full Fleeing, escaping from where. B. serf. 2. Fast, no delay. B. look. Fluent reading (without difficulty). B. review of the manuscript (done hastily). Fluently (adv.) play the piano (skillfully and ... ... Explanatory dictionary of Ozhegov
Criminal Investigation Agent in dress and casual uniforms. The criminal investigation service of the Russian police in the period from 1866 to 1917, whose task was to solve ordinary crimes, conduct an inquiry on them, search for ... ... Wikipedia
Criminal Investigation Agent in dress and casual uniforms. The criminal investigation service of the Russian police in the period from 1866 to 1917, whose task was to solve ordinary crimes, conduct an inquiry on them, search for ... ... Wikipedia
Books
- Learning to read in syllables. 3 level of difficulty, . The book “Learning to read in warehouses. Difficulty Level 3 will help your child master fluent reading. The method of learning to read in warehouses is very effective, because it is warehouses, not syllables, ...
- Learning to read. adaptive stories. 3 level of difficulty, . Book 171; Learning to read. Difficulty level 3,187 will help your child learn fluent reading. The book is based on fascinating and child-friendly fairy tales: 171; Ilya ...
