Melvin Ng asked:


Obviously few people want to undertake the task of learning a new skill, such as speed reading, if there is no direct benefit. Life’s just too short.

So, what are the direct and indirect benefits of learning to speed read? The answer to this question very much depends at what stage in your life you are at. Here are some to consider:

High school / pre-college students

High school, pre-college, students are normally considered to be primary target groups for a speed reading programs. Basically, the reason why such students are seen as ideal candidates is because they at an age where they can still absorb new ideas without too onerous consideration – an important facet with learning to speed read.

Another upside to teaching high school students to speed read is the fact that they can take in far more information from their greater reading skills. Also, with advanced reading skills, students should also be able to comprehend more of what they are reading. Furthermore, with potentially the toughest period of their lives ahead of them, so far as obtaining information from reading is concerned, learning to speed read at this time is seen as being extremely advantageous.

College students

If a college student has not learnt, for one reason or another, to speed read by the time they enter college, it is generally considered essential that they do so within their first year (along with learning short-hand!). Practically speaking, this is likely to be the busiest time of a person’s reading life. Moreover, students are often required to read huge amounts of materials, comprehend them, condense them and then comment on them. Having the ability to speed read is nothing short of a God-send skill.

Work employees

Even though you may not have learnt to speed read prior to entering the workforce, this doesn’t mean that you no longer need to learn speed reading. Consider this: three quarters of all the world’s reading materials (which includes every book and magazine ever written) is contained within the filing cabinets of offices! And, even in this electronic age, with data protection laws in place, we are still required to read vast amounts of information at work each year.

Learning to speed read will not only allow you to read quickly, with greater comprehension of the material, but it’ll also provide you with more time to be getting on with the other tasks in your daily working life!

Pleasure

Again, even if you are only reading for pleasure, the mere fact you have more chance of comprehending that romance novel if you have the skills at-hand that allow you to speed read should be sufficient to convince you of the value of learning this essential skill. Of course, pleasure reading is a lot more enjoyable than technical reading, so if you do have speed reading skills, this will allow you the chance to read even more of those books you always wanted to read, but didn’t have time for!

Language students

One final group that we should not overlook is “English as a second language” students. Clinical evidence has shown that ESL students who have the ability to speed read have a far greater chance of comprehending the English language and are more inclined to stick to learning English. This is not to say, of course, that speed reading is the answer to all your English language problems, but it is an additional weapon to help you conquer the language barriers!

Conclusion

So, to sum up, it doesn’t really matter at what stage in your life you are at, provided that you read at anytime during the day, even if it is only the daily newspaper, you are likely to benefit from the skills acquired from learning to speed read. You are also likely to be able to comprehend more of the information you read. And, there’s every chance that because you understand and comprehend what you have read, your long-term memory will be able to retain this information for a future time. All-in-all, some very good reasons to learn speed reading now!



Christine

Dan asked:


Like with a lot of disciplines or skills in life, to get good at speed reading you will need to have a strong motivation to want to develop the skill.  Like with any other skill, you will get better at it the more you do it, and having some from of motivation will help you stick with it long enough to get good.

A big part of sticking with the process as you go though the learning curve and development process as you practice your speed reading skills is to have a reason or a motivating thing that will keep you going.

How to develop motivation to do anything is very simple, all you have to do is think of and come up with a list of those benefits and good things you will be able to be,  do or have as a result of being able to speed read well. Then when ever you feel yourself loosing motivation to carry on, just go back to your list of motivating things and that will help to re-motivate you to carry on and maintain and improve your speed reading skills.

Vision

Having a vision or an image of why you are developing your speed reading skill s is a great way to motivate you to carry on and improve your speed reading skills.

To do this simply draw pictures of what you will get as a result of being a good speed reader and colour them in so they are bright and colourful, and look at them daily so they become a daily reminder and a motivating focus as you practice.

Another big piece that is important to work on in order to become a fast speed reader, is to boost your speed reading stamina, your speed reading stamina is the amount of time you are able to read at speed for with good comprehension and recall. Boosting your speed reading stamina will help you to train and recondition your brain to reading at faster speeds and so will allow you to get all of the benefits of speed reading faster.

I have collected together all of the important things that you will have to do in order to boost your speed reading stamina, all of this information has been arranged into a 7 part e-course that you can take. To receive this valuable resource for boosting your speed reading stamina which will help you to increase your reading speed faster, simply visit my reading stamina web page and enter you name and a email address so that I can email it to you right away.

Thanks DAN!



Nellie

Melvin Ng asked:


Below we set out some of the circumstances under which it may be beneficial to be able to speed read and other circumstances where it may not be so beneficial to be able to speed read:

When it is beneficial to speed read

Essentially, the great joy of being able to speed read is the ability to take in large volumes of data over as short a period as possible. Consequently, those of us who find ourselves in circumstances where we need to read excessive amount of information in a short period of time; and, importantly, to comprehend that material at the same time, will benefit from this skill. Such persons include:

School students:

School students are ideal candidates for speed reading skills because they are at an age where they can still absorb new concepts and ideas, whilst also having the need to have advanced reading skills in order to be able to read lots of school texts;

College students:

As with school students, college students need to be able to read lots of textbook material in a short space of time. Therefore, the ability to be able to speed read is an important and useful skill.

Work employees:

Those of us who are working “white-collar” clerical jobs certainly need to have the ability to speed read as this will cut-down on an otherwise very long day. With almost all of the world’s reading material being generated in offices, as faxes, memos, letters, reports, etc. being able to speed read becomes more important as time progresses, not less!

English language students:

As speed reading skills enable you to comprehend what you are reading better, English language students are an often quoted group of people who benefit from the ability to be able to speed read.

Pleasure:

With the amount of advertising in modern magazines, the ability to speed read is vital if you want to read this month’s magazine before next month’s issue! And, that’s nothing compared to Sunday’s edition of the newspaper. Can you image trying to read Sunday’s paper without speed reading skills? – Well, it simply cannot be done these days!

In short, it doesn’t really matter what stage of your life you are at, the ability to be able to speed read is an essential one.

Occasions when speed reading may not be beneficial

Having said that speed reading is an essential element no matter what stage you are at in your life, there are a number of circumstances under which it may not be overly beneficial to be able to speed read. These include:

If you have a reading problem:

Speed reading techniques use cluster methods. This is to say, the reader needs to group whole paragraphs together and skim read them. However, if a person has a reading disability that doesn’t allow them to be able to process the clustering of paragraphs easily, then this may result in a feeling of embarrassment, discomfort, or even slowness. In such circumstances, it is far better for the confidence of the reader if they resort to traditional methods of reading each word on the page word-by-word.

Age:

Care needs to be taken at what age a student starts to learn to speed read as certain clinical studies have shown that students who try to learn to speed read too early can be left with counterproductive problems – such as dyslexia. As such, it is not recommended that children below 10 learn to speed read.

Comprehension:

In certain circumstances some readers who speed read are left with a loss of comprehension of the reading material, rather than more. If this is the case, then invoking speed reading skill may be counterproductive.

To sum it up, like most things in life, the ability to speed read is something most of us should try to conquer, which is not to say that it is necessarily beneficial to all of us, nor that we should invoke it at all times.

Learn it and use it to your advantage, as and when is needed.



Carol

Melvin Ng asked:


The ability to speed read is an important skill in today’s world, where – whether we are students or at work – we are often expected to read hefty amounts of materials on a daily basis. As a result, improving your speed reading technique is something each and every one of us should not only do, but maintain. What, then, are speed reading techniques?

Speed reading – the essential elements

Before you start to learn any particular speed reading technique, you need to consider that all speed reading techniques rely on three essential elements:

1. A desire to improve you reading speed;

2. A willingness to give new ideas a chance; and

3. Motivation, discipline and continued practice.

Without these three key elements, no speed reading technique is going to succeed.

Speeding reading technique (1) – Skimming

Almost all successful speed readers will attest to the fact that they are a successful speed reader because they have a form of peripheral vision that allows them to see large amount of data on a page and to “skim” what they are reading. In short, speed reading like this means that one is not reading each and every word on the page, but merely scanning through the material. Using this speed reading technique, every now and then you will come across a keyword or phrase and it is this that will provide you with the essence of what is being written. The rest of the information on the page is discarded.

Although this speed reading technique would seem to indicate that the reader does not fully comprehend what has been written, in fact studies have shown this is not the case – majority of speed readers using this technique actually increased their comprehension of the reading materials!

Speed reading technique (2) – first sentence reading

Unlike speed reading technique (1), in speed reading technique (2), the reader will read the first sentence of each paragraph, in order to get the crux (main idea) of the idea behind the paragraph and will then skim read the remainder of the paragraph. This process is then repeated on down the page until such time as all the reading material has been exhausted.

Using speed reading technique (2), it is generally understood that the reader will glean enough information from the first sentence not to be overly concerned about the information contained in the remainder of the paragraph, where the writer will merely be reinforcing the notion set out in sentence one. However, this technique does fall-down on one major point – it pre-supposes that a paragraph only has one idea, which is clearly not always the case! If you find that you are reading material where the writer has used multiple ideas in the same paragraph, you may need to adapt your speed reading technique to one of the other speed reading techniques.

Speed reading technique (3) – Group wording

There is a term in speed reading circles that is seen as being one of the major demons of reading: “subvocalization”. Subvocalization is a clinical term for word-for-word reading – and it’s a huge no-no in speed reading techniques. Subvocalization slows reading down, without providing any upswing in comprehension to counter the lost reading time.

Group wording, as the name suggests, is where the reader looks at a group of words and phrases at the same time. Using the group wording technique, speed readers are able to read large chunks of information at the same time – thus, saving time.

Additional speed reading techniques

Aside from the specific speed reading techniques in 1 to 3 above, there are a number of habits/practices that are generally considered counter-productive to speed reading – thus will have an affect on your speed reading abilities. In no particular order, these include:

subvocalization – as already stated, this is where you speak out the words you read. It’s a major cause of slow reading. Unfortunately, as most of us are taught to speak out the words we read when we learn to read as children, it is also one of the hardest habits to break. All that can be said is that you keep plugging away at trying to eradicate this habit. digressing – digressing is where the reader will read a passage, then return to re-read it, usually in the mistaken belief that they will be able to comprehend better what has been written on a second read. Again, in speed reading circles this is seen as a major no-no, bad habit, which needs to be broken!

Conclusion

So, if you want to improve your speed reading skills, you need to remember not to subvocalize or re-read passages, and to read great chunks at one time by broadening your eye-span. Simple really! Actually, in fairness, it will take time to learn, and don’t expect to get it right the first time. Don’t push this issue too much, as pushing it may prove to be counter-productive.



Cecil