Hello friends! Lyudmila Redkina is with you. There are times when we need to process a huge amount of information. And it is important to “swallow” and remember these terabytes of new knowledge correctly. There are many different techniques that develop memory and thinking, but I want to talk about speed reading, which makes your brain more active, increases the speed of all mental processes, you move forward and keep up with the times! Below I will tell you how to learn to read quickly and describe effective methods for developing speed reading.
COMPLETE LIST OF HUMAN SKILLS
Benefits of Fast Reading
Brain research has given us valuable information: it can “think out” without awareness, “complete” without the whole picture. But many people have no idea about this. We are trying to improve memory and brain function, although initially we do not know what it is really capable of.
Did you know that without vowels in a line you will understand what is being said? Did you realize that when you close the third part of the text vertically, you will also fully understand its meaning? Teaching speed reading techniques is based on these seemingly trifles. But when “absorbing” large amounts of information, speed reading saves a lot of time.
Most likely, among your friends there is a person who needs a maximum of 1 day to read a book, while you will need about 5 days. Yes, and sometimes it’s so difficult to force yourself to read a book! There are not many people who read quickly, but they use this skill to their advantage to develop their thinking and succeed at work. Who would refuse success and saving time?!
As you watch people read quickly, you may have noticed how they turn the pages within seconds. Do they really not remember or see anything? They see everything, but when reading this way, their brain works hard according to a previously worked out scheme, the person knows:
- what information is he looking for;
- how it will be useful to him in life;
- what other ways can he obtain such information?
All these tricks help you cope with the task of obtaining information as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Preparation
To learn how to read quickly at home, you need to prepare. Our main computer will do the rest for us. The brain is used to working quickly. If you quickly read this text now, you will understand what we are talking about.
According to rzeuzlattam ilssoevadny anligsyokgo unviertiseta, not vzhnao, in kaokm proyakde in solve rsapjooleny bkuvy. Galovne, so that the preavya and pslonedaya bkvuy blyi on the mseta. Osatlyne mgout seldovt in ablosyuontm bsepordyak, all-torn tkest without wandering chtaitsey. The main thing is that we consider everything as a whole, and not separately.
Happened? Me too! If you don’t think about each letter separately, you can “swallow” a large piece of text, even if the words and letters in it are confusing.
You can also try to read the text in this picture, where some letters are missing at all, they have been replaced, but the brain still reads the text, and you understand the meaning.
Speed reading mixed up letters You have decided to develop your speed reading, but where to start? I recommend starting with statistics so that over time you can see what you have achieved. Statistics is a test that will tell you how fast you read.
An excellent tool is the reading speed test on the Wikium website. This is an excellent development platform where you can find exercise equipment for brain development. I can boast of my results: 600 words per minute and 50% text comprehension. This is an average level, there is still something to strive for. What are your results? Please note your initial results in the comments.
After passing the test, it's time to start developing your speed of reading and understanding information. Yes, that's the rub. You can read quickly, but in order to remember what you read, you need to practice.
By the way, about children. It is quite difficult to teach a first-grader how to speed read, but a girl or boy of 9–10 years old can be trained to quickly and understandingly absorb information. Various techniques help with this, in particular a table of syllables.
When to start
Experts recommend mastering speed reading techniques no earlier than 14 years of age, when the child has already mastered the basics of regular reading and literacy. If you start earlier, it will be more difficult for him to complete the school curriculum.
At the same time, exercises for children to develop memory and speed reading are found everywhere. All these familiar labyrinths and comparisons of pictures, riddles, rhymes and other means are a kind of gymnastics for memory and attention. Therefore, the child must master them. Much in this case depends on the parents who are willing to spend time and effort on their own baby. But you shouldn’t get too carried away when cultivating a genius. Excessive concentration on this issue does not allow the child to develop other areas of life, including psycho-emotional, and in the future he may have problems with communication.
Until what age can speed reading be developed? No matter how long it takes, a person’s brain functions until the end of his life and is always ready for stress. It’s just that at an older age it will be a little more difficult due to less flexibility of the mind, but on the other hand, this is a way to keep it in good shape and improve overall thinking. And this is a very important point in preventing senile dementia.
Anyone can develop speed reading abilities; it is easier to do this at a young age. To master the technique, there is a lot of all kinds of literature and computer programs. The main thing is to have the desire and enough patience. Even people who have not mastered the technique perfectly note an improvement in memory, attention and thinking, as well as easier work with texts and their understanding.
Syllable table
The syllable table helps to train reading at any age. Below is a simple table in Russian.
| A | ABOUT | U | E | AND | |
| B | BA | BO | BOO | BE | BI |
| IN | VA | IN | VU | BE | IN AND |
| G | GA | GO | GU | GE | GI |
| D | YES | BEFORE | DU | DE | DI |
| Z | BEHIND | ZO | memory | WE | ZI |
To improve your skill, read out loud all the rows of the table to the right and left. Gradually speed up your reading pace. Then you can move on to syllables consisting of 2 consonants and 1 vowel.
| A | ABOUT | U | E | AND | |
| NS | NSA | NSO | NSO | NSE | NSI |
| MK | MKA | MKO | MKU | MKE | MKI |
| WB | VBA | UBO | Wetland | VBE | nosocomial infection |
| ETC | PRA | PRO | PRU | PRE | AT |
| ST | STA | ONE HUNDRED | STU | CTE | STI |
The training technique is the same here. Try to reach your maximum reading pace. It is necessary to read aloud to an adult in order to develop rapid reading.
A child of 7 years old can also be given these syllable tables when learning to read. This will be a kind of stimulation for reading for his brain and visual analyzer.
Using this technique, already at the age of 10 the child will be different from his peers. After all, at this age, children’s brains are especially plastic and receptive to educational programs. It’s us adults who need to think about how to develop memory and attention in order to work more efficiently.
For children over 8 years old
Continue improving your reading speed in second grade. Eight-year-old children are independent and fast. They have outgrown the first grade activities, so offer them other fun exercises and games:
Looking for a word, line
The meaning of the game: a schoolchild (2nd grade) finds all the words in the text that begin with the same letter. Searching for a whole phrase is a more complicated version of the task.
The exercise teaches attentiveness and develops the left hemisphere of the brain - the linguistic one.
Insert letters
A second grader is presented with a text with missing letters. To read it and understand it, you need to think of endings and prefixes. This speeds up the pace of text comprehension in the future and helps to combine letters into whole words.
Fixing the error
The teacher reads the text, the children follow. The teacher deliberately makes a mistake in the ending of a word, root, etc. The task of a 2nd grade student is to correct the inaccuracy.
Read at speed
A second-grader independently takes measurements of reading technique, timing a minute, and keeps a diary of successes. Normally, by the second grade, children read at least 70 words, in the third - 100 words, in the fourth - 120.
Playing "Hidden Words"
The game is similar to reading anagrams. Children find words (large and small) in the field with letters. It looks like this:
Words can be selected on one topic or randomly. It is better for primary school students to provide a list of words that need to be found, leaving the task of isolating them on the field.
And one more option that you can print and use with your child.
Reading and counting
A second grader reads the text and counts the given sounds. For example, in the following poem, find out the number of “o” sounds.
The ball is bouncing along the path,
We can't catch the fast ball.
Develops multitasking skills and concentration.
How to learn speed reading with exercises
You can help your child learn to read quickly using the following exercises:
- Reading simple words. Write the words on separate sheets of paper: house, hedgehog, cat, moat, whale. Show them to your child, and he should read them as quickly as possible. When he learns to read them instantly, write words of 4 letters, then 5. After that, move on to word combinations.
- Show your child words with pictures first. Then cover the pictures. The next step is to show words along with examples so that he learns to quickly count in his head. Make sure that he reads correctly, because not only visual memory is involved in the process, but also auditory memory.
- Along with the development of rapid reading, develop diction. To do this, use tongue twisters or rap with your children (within reason!). Exercising together with your child will bring a lot of positive emotions to you and a lot of impressions for the child.
By the way, such training is suitable for learning to read French, German, English and any other foreign languages. In addition, you will also be able to read with mixed up letters, since this speed reading technique also works in foreign languages.
Speed reading techniques in different languages
But you can’t read it like that in Arabic, because it uses signs instead of letters.
Exercises for adults differ from those listed above. The following tasks will help you read quickly.
Settings
Tune in. Look at the picture of your desktop, look at its small details. Then close your eyes and remember the whole picture, down to the smallest detail. Open your eyes and compare the real picture and the imagined one. When reading, you need to pay attention to the content, and not to the smallest details.
Metronome
If you have a metronome, set it to a slow speed. Read the passage of text slowly. Then increase your speed. You should achieve not only quick reading, but also understanding of the text.
Reverse order
Read in reverse order. The reading speed to the right and left should become equal.
Help from a friend
Ask someone to find a word in the text, then find it as quickly as possible. Practice this several times.
Slip
One of the fastest ways to learn is the “sliding” exercise. Do not peer at the letters, but try to cover the maximum number of units in a few seconds: letters, signs, numbers. At first you will remember little, then you will be able to absorb more and more information.
By the way, this exercise works when learning to read notes from a sheet, drawings and other necessary information.
Diagonal
An exercise where you read the beginning and end of a line. There is even a program for reading diagonally. At first you will not understand anything, but after some time of training you will see that your brain is absorbing much more information.
“I dispelled the myth that at school they teach you how to read correctly”
— I learned to speed read a long time ago—in 2008.
I was interested in trying something new. The price of the issue was small, and I always had a problem with remembering what I read. And I read a lot. Dmitry Ivanovich Economic Observer
There were about 10 face-to-face classes twice a week on weekends. We were also given methodological literature, homework, and a CD for practicing the “rhythm-knock” technique. After the course, I trained myself for about 3 months.
As a result, I increased my reading speed of regular (non-technical) literature from 60 to 150 pages per hour with a qualitative improvement in memorization. And this is not the limit. I dispelled the myth that we are taught to read and memorize correctly at school.
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Useful tips on how to learn to read well and quickly
As you learn to quickly process written information, you should use the following tips.
Don't say the words
Try to read only with your eyes. Even at school, we get used to pronouncing words in a whisper when we read a text. This interferes with speed reading. It is known that moving the lips slows it down. So break this habit if you want to speed up your reading.
Don't come back
Often, when the reader finishes a line, he returns to the one he just read. This slows down the pace significantly. Try not to return to the same line several times; it is better to use a ruler or your index finger.
Don't miss the text
An amazing technique is text tracking. Turning your head and using your hands to help speed up the reading process. Connecting peripheral vision is very useful for mastering a huge amount of information.
Learn
Don't forget that any skill requires dedication and training. You can learn how to read better from books. For example, the book by E. A. Nefedova and O. V. Uzorova “The fastest way to learn to read” will be very useful for you. Syllable tables.” These authors also help you learn to read English quickly.
Video
Also be open to receiving helpful tips from video sources. See one of them below.
Brief introduction
Being able to read quickly is not just about words. The main value of this skill is that it can free up a huge amount of free time, allowing you to master any literature, from technical to fiction, at least three times faster. Not a bad result, do you agree?
Many people believe that achieving such a result will require months of hard work and training. But this is not the case at all - you will be able to read faster after just half an hour of your first lessons. To prove this, we want to invite you to conduct an interesting experiment, but first we will say a few more introductory words.
This article is based on data from a PX Project workshop held in 1998 at Princeton University. This seminar was dedicated to fast reading, or more precisely, to increasing reading speed.
The PX Project was a special cognitive experiment that lasted three hours. According to the organizers’ idea, after completing it, participants could increase their reading speed by 386%. The participants themselves were people of different language groups, and some of them suffered from dyslexia. But even they learned to read up to 3 thousand words per minute, which is about 10 printed pages, i.e. they read one page in 6 seconds!
If you are interested, here are some statistics: Americans read approximately 200-300 words per minute, and Russians read 120-180 words per minute, which is due to language characteristics. But anyone can increase this figure to 900 words per minute. The only thing that is necessary here is to master the principles of operation of the visual apparatus, to realize what time is spent on when a person reads, and to stop wasting it on it.
Having dealt with the main mistakes, having practiced a little and gaining a little experience, you will already begin to read noticeably faster. At the same time, you will not just “stupidly” look at the text and run your eyes over it without catching the meaning, but will learn to perceive what you read and remember it.
In short, let's get down to practice. Below we will give a slightly modified variation of the exercises from the PX Project, and at the end of the article we will offer a number of auxiliary recommendations. Although now it won’t hurt to get acquainted with useful tips. Let your learning begin by watching this video.
Training for mastering speed reading
The Speed Reading course from Vikium will help you achieve excellent results. The course will allow you to improve the processing and memorization of information. You will receive exercises to develop attention and memory, exercise equipment to activate brain activity, and master various techniques for concentration and peripheral vision.
Vikium offers a 7-day money back guarantee!
This investment in yourself will pay off very quickly, and you will become much more productive.
In any case, friends, you have several options on which way to go: you can improve yourself or buy a course for little money and achieve results as quickly as possible.
Also on our blog there is a selection of the 11 best speed reading courses.
Check out 11 courses →
