HOW FAST do you read? How much do you understand and remember when you read? Probably you cannot answer these questions, for few of us know our actual reading skill. However, whether you are now an excellent, average, or poor reader, you can learn to read considerably faster and still understand and remember what you read. To enable you to improve your reading skill, this unit presents a one month's reading improvement program. As part of this program, you will determine your present reading speed and your percentage of comprehension. You will then be shown how you can double or even triple your rate of comprehension.
THE READING PROCESS
When you are reading, your eyes move across a line of print in a number of pauses called fixations. It is only during the fixation that you actually see or read; nothing is seen during the movement of your eyes from one fixation point to another. The only sweeping movement of the eyes made while reading is from the end of one line back to the beginning of the next line. Most good readers have a wide perception span; that is, they see several words at each fixation. Poor readers usually see only one or two words. Your eyes are probably capable of a much wider span than you realize. To determine what you actually can see in one fixation, try the following exercise. Look at the middle number, the one with a line below it. Hold your eyes steadily on the middle number and determine how many numbers you can see on either side of the middle number. Be sure your eyes do not move left or right from the center number.
9 6 7 2 8 3 5 4 6
From this exercise, you probably discovered that you could see much more than the center number on which your eyes were fixated. You can readily understand that your rate of reading will be greatly increased if you increase your span of perception. The following drills will give you practice in developing your perception span.
EYE SPAN PRACTICE DRILLS
Directions: Use a card or piece of paper to cover the numbers in the first column until you are ready to begin. Move the card down the first column, fixating only on the center number. Keeping your eyes fixed on the center number, try to read the entire span silently without shifting the eyes from left to right. When you have finished the first column, move to the other columns and follow the same procedure. Try to see each group of numbers as quickly as possible. Continue to practice with this drill for a few minutes every day until you can read all of the numbers in each column in one quick fixation.
RAPID READING AND COMPREHENSION
HOW FAST do you read? How much do you understand and remember when you read? Probably you cannot answer these questions, for few of us know our actual reading skill. However, whether you are now an excellent, average, or poor reader, you can learn to read considerably faster and still understand and remember what you read. To enable you to improve your reading skill, this unit presents a one month's reading improvement program. As part of this program, you will determine your present reading speed and your percentage of comprehension. You will then be shown how you can double or even triple your rate of comprehension.
COMPREHENSION INCREASES WITH SPEED
You may have heard people say that they prefer to read slowly because they want to understand what they read. They argue that the rapid reader skims over the printed page and misses the points he should be getting, that the slow reader is best. Numerous scientific studies show that the slow reader does not necessarily have a better understanding of the material he has read. In fact, the rapid reader generally understands better than the slow reader. Research in the field of reading also reveals that comprehension does not suffer, but indeed usually improves, as the reading rate increases. This is especially true for the slow reader who undertakes a reading program to increase his reading skill. In the following section, we will discuss the reading process more fully so that you may better understand why comprehension tends to increase with speed.
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