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Read Faster, Read Smarter
Written by Michael Southon
The Internet is a new continent where the maps are constantly changing. What was a small stream becomes a roaring river. What was a desert becomes a lush green valley.
To keep up with the changing landscape of the Internet you must read. And the best place to read about new developments on the Internet is in Newsletters or Ezines.
But you may not be reading efficiently.
Did you know that most of us use only 4% to 10% of our mental abilities?
Speed reading is not just about reading faster; its about learning to use much more of the extraordinary powers of the Mind.
When you read, are you aware of an inner voice that follows the words as your eyes move across the page or the computer screen? This inner voice is called subvocalization. You probably experience it as a slight movement in the tongue or throat region. As long as you subvocalize, you limit your reading to the speed of normal speech, to about 300 w.p.m.
The Mind is capable of thinking much faster than that. So when you subvocalize, youre literally holding back your mind.
Try this exercise:
As you read, count to yourself, silently, from one to ten. Or, repeat the sound Eee, Eee, Eee. It will be impossible to do this at the same time as subvocalizing, so this is an excellent way of breaking the habit of subvocalization.
As you do this exercise, youll become aware that youre no longer processing the words in the tongue/throat region but in an area called thought stream that you experience in the top of your head.
Thought stream moves much faster than subvocalization. And thats why people who subvocalize often have comprehension problems.
Theres a mismatch between reading speed and thinking speed. The Mind is constantly racing ahead of the inner voice and so it gets bored. You experience this as an inability to hold your attention on what youre reading. You have to back-skip words, or read the same line twice.
As your reading speed catches up with your thinking speed, reading becomes much less tiring and your comprehension improves.
Once youve got a feeling for reading in thought stream, the next thing to do is speed up your eye movements. This will also help break the habit of sub-vocalization, since your eyes will be moving faster than you can possibly subvocalize.
Your eyes move across the written page in a series of quick jumps. Between each jump theres a stop lasting a fraction of second, called a fixation. The fixation is when the eye actually takes in the written word.
The untrained eye takes about a quarter of a second at each fixation, and takes in 2 or 3 words per fixation.
By speeding up you eye movements, youll learn to make fewer fixations per line and take in more words per fixation.
Try this exercise:
If you use a glass anti-glare screen, draw 2 vertical lines in felt-tip, 5 cms apart, so that you have a strip 5 cms wide located over the middle of the text you are reading.
Now move your eyes in a Z pattern down this central strip, at a speed faster slightly faster than is comfortable.
Because your Mind is not reading each word, it is forced to fill in the gaps. This engages much more of the Mind, since it has to build associations and patterns in the written material. This in turn leads to greater comprehension and increased memory of what was read.
This technique takes advantage of the fact that much of written English is highly redundant; a lot of words can be skipped without any loss of meaning.
When your eyes move down a central strip of the text, you also engage much more of your peripheral vision. And that in turn brings the right hemisphere of the brain into the reading process. You make much more use of the right-brains ability to synthesize and build relationships within the material.
So speed reading is not just about reading faster; it also allows you to access much more of the brain and thereby increases your comprehension and creativity.
For an excellent, free, speed-reading course, visit:
The Speed Reading Course http://www.trans4mind.u-net.com/speed_reading/index.html
Here are some more free speed-reading sites:
The Study Hall Free Speed Reading Programs http://www.studyhall.com/sread.htm
Road To Reading Home http://www.roadtoreading.org/
University of Texas Speed Reading http://www.utexas.edu/student/lsc/sprdg.html
Speed Reading Links http://www.readingsoft.com/flinks.html
ReadRace: Free Java application for speed reading http://supershareware.co.uk/Apps/8080.asp
WannaLearn.com: Personal Enrichment : Speed Reading http://www.wannalearn.com/Personal_Enrichment/Speed_Reading/
(c) 2000 by Michael Southon
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezine-writer.com
Additional Articles by Michael Southon
How To Create a Perpetual Traffic Generator
How To Use the Multiplier Effect in Web Marketing
Is Your Ezine Being Zapped
5 Power Tips To Double Your Sales
A Guide To Automated Email Marketing
Eight Tips for Ezine Writers
Great Ideas For Your Next Article
How To Boost Your Affiliate Sales With Free Articles
How To Choose the Right Ezines For Your Ads
How To Create and Market Your own EBook
How To Make Your Resource Box Sell
How To Mind Map Your Business
How To Reverse Engineer Your Success
How To Set Up an Ezine Encyclopedia
How To Tweak Your Website For More Sales
How To Use Articles To Build Your Affiliate Program
How To Win The Affiliate Game
Interviews with WellKnown Ezine Writers 1 Bob Leduc
Interviews with WellKnown Ezine Writers 2 John Colanzi
Interviews with WellKnown Ezine Writers 3 Shelley Lowery
Popularity Your Key to a Page 1 Listing
My First Year In Cyber Space
Profit From The Author Inside You
Review eBook Secrets Exposed
Review Profit From The Author Inside You
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