How Does Speed Reading Work And How Will It Help You?
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Does speed reading work? See if you have ever been in this situation: Youve just found this very interesting book but just cant find the time to read it. Your teacher just gave you a three-chapter assignment and gave a hint that a pop quiz might just happen next meeting. Your boss is requiring you to review a 200-page business agreement that your company is entering intoand he needs your opinion the next day. Does this sound familiar? Have you ever wished you could just read everything faster? Have you ever wondered how speed reading will work for you? If you are getting tired of reading and rereading every paragraph because you just cant comprehend the information, then maybe speed reading is for you. Speed reading has been one of the hottest selling items in the market today. From bookstores to online shops, youll find different ways of increasing speed and comprehension. They can be audio files, books or software programs. All of them promise to speed up your reading skills.
So how does speed reading work? How can it improve your comprehension? The concept of speed reading is pretty simple: it increases your speed by practicing your eyes to avoid rereading words youve already read, stopping you from vocalizing the words being read, whether by silently moving your lips or reading the individual words through your mind and making you concentrate and focus only on the material you are reading instead of wandering off. The objective is for you to read the sentence lines or blocks of words instead of individual words. Sounds too optimistic? Think again.
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Some people find it hard to concentrate on the material they are reading because their mind tends to drift off from the topic at hand especially if the material they are reading is boring or full of technical details that are hard to comprehend. You certainly think faster than you speak and if you are slow in reading, you feel bored and your mind will wander off. But if you practice speed reading, youll find that you finish the material with more focus and comprehension because you read almost as fast as you think.
The reason people read slowly is because when we were children, we were taught to read individual words. You may never really get to outgrow and move away from this habit even though you could already read individual words with one look, called sight words which were taken to the next level by speed reading education. Instead of recognizing words, speed reading will make your recognize groups of words with one sweep of the text. With constant practice, you can even recognize several groups and lines of words. Similarly, some people move their lips when they read an article. Some will pronounce the words in their minds. This is called sub-vocalization and it slows down your reading speed. With speed reading practice, sub-vocalization will be terminated without making you lose your comprehension. In the end, if you ask again the question does speed reading work the answer is a resounding yes.
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