Speed-Reading is a nice skill to have. As most of the knowledges are gained from books, and there are so many readings to digest in work, speedreading can actually save us time. Here is the quick start for you on learning this skill. Keith Drury has written a quick article on teaching this technique. He starts off with myths of reading, then talk about preparation, rapid reading techniques and finally retention techniques. Some techniques in speed reading are:
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4. Use your finger. For most beginning speed-readers this is a shock. They remember reading in grade school with their finger and assume it slows one down. Actually the finger is your pace car. It leads you forward at a speedy pace, and keeps you on focus and avoiding back-skipping. There are several ways to use your finger (or hand) but just try it out for starters. As you improve, buy one of the books on speed-reading and settle on the pattern which works best for you.5. Break the Back-skip habit. Most of us read along a line of type like this one to get the interpretation of the meaning, but as we read our eyes jump back to dwell on a word we just passed. We do this without knowing it. In fact, probably the only way to discover how many times you back skip is to have someone watch you read and count the eye-darts back. But, unless you have someone you feel pretty comfortable staring you in the face while you read, just trust me — you probably back-skip. How to stop? First confess you do it. Then start recognizing when you do it. Finally when tempted to back-skip, treat the book like a movie — that is, even if you miss something in a movie, you don’t stop the video and replay it. You just let it flow on through, hoping you’ll make it up later.
6. Use your peripheral vision. Just like you must develop a muscle in the gym, so your mind can be trained to use the eye-gate to take in a broader amount of data. For instance, instead of reading left to right across the lines, pretend there is a line right down the middle of this page and you are following the line. Let your eye take in through peripheral vision the phrases to the right or left. Can you do it? With practice you can train your mind to read on “both sides of the road” even though your eyes are on the center line. To practice this skill most speed readers actually draw lines down pages of a book until they have mastered the skill with an invisible line. Let your mind drink in the information on the page without looking directly at it — just like you “see” the sides of the road when driving an automobile.
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Speed-Reading Techniques – [Keith Drury] (Link not working)
Speed-Reading Techniques – [Keith Drury @ Archive.org version]
