10 Days to Faster Reading Read online

  The Three Passive Habits for Losing the Reading Race

  The most common passive reading habits are mind wandering, regression, and subvocalization. They prevent you from reaching the finish line efficiently. You cannot get rid of any of them, only reduce them. Becoming aware of them is the first step to improving your chances of winning.

  Mind Wandering

  Mind wandering is also known as daydreaming. All readers do it but active readers do it less than passive ones. Mind wandering while reading is effective if you are mentally applying what you are reading to something you already know. For example, if you took a trip to Italy several years ago and you're reading a magazine article about Italian art preservation activities, your mind most likely wanders to your trip. You mentally relate what you personally experienced with the information presented in the article. This is what I call active mind wandering because this is how you learn. You build bridges of knowledge from what you know to the new material on the page.

  I use a concept called brain glue. Everything you have learned and experienced is your brain glue. When you stretch it and stick new information to it, then you are active. If you wallow in it without stretching or adding to it, then you are passive.

  Passive mind wandering is thinking about a million other unrelated tasks or plans, such as remembering to make a vet appointment, or thinking about an upcoming party, or thinking about. You fill in the blank!

  Too much passive mind wandering slows you down, prevents you from getting better comprehension skills, and wastes your time. If you want to edge closer toward the winner's circle, then you need to reduce your passive mind wandering.

  Regression

  Regression is a flick of your eyes back to a word or words previously read. For example, if you have ever arrived at the bottom of a page wondering what you just read, you are forced to regress to the top. Many people unconsciously and habitually flick their eyes backward as they read forward on the same line of text. If you frequently get sleepy while reading, even while sitting upright at a desk or table, chances are your eyes are regressing a lot.

  As with mind wandering, there is active and passive regression. Active regression is intentionally going back looking for what you missed. You are reading consciously but you don't quite get the author's meaning. Sometimes, for example, you need to go back after you come across a word you don't know. You go back with a purpose in mind.

  Passive regression is when you go back and reread words or passages because your mind is wandering or your concentration is off. Many people simply do not trust their brain when reading. This insecurity creates a situation ripe for passive regression. They feel they have to double back while reading to make sure they understand the content. It's similar to watching a movie. Most times you hear everything said but sometimes you miss its meaning or you thought you heard incorrectly. If you are watching at home on your VCR, you take the remote and rewind (regress) to hear it again. If you are in a movie theater, you cannot rewind the film. You have to trust that either you heard correctly or that you'll figure it out from the rest of the movie's context (and you usually do).

  When participants in my classes begin to use the white card method, they become acutely aware of their previous need to reread. This awareness, coupled with the white card method, begins the reduction of passive regression. You can try this, too.

  Subvocalization

  Subvocalization means mentally reading word-for-word or physically moving your lips while reading. If your beginning reading rate on Day 1 was under two hundred words per minute then you are subvocalizing. Look at your Personal Progress Chart. If you read at a greater speed you may also be subvocalizing but just not as much. Remember you cannot get rid of this voice, only reduce it.

  There are some occasions when the talking is active. For example, hearing your voice repeat or say the information to yourself while you are studying or memorizing is active. When you read poetry or dialogue, such as from a play, you need to hear the rhythm and intonation to truly appreciate these forms of writing. Students tell me — and I agree — that reading the Bible or Shakespeare is challenging without mentally talking. As far as your brain is concerned, it finds it as challenging as trying to read a foreign language. I also suggest reading the fine print of legal and insurance documents word-for-word unless you are a lawyer or insurance agent who is familiar with the jargon.

  Though you may have a good reason to subvocalize, remember that it slows you down. Keep this in mind when you plan your reading time.

  So, unless you're reading Hamlet or memorizing poetry, the talking is passive and therefore slows you down. Many readers believe that when they read something for the first time, they must study or memorize it. I believe this is another remnant of your school days. How can you study or memorize something when you don't even know what it is about? You will learn a powerful technique called pre- viewing on Day 5, which will help you discover what the reading is about before you begin.

  Ten Ways to Reduce the Talking

  Talking while reading, either by moving your lips while reading or mentally whispering every word, slows you down. Everyone does it, but efficient readers do it less. Here are ten proven strategies to help you reduce the talking:

  Catch yourself doing it. Only when you realize you are talking can you do something about it.

  Read faster! This is by far the best strategy. The faster you read, the less you can talk word-for-word.

  Read key words. This naturally helps you reduce the talking, since you are only speaking the key words.

  Use a pacer. Each day you will learn a new pacer technique. Whichever one you choose will help you read faster and reduce the talking.

  Hush it. Press your index finger to your lips while you read as if you were telling a child to be quiet. Put your finger to your mouth anytime you feel yourself talking.

  Mumble. Try saying something like "1-2-3, 1-2-3" or "la-la-la" to yourself while reading silently.

  Hum. Hum a tune to yourself while reading silently.

  Chew gum. Try chewing three or more pieces at a time. While reading, use a rhythmic chewing motion.

  Put toothpaste on your lips. If you move your lips while reading, you will taste the toothpaste and it will remind you to stop talking.

  Silence your tongue. Press your tongue to the roof of your mouth to reduce your talking.

  Time Trial No. 2

  Okay, buckle your seat belt. It's time to evaluate your engine. The exercise below takes less than five minutes to complete.

  The following passage gives you the opportunity to experiment with the white card pacer. While reading, be aware of your daydreaming, regressing, or mental talking. Notice whether these habits are active or passive.

  1. Time yourself. See how long it takes to read the passage "Battling the Worry Bug" below. Write your total time in minutes and seconds in the space provided at the end of the reading.

  Battling the Worry Bug

  By John D. Whitman

  Worrying is good. Worrying to a degree is even healthy. From an evolutionary point of view, it's probably the human ability to worry that got us where we are today. Since early human beings were generally unable to outrun or outfight larger, faster, sharper-clawed animals, our ability to anticipate danger played a role in our survival as a species.

  Unfortunately, while times have changed, our instincts haven't. The majority of humans have far fewer immediate physical threats or concerns than their ancestors (how many of you are, at this moment, worried about being eaten by a cave bear?). But according to several studies, the worry level of average Americans is increasing. At its most intense, this type of chronic worrying qualifies as an anxiety disorder.

  Researchers identify this syndrome as GAD, or general anxiety disorder. Studies suggest that GAD afflicts about one in twenty adults during some point in their lives. Why are some people prone to anxiety while the rest of us cruise along humming "Don't worry, be happy"? Scientists point to many factors.
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  Apparently, some of us are born worriers. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia estimate that the tendency to worry can be genetically inherited. Those who aren't born worriers can develop the tendency during childhood, either by an unsettling event or the demands of overprotective parents who give their children the impression that everything is worth worrying about.

  A related factor is an early assignment of responsibility. In one study, almost two thirds of GAD sufferers stated that as children they were given adult responsibilities, such as caring for younger siblings. They learned that in order to receive love they had to watch out for every real or imagined threat.

  The upshot of GAD is that worrying becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. As the brain worries more, it loses the ability to distinguish real problems from non-problems.

  How to break the worry cycle? Therapists help worriers develop methods to identify moments when they worry. For example, one patient wore a rubber band on her wrist and snapped it every time she found herself worrying. Raising sufferers' self-awareness of their mental attitudes helps them distinguish between when they worry about real problems, and when they are simply worrying for worry's sake.

  No therapist will tell you that curing worrywarts is a snap, but such effective therapies give us hope that GAD isn't something we have to worry about.

  2. Respond to statements. Immediately answer the following statements to the best of your ability WITHOUT looking back at the reading. Then, estimate the number of answers you believe are correct and put the number in the blank provided.

  Comprehension Statements

  Without looking back at the reading passage, respond to the following statements by indicating whether the statement is True (T), False (F), or Not Discussed (N).

  1. GAD stands for genetic anxiety disease.

  2. Studies suggest about one in twenty people are affected by GAD sometime in their lives.

  3. Worrying is a human instinct dating as far back as the caveman days.

  4. More women than men worry.

  5. Worriers are never born that way.

  6. The tendency to worry can develop as a result of giving a child adult responsibilities at an early age.

  7. The more a person worries, the less the brain can distinguish non-problems from real problems.

  8. More and more people are choosing to participate in anxiety research.

  9. E-GAD is the term used for extreme worriers.

  10. There are effective therapies for GAD sufferers.

  Now, estimate how many of these answers you believe you have correct out of ten.

  3. Check your responses. Turn to the Answer Key. If you have any incorrect, mark the correct response and return to the reading passage to try to understand where you had a problem.

  4. Figure your comprehension percentage. Add the total number of correct responses you have and multiply by 10. Write your comprehension percentage in your Personal Progress Chart.

  5. Figure your words per minute. Look at your reading time and round off the seconds to the nearest 10-second mark. Find your Words per Minute and record next to your reading time. Write your Words per Minute in your Personal Progress chart.

  6. Track your Time Trial scores. Go to your Personal Progress Chart and make sure you've recorded your Words per Minute, comprehension percentage, and the date you did the exercise. It's also helpful to document other details such as time of day, any preoccupations, strategies used, and so on.

  A Guaranteed Solution for Becoming a Race Contender

  One of the best ways to reduce mind wandering, regression, and subvocalization is — to read faster!

  By increasing your speed, your brain has less time to daydream. You are filling it with more words — remember the 150-words-per-minute talker vs. the 400-words-per-minute thinker? — leaving your brain less time to wander off. Your tendency to regress is reduced. And reading faster naturally reduces the mental whispering because you simply cannot read word-for-word when you are increasing your reading speed.

  Fast Tracks: The Process of Retooling the Engine

  You will be happy to know that it is possible to take a poor reading engine and replace it with better parts to make it purr like a kitten. That's what you're about to do. You are going to replace some passive habits with active ones.

  You might have tried to read faster on your own without any formal training. Perhaps because you had a lot to read in a short period or just because you wanted to try. You probably discovered that though you read faster, you missed a lot of the meaning. And at that time you probably said to your- self, "What's the point? Why read faster if I don't understand it?"

  You were actually coming to the part of retooling where people run into trouble. In the process of trying to upgrade your skills, you begin working with a new set of strategies. Ironically, instead of getting instantly better, you initially get worse. This is what I call "unlearning to relearn." However, over time, with perseverance and repetition, your skills improve.

  A perfect analogy is driving an automatic car as opposed to a stick shift. Let's say that you only drive an automatic car. As sometimes happens, your car breaks down. It will take at least a week to repair. You absolutely positively have to get to work for a big meeting. Your neighbor says, "You can use my car," and it's a stick shift. Now, I know some of you are thinking, "I'd rather carpool or rent a car, anything to avoid a stick shift," but just stay with me.

  You take the keys, get behind the wheel of the car, put the key in the ignition, and all of a sudden driving isn't the same anymore. For starters, when you turn the key, the car lurches forward and stalls. You don't know that you have to put your foot on the clutch — a third pedal — in order to stop the car from moving. To make matters worse you also have a stick shift with five numbers and the letter R staring at you. Putting the car in reverse is now very tricky.

  Let's stop here to answer a few questions. Are you a bad driver or just an unskilled operator? Are you comfortable or uncomfortable? Are you confident or insecure? If you drive the stick shift for several days, do you think you would feel more comfortable? Probably. Would you make better time on the second day than the first day? Most likely. After a few days might you feel more confident in your abilities? I can assure you that by the end of the week, you will feel more willing and confident to drive while drinking a coffee or making a cell phone call. In the beginning, relearning a skill you already know is frustrating and challenging. If you stick it out and continue to figure out what works and what doesn't through trial and error, you will build the skills you are trying to improve.

  What Your Eyes Do When You Read

  Find a partner who can help you with this quick exercise. Don't be shy about asking but if no one is around, you can do it later. One of you will take on the role of the silent reader while the other will be the observer. The reader should face the observer. The reader needs to select anything to read. This book is just fine or grab something from your "read later" pile. The reader then lifts the material up to just below eye height, so the observer can see the reader's eyeballs. The reader then reads silently for about thirty seconds while the observer watches the reader's eye movements. When you're done, switch roles with your partner.

  What might you see? A process similar to a typewriter. You see small jerky movements going across a line and you might imagine a quiet "ding" — as typewriters used to do before computers — when the reader reaches the end of the line before going on to the beginning of the next line.

  What you really see is the eyes stopping and jumping. Your eyes stop and jump on average every quarter of a second, or four times per second. You read, or pick up information, only when you stop. Each jump takes you from one stop to the next. And what your eyes see in one eye stop is your eye span. Remember the narrow vs. wide eye span discussed earlier? If you want to learn how to read faster, you need to see more each time your eyes stop, widening your eye span.

  What's On The Side Of Your Road?

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p; You can widen your eye span and therefore read faster because of peripheral vision. This is your visual boundary or what you can see on the left and right while looking straight ahead. Though the outer area of your boundary is blurry, the inner part — the part you see when you stare directly ahead— is focused.

  There are two quick ways to assess your peripheral vision ability. Both methods require your eyes and your hands.

  Method 1: Finding your peripheral vision breaking point. Stare at something directly in front of you. Raise your arms straight out in front of you at shoulder height and point your fingertips toward the ceiling. Slowly move your hands and arms apart to the sides without moving your head or your eyes. Your hands are not in focus but they are visible. When you are at the point where you no longer see your hands while staring straight ahead, since they are now too far out of your periphery, bring them back in just enough to where you can see them again. Now, look at how far apart your hands are. This is your peripheral vision ability.