A Quick tip to Enhance Speed Reading

Reading is an activity shunned by the majority of people. The younger might feel that their time is better spent enjoying other aspects of life (and in certain cases they’d be right). The middle-aged would love to have the time to read, but really don’t and have many more priorities in life. The elderly have time, and yes — they do read — but many lose focus in their eyes to read easily, and have to take breaks often. The others might be illiterate.

I say there are plenty of excuses, but we can all admit that reading is important. Reading contributes significantly (not as much as talking, perhaps?) to our well of information. Reading also introduces new ideas, fresh concepts, and greases the wheels of our minds. Humans need this, especially in today’s day and age. And obviously, writers need this more than an ordinary human — to study other writing, to study styles, material, ideas, expressions, and themes. But, the problem with reading is its time-consumption — reading does take a long time for most, writer or human. Hell, reading takes a long time for me — so how do I manage to cut down some of the time?

I remember a year or so ago, I downloaded an eBook by Scott H. Young titled “Learn More, Study Less!” After downloading a sample chapter, I realized this wasn’t an empty promise — it was the real deal. And speed reading was just one of the many topics covered. I don’t want it to seem like I’m giving away premium information for free, and I’ve found a link to speed reading incorporating using a pointer finger on the Internet anyway — so I figured it’d be fair to introduce the idea.

Reading with a Pointer

Your eyes don’t stay fixed in one spot when reading. Eye tracking movements have shown that your eyes actually quiver and move around considerably. And every movement away from your position in text requires a few milliseconds to readjust. Can you imagine how much faster you would be able to read if you could keep you eyes from wavering off and then having to bring them back all over again?

Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/advice-articles/speed-reading-using-a-pointer-537793.html

This seems like a very minor tweak, but I’ve found that reading with a pointer helped me speed up only a bit — however, I would also like to mention that it worked wonders for my comprehension. Focusing on the pointer helps me turn off all the other noise in my head and just focus on the text in front of me.

It’ll feel funny at first — when I started reading with a pointer, I had to adjust the way I held the book (I have small hands, so it was actually more difficult than it sounds, haha). I also felt kind of self-conscious about my movements — especially when the class had time assigned to read, and everyone else was just sitting normally, haha.

This isn’t the only method of improving speed reading, but for me it is probably one of the most simple changes with the most significant effect. Try it out, and see if it works for you!

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Published:
July 2, 2009 / 4:02 pm
Category:
Reading
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