Part VII: Where To Go From Here
July 18, 2008
Where To Ride This Speed Reading Train
Okay … so now you’ve learnt some of the basics of speed reading and what to know where to take it next.
As per lesson II, I recommend some key resources that are ideal as a course for further developing your reading speed.
Judge for yourself according to where you are at currently, but I recommend:
Feel free to browse around the rest of the site for further speed reading info also 
Part VI: Tools Of The Speed Reading Trade
July 18, 2008
Speed Reading tools for top performance
Speed reading doesn’t seem like something that requires tools does it? After all we’re not building a house here. But from my own experience there are a number of things that have helped me and that I still use in my reading…
1) A guide
Most speed readers use their hand or a finger as a guide for their eyes. Remember, guiding your eyes is one of the keys to speed reading.
Personally I didn’t like this. My hand or fingers were too noisy as they ran of the page, and sometimes my eye was actually distracted by my own finger or hand.
So I use simply a piece of blank, white paper and inch it down the page line by line to guide my eyes. I never read without it now, and it works wonders
2) A highlighter
This one depends a little on what you’re reading and how you have developed your own speed reading style. But for me, when I’m studying, I like to quickly scout the page and highlight headings, captions, and other keys points that really drive home the essence of the page to me.
It only take a few seconds and it adds much to my comprehension. Give it a try and see if it works as well for you.
3) Light
This is really a tool obviously, but I just want to make the point that positioning of light, and having appropriate levels of light are crucial to your speed reading endeavours.
Make sure you develop a protected, well lit area for your reading.
Try these tips outfor yourself - they’ve certainly worked for me.
Part V: Speed Reading For The Whole Family
July 18, 2008
Speed Reading For Mum, Dad and the Kids
When we think of families doing things together, we often picture hikes or Sunday afternoon drives. We don’t often picture a family reading together. Granted we are all accustomed to the idea of a parent reading a lullaby to their toddler. We’re not as used to the idea of a family speed reading together.
Children learn by example. If they rarely see their parent reading, they notice and they are less likely to take a strong interest in reading. This isn’t beneficial in any way to a child. If a parent wants to help their child succeed, one of the first things they can do is encourage the child to read.
Speed reading is a great activity that families can do together. It’s not only educational and entertaining but it improves the reading skills of each and every member of the family.
Parents can teach children the fundamentals of speed reading and at the same time their children are brushing up on their skills, the parents can be doing the same thing. It can even become a fun household game. Each family member grabs a book and a timer is set.
Once the reading begins, each person uses their speed reading skills to read as many of the pages of their book as they can until the timer sounds. Parents will see this as a fun way to get children to read more and they can offer small prizes such as a trip to the library or a new book for the winner.
Helping your child develop their speed reading skills gives them an advantage that they’ll carry with them their entire lives. At the same time, you can improve your own reading skills proving that you are never too old to learn a new thing.
Part IV: Practice, Practice, Practice
July 18, 2008
Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
If you’ve decided that you want to learn to speed read, it’s important to consider that it’s a learned skill. Just as swimming or riding a bike is a learned skill, speed reading is the same. They all take practice. As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect.
Even if you have the basic skill of reading mastered, it takes more than just moving your eyes faster along the page to become good at speed reading. It takes concentration, determination and a set time each day devoted to practice.
More than that, its about building habits.
Pick a time during the day when you are alert and not too tired. Trying to speed read near the end of a stressful day isn’t wise. Your mind will be clouded with the images of the day and the pressing needs of the next day. Many people find it easiest to practice their speed reading either in the morning or at mid-day. At these times you are alert and are still not as fully immersed in the pressures of your day as you are later.
Choose a part of your day when you will have fifteen minutes of uninterrupted time. Find a quiet spot and spend that fifteen minutes concentrating on your reading and on increasing your reading speed. If you do this each day, your reading speed will naturally increase. It’s much the same principle as learning to play a musical instrument. Time is regularly devoted to practicing the instruments and before long the noises coming from the instrument become a recognizable tune.
Taking your speed reading seriously and practicing it will guarantee success. Before long you’ll be able to work your way through a book in a fraction of the time it took you in the past. Fifteen minutes a day is a small investment to make for a result as big as having the ability to speed read.
Part III: Some Tips On Top Speed Reading
July 18, 2008
Top Tips For Tip-Top Speed Reading
Everyone can improve the speed at which they read by changing their reading habits and adopting a few new techniques.
Even if your goal isn’t to read an entire three hundred page book in one night, reading at a faster pace certainly has its advantages. It can help you get through the newspaper, a magazine or even work related documents much quicker.
For people who do want to exercise their reading speed, the best type of book to read is a non-fiction book. The main reason for this is because non-fiction books generally contain little or no dialogue. Dialogue slows the speed reader down because it involves so many breaks in the text. This throws off the rhythm of the reader and their speed can be reduced substantially.
Speed readers can of course read novels at a much faster pace than a regular reader but if a person is just learning the technique of speed reading, choosing a work of fiction hinders the process. A non-fiction book works well as a speed reading tool.
Therefore it’s important to choose a non-fiction book that isn’t terribly long. On average a work of about three hundred pages is ideal for the beginning speed reader. Pick a book that is about a subject that is appealing to you. Perhaps something that you’ve long wondered about but haven’t taken the time to learn about. This would be an ideal time to pick up a book on that particular subject.
If you do this you’ll improve your reading skills and at the same time be learning something. There are so many great non-fiction books that would be ideal for speed reading. Pick one that interests you and before long you’ll be quickly reading books on many different subjects. While you’re becoming adept at speed reading, you’ll also find yourself becoming a wealth of knowledge.
Remember - the best tip for better speed reading is to keep on practicing!
Part II: Getting Started In Speed Reading
July 18, 2008
How To Get Started In Speed Reading
There are various ways of improving reading speed. For example – placing the reading material away from the eyes at a comfortable distance is the first step towards that. The whole text should be skimmed or pre read once to know what are the subtitles involved. The mind of the reader should be prepared to absorb what the author wants to convey. Instead of reading word by word and listening to the words getting pronounced in the mind it is better to read three or four words at a time.
The practice of making faster eye movement from left to right of the text would result in more words being read per minute. Using a pen or a finger doesn’t allow the mind to waver and prevents regressing. Reading without vocalizing the words in the mind or sub-vocalizing as its known, would release the breaks and add turbo to the reading.
How You Can Start Today
A good place to start is to purchase a cheap speed reading course or book. Don’t go out and speed a great deal of money straight up without a little research first. speed reading courses can be expensive, and without a bit of background knowledge you won’t know what to look for.
Courses you could use to begin with would include:
- ‘Speed Reading Secret’ Click Here
- ‘Best Speed Reading Course’ Click Here , or
- ‘Reading Genius’ Click Here
There are books, courses and workshops in virtually every country in the world to improve reading speed. Reading is a universal skill that many people want to improve on. The process isn’t difficult and within days of beginning to learn you will be reading books at a much faster rate than you ever imagined.
Anybody in the age group of nine to ninety-years-old can benefit from speed reading. With practice and diligently following simple techniques anybody can improve reading speed. Drinking of texts through the eyes can be faster and swifter if speed-reading methods are learned and followed properly over a period of time. You’ll become more efficient, you’ll never view reading as a burden again and the time that you did spend reading the regular way will now be better spent on doing enjoyable things.
Speed reading is truly a great way to build your confidence and productivity.
Part I: A Brief Speed Reading Tutorial
July 18, 2008
A Brief Tutorial In Speed Reading
Speed reading is a method that aims at improving the speed of reading and comprehension. The need for speed reading is obvious, as the volume of texts to be read on an average has been increasing since the invention of the printing machine.
Every single minute a book gets published and an online text gets added. Executives are paid nearly half of their salaries for reading job-related materials. The ever-expanding frontier of knowledge makes it imperative to read more and more. Students now read ten times more what their parents read.
Speed reading enables to cope with huge reading tasks by increasing reading speed and improved comprehension. It makes reading fun and interesting, surprisingly.
Speed reading as a technique was developed by Mrs. Evelyn Wood in 1959. Impressed by her professor who read and graded a term paper of eighty pages in ten minutes she went on to observing reading methods of fast readers and developed the first ever speed reading technique.
Most of us are either average or slow readers with only a few being natural speed readers. The reason can be traced back to our early learning days when we were asked by the teacher to read out loud each and every word, to make sure that it was pronounced right. That method of uttering a word aloud and reading takes the form of saying the word in the mind and reading continues through life. But people do not pay attention to it, all the while complaining of low concentration and taking long hours at reading small texts.
A person spending hours on reading before a computer monitor would seriously consider improving typing speed but may not pay attention to reading speed which is equally crucial or probably more. Increasing reading speed can make a substantial difference in almost everyone’s life, including yours.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s lesson where we’ll cover how you can get started speed reading yourself.
Speed Reading Books By The Dozen
July 7, 2008
Ever wondered what the best speed reading books are? Ever wanted to buy some speed reading books but haven’t known which ones to go for?
Well now we’ve just added the ‘Books’ page, as you can see above, to the site.
Here we’ve added some popular titles in the field, with plenty of room for feedback and comments, particularly at the end of this post!
Please feel free to take a look here
Has Melvin Ng Created The ‘Best Speed Reading Course’ ?
July 6, 2008
Melvin Ng - creator of the ‘Best speed reading course‘ - boasts that his ebook can teach you to double your reading speed in just 16 minutes.
I’ve never liked headlines like this because it can never be true for everyone reading it - could Evelyn Wood double her reading speed with it? I doubt it.
But it does suggest that for average Joe, there are some useful techniques here. One previous user said:
Melvin, The short time that it took to go through the course was enough to help me completely understand how to speed read!
I was amazed that the book I was testing myself on actually came alive in my hands. After doing just the course I was a 1/4 of the way through the book-an amount that would have taken me quite a while to read before.
Even more amazing was that I completely understood the story up until that point. As I have a tower of books I’ve been wanting to read, I can’t wait to read them at ‘blistering speeds’.
Amanda Hare
Read our full review by clicking here
Tony Buzan and Speed Reading
July 5, 2008
Tony Buzan is a popular author on speed reading, including the first book I read on speed reading myself!
His techniques are (in my humble opinion) an excellent general approach to the world of speed reading, and he focuses in particular on comprehension.
Take a look at this video of his on the key to speed reading:
