Learn to Read All Over Again with Speed Reading
Posted by GeneralisimoRCB on April 21st, 2009
Regardless of your current ability to read and comprehend, a good online speed reading program can help you improve your reading speed. And at the same time you can maintain or improve your comprehension skills.
With a speed reading program, people learn to rapidly scan the reading material. They are taught to ignore irrelevant information and pick out only the pertinent parts. The idea is to be able to gather the essence of the material through reading entire sentences or phrases as a block, instead of just individual words.
An example of particularly difficult reading material is a technical manual containing endless pages of detailed information. But with speed reading you can manage it more quickly and also remember the content more completely. It’s very important that they remember everything they need to in order to avoid having to re-read the text.
Children who are being taught to read are told to focus on a single word, and repeat it aloud to reinforce their recognition. And they repeat this with the following word. And as they get older, they continue to use this rather inefficient way of reading. However, a good speed reading course can teach the brain a faster, more efficient way of reading.
The first speed reading program was developed and introduced in Australia by Evelyn Wood in 1958. Since then, learning to read faster has become extremely popular, especially when it comes to reading informational text.
It’s possible to find a variety of techniques when looking for a speed reading program. These have all been formulated to teach people how to increase their reading speed. Some naysayers, however, charge that some of these programs increase reading speed at the expense of comprehension. The speediest readers can plow through a couple thousand words in just an hour, as demonstrated in speed reading competitions. On the other hand, their comprehension rate is about 50 percent.
Some claim that this is the problem with many of the speed reading programs. They measure their success based solely on speed instead of comprehension and retention. This, of course, is very important, particularly in technical matters.
If you’re looking to find a good speed reading program, make sure it promises to help your understanding and ability to retain the material and not just teach you to read faster. When you put these new skills into action, you’ll find it easier to get the information you need from any of your reading materials.
