>Ok, I'm dragging this waaay off topic, but this caught my attention while skimming through. :)
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>I remember when I was a kid seeing commercials advertising speed reading lessons. I thought it was cool, then, but when I grew older figured it was a scam. I didn't think it was possible to read a book as fast as you can flip through the pages.
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>Now 1200 wpm isn't quite as fast as they were showing, but still a heck of a lot faster than I read. Any suggestions on how to learn how to do it?
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>Thanks,
>
Michelle;


Run Spot run. Run Dick run. Run Jane run. Dick and Jane ran after Spot. Gee the first grade was such fun! Sister Mary Pain in the Neck and all! If you survive school you have done well. If you have survived catholic school you have done very well. I think I survived but I am skeptical. Perhaps three Our Fathers, Five Hail Mary’s and a good Act of Contrition and I will know more.

While in high school, I went to the school library and found a book on speed-reading. This was 1958 and the book had a great effect upon my life. When I went to catholic grammar school I read a book (required) about Dick, Jane and Spot – the dog – some of the actual verbiage will be found at the beginning of this post. As a matter of coincidence the speed reading book I read referred to that book and the way children were taught to read. The basic concepts from the book follow.

We were taught to read one word at a time and this causes us to “break” before and after reading each word. That is the basic problem to overcome – to discontinue stopping our eyes before reading the next word. We are taught to do this from the beginning of our education through the rest of our lives. The average person reads at about 250 words a minute. So I followed this concept and my speed rose from about 250 to 1200 words a minute within a few weeks.

Allow your eyes to “flow” along the line of text you are reading. Do not allow your eyes to stop after or before a word is read.

Now, 1200 words a minute is about the maximum this technique will allow. You may have seen people reading a book or newspaper who are using his/her right hand to flow along (beneath) the text they are reading. I do not use my hand – I learned to do this with eye movement only. This can be done with any reading material – nothing special is required. I found that short columns of data slow you down – the longer the line the better – as a page from a book for example.

This does not mean you can read an engineering manual, math book – etc. at such speed. With such text you have to absorb concepts that are visual, conceptual and not purely text in the normal context.

What is also important is another often made claim which I found to be true. Speed-readers have greater retention of read material and I was put to “the test” by teachers and other students who were not speed-readers. My retention averaged 95% while “normal” college readers had about 25% retention. I do not think I am unique but I do like to do something that gives positive results. Encouraging others is something I really enjoy. The only person I have ever competed with was myself. I always try to do my best and am not concerned with what others are doing. If I can help others I will – that is the way I have been since before I began school.


There is a second technique, which I did not master but did make the attempt. This technique has you read vertically – line by line. Yes vertically and not horizontal. This is not a joke – and is the technique used by John F. Kennedy and others, to read about 10,000 words a minute. You begin by using a book designed for this purpose. There are narrow columns of words which you train your eyes to scan vertically. You begin with one word columns and progress until you can scan the width of an entire page. As I said I was not able to master this technique. I got to about five words and that was the maximum. For my purposes reading 1200 words a minute was sufficient.

I estimate I have read over 17,000 in my lifetime, and about 99% were non fiction. I am not counting any books required by school or the six years of college I enjoyed. Reading a great deal has given me the opinion that truth exists in the mind of the individual and may not exist in exactly the same form anywhere else.

Hope this has given you some concepts on how to increase your reading speed. It is not really necessary to spend money on a class or even a book. Try the library or the suggestion above about “not breaking the eye”.

Run Spot run. Run Dick run. Run Jane run. Dick and Jane ran after Spot.

Tom