Read Faster, Read Smarter'

By Author: Michael Southon
Total Articles: 20
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The Internet is a new continent where the maps
are constantly changing. What was a small stream
becomes a roaring river. What was a desert becomes
a lush green valley.

To keep up with the changing landscape of the
Internet you must read. And the best place to read
about new developments on the Internet is in
Newsletters or Ezines.

But you may not be reading efficiently.

Did you know that most of us use only 4% to 10% of
our mental abilities?

Speed reading is not just about reading faster; it's
about learning to use much more of the extraordinary
powers of the Mind.

When you read, are you aware of an inner voice that
follows the words as your eyes move across the page
or the computer screen? This inner voice is called
'subvocalization'. You probably experience it as a
slight movement in the tongue or throat region. As
long as you subvocalize, you limit your reading to
the speed of normal speech, to about 300 w.p.m.

The Mind is capable of thinking much faster than
that. So when you ...
... subvocalize, you're literally
holding back your mind. Try this exercise:

As you read, count to yourself, silently, from one
to ten. Or, repeat the sound 'Eee', 'Eee', 'Eee'.
It will be impossible to do this at the same time
as subvocalizing, so this is an excellent way of
breaking the habit of subvocalization.

As you do this exercise, you'll become aware
that you're no longer processing the words in the
tongue hroat region but in an area called 'thought
stream' that you experience in the top of your head.

Thought stream moves much faster than
subvocalization. And that's why people who
subvocalize often have comprehension problems.

There's a mismatch between reading speed and
thinking speed. The Mind is constantly racing
ahead of the inner voice and so it gets bored.
You experience this as an inability to hold your
attention on what you're reading. You have to
back-skip words, or read the same line twice.

As your reading speed catches up with your thinking
speed, reading becomes much less tiring and your
comprehension improves.

Once you've got a feeling for reading in 'thought
stream', the next thing to do is speed up your eye
movements. This will also help break the habit of
subvocalization, since your eyes will be moving
faster than you can possibly subvocalize.

Your eyes move across the written page in a series
of quick jumps. Between each jump there's a stop
lasting a fraction of second, called a 'fixation'.
The fixation is when the eye actually takes in the
written word.

The untrained eye takes about a quarter of a second
at each fixation, and takes in 2 or 3 words per
fixation.

By speeding up you eye movements, you'll learn
to make fewer fixations per line and take in more
words per fixation.

Try this exercise:

If you use a glass 'anti-glare' screen, draw 2
vertical lines in felt-tip, 5 cms apart, so that you
have a strip 5 cms wide located over the middle
of the text you are reading.

Now move your eyes in a 'Z' pattern down this
central strip, at a speed faster slightly faster
than is comfortable.

Because your Mind is not reading each word, it
is forced to 'fill in the gaps'. This engages much
more of the Mind, since it has to build associations
and patterns in the written material. This in turn
leads to greater comprehension and increased
memory of what was read.

This technique takes advantage of the fact that
much of written English is highly redundant; a lot
of words can be skipped without any loss of meaning.

When your eyes move down a central strip of the text,
you also engage much more of your peripheral vision.
And that in turn brings the right hemisphere of the
brain into the reading process. You make much more
use of the right-brain's ability to synthesize and build
relationships within the material.

So speed reading is not just about reading faster;
it also allows you to access much more of the brain
and thereby increases your comprehension and
creativity.

For an excellent, free, speed-reading course, visit:

- The Speed Reading Course
http://www.trans4mind.u-net.com/speed_reading/index.html

Here are some more free speed-reading sites:

- The Study Hall Free Speed Reading Programs
http://www.studyhall.com/sread.htm

- Road To Reading Home
http://www.roadtoreading.org/

- University of Texas Speed Reading
http://www.utexas.edu/student/lsc/sprdg.html

- Speed Reading Links
http://www.readingsoft.com/flinks.html

- ReadRace: Free Java application for speed reading
http://supershareware.co.uk/Apps/8080.asp

- WannaLearn.com: Personal Enrichment : Speed Reading
http://www.wannalearn.com/Personal_Enrichment/Speed_Reading/

About the Author Michael Southon is the publisher of
'The Free Directory of Ezines'
http://www.netmastersolutions.com/
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