HFCC Learning Lab Speed Reading C1.11 RAPID AND EFFICEIENT READING People who love to read or people who must read widely because of school or work often become impatient to finish interesting or exciting material. At this point, they often unconsciously increase their reading speed by taking in more than one word at a time. The process works like this: In order for the eyes to convey a thought to the brain, They must fix for an instant on the page. Most readers fix their eyes on each word. Using dots to represent eye fixations, we may illustrate the word-byword reading process as follows: The house stood on a hill. The same sentence can be understood by fixing, not on any single word, but on a group of words, or a phrase. The house stood on a hill. The method of reading is often called phrase reading and is a skill that can be learned by any good reader. The following article is printed in phrases to help you sample the techniques. Try reading the article by fixing your eyes only once on each phrase. Try to avoid word-by-word reading. Some readers find they are helped by focusing their eyes on a dot located above each phrase. Such dots are included to help you keep to a single fixation per phase. The Improvement of Eye Movements By Ruth Strang 1
Good eye movement underlie efficient reading. Poor eye movements are signs of lack of skill in reading. Accordingly, we should understand how the eyes work and how to make them work better. The eyes can be trained. With right kind of training, they become more efficient just as the fingers they make a swift movement, pause, make another swift movement, become more skillful with practice on the piano or the violin. In order to understand how to train the eyes, it is first necessary to learn how they are used in reading. As you read a lone of print, your eyes are not moving smoothly and steadily across the page. Rather, they make by fits and starts - because the eye moves like a flash between stops. There is not time 2
pause again, and so on until they reach the end of the line. The movement of the eyes along the lines of print is somewhat like the movement of an automobile down the street with traffic lightsstops and starts in its progress. During the movement from one pause to another no words are recognized. The printed line is a blur only four times in reading a line on which a poor reader may make nine pauses. to see the words Clearly. Only about 6 per cent of the total time of reading is spent in movement. It is during the pauses that we comprehend the meaning of the printed words. Even the pauses are only about one fourth of a second in length, but long enough to take in and eyeful of words. A good reader may pause just for pleasure can be understood with very few pauses per line, 3
The more pauses, of course, the slower is the rate of reading. The good reader may be able to recognize four or five words in a single pause; the poor reader only one. The number of pauses per line also depends on the difficulty of the material and the purpose for which we are reading it. Stories and other easy material which we read be making the following experiment: punch a small hole while mathematics problems and other difficult material which we must study require a larger number of pauses per line. These facts about eye movements were discovered by taking moving pictures or the eyes of people who were reading. The pictures show clearly how many pauses each person s eyes made as he read. and whether his eyes often moved backward along the line of print. You can see for yourself how one s eyes work when he reads, from the end of one line to the beginning of the next line. 4
in the center of a separate page of print. Then ask your friend to hold the sheet at a comfortable reading distance from his eyes. Put one eye to the little hole in the sheet and watch his eyes as he reads. Count the number of times his eyes pause on each line. See whether his eyes sometimes move back across the line and how quickly and accurately his eyes sweep is to read a good deal Few pauses, no backward movements, and an accurate jump from one line to the next are signs of efficient reading. Eye movements cannot be improved by thinking too much about them. To do so might put us in the state of the centipede that got mixed up as soon as it began to think about which leg to move first. The best way to improvements The eyes are not checked in their forward movement 5
of interesting material with keen attention. Such reading, With no attention to the mechanics of eye movements trains the eyes For example, in reading a paragraph, it is better to think of its meaning than to wonder how many pauses our eyes are making. If we eagerly read material that is not too difficult for us our eyes naturally take in a group of words at each pause. can get the meaning by lack of comprehension. Nor do they Have to go back over the line to pick up the meaning of some of the words. Reading many easy interesting books is the best way to improve eye movements. A second way of increasing the number of words we can take in at a single pause of the eyes is to use the daily newspaper for practice material. The newspaper column is so narrow that good readers three by five inches 6
of a line by letting their eyes rest on it only once. An attempt to grasp the meaning of this short line be means of only one pause gives excellent practice in increasing the number of words recognized at each stop. A third way of learning to take in the meaning of a phrases or clause rather than of single words is to use practice cards which we can make ourselves These cards may be in size. in the center of each card, we may either type one or more words or paste words cut from magazines. tthe first set of cards may have one word on each; the second set two words and so on up to five or six words We may ask someone to hold the cards at a comfortable distance from our eyes and uncover each word for about one-fourth of a second. In that short time, we should try to recognize 7
At first we may be able to recognize only one or two words in a quick glance. Some students like to use a small notebook for this kind of drill. They type a group of words on each page and practice getting as they quickly turn each page. If you can get the meaning of three or four words together, quick as a flash, we can take in a line of print rapidly and are well on our way towards becoming good readers. the meaning of the words. You probably found that some word groups were too wide for you to see all the words. Thus, if your eye fixation rested on the center of the word group, you would miss words at both ends of the phrase. What reader sees effectively in a word group is called span of recognition is one inch, for example, you would have no trouble with the following phrase: ----1 inch--- at the age However, you would have difficulty recognizing the words at either ends of the following phrase: ----1 inch--- make ano / ther swift / movement, Span of recognition can be widened with practice. 8
Exercise: Test you speed reading technique by attempting to read the following selection in phrases. To satisfy your curiosity about your reading speed, keep track of how many seconds you require to read the selection. At the end is a quiz to test you comprehension and a table to translate your reading time in seconds to the approximate number of words you read per minute. Tarzan Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of Tarzan, a fictional Casper Hauser, or ape-man, of his books, the Tarzan movies and cartoons is estimated at whose jungle exploits $10,000,000. are known to people in the four corners of the globe, died on March 19, 1950, at the age of 74. About 36,000,000 copies of his 23 Tarzan books have been sold, and his income from the sale He first sent the manuscript to a number of eastern publishers, but they all turned it down Tarzan of the Apes was Mr. Burroughs first published book; it was written while the author was a department manager at Sears Roebuck, and was based on extensive research which Mr. Burroughs did in his spare time at the Chicago public library. for a book that would contain the complete story. Mr. Gould talked it over with the late 9
as being Joseph Bray, too fantastic. then head of He then sent it McClurg s To Argosy Magazine publishing department which promptly who immediately saw accepted it its tremendous for serial publication. Possibilities. After a few installments McClurg published it had appeared, in 1914, the late Herbert A. Gould, and it was then director an instant success. of McClurg s Mr. Burroughs retail store found himself famous on Wabash Avenue overnight. discovered there was Succeeding Tarzan books a demand became best sellers, too other books Tarzan and the of adventure stories, foreign legion, and hundreds of short stores. as soon as He set up they were published. his own Tarzan and the Foreign Legion publishing company was the last in southern California Tarzan book to be some years ago: published it is located in a town Mr. Burroughs called Tarzana. was the author of thirty-five 280 words Reading Time: 10
1. Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote books that were primarily a. educational b. action and adventure c. mysteries d. science fiction 2. Burroughs spent most of his life a. working for Sear Roebuck b. writing c. researching d. going from publisher to publisher 3. Burroughs probably died a. frustrated and lonely b. wealthy c. poor d. as a film director 4. Burroughs is responsible for a. popularizing adventure stories b the naming of a California town c. find the real Tarzan d. the creation of Argosy Magazine. 5. The man whose foresight most helped Burrough s work become famous was a. Casper Hauser b. Herbert A. Gould c. Joseph Bray d. Mrs. Burroughs Time to Rate Chart for Tarzan Reading Time Words per Minute ( in seconds) 170 99 160 105 150 112 140 120 130 129 120 140 110 153 100 168 90 187 11
80 210 70 240 60 280 50 336 40 420 30 560 20 840 10 1680 Answers: 1. b 2. b 3. b 4. b 5. c 12