improving your reading. copyright © houghton mifflin company. all rights reserved. 6–26–2 ways...

Improving Your Reading

Copyright © Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. 6–2

Ways to improve your reading

• Learn the reading speed limits

• Pick up your PACE naturally


How the eyes read

• Moves (saccades)

• Pauses (fixations)

• Focusing


What eye-motionphotography reveals

• An average of 4 fixations per second

• 1.1 to 2.5 words per fixation


Reading speed limit

• 4 x 2.5 x 60 = 600 words per minute


Reading expert, Anne Cunningham

• Places speed limit closer to 300 wpm


Hear your silent speech: Vocalization:

• Most readers “speak” their words as they read

– By whispering their words

– By moving their lips

– By vibrating their vocal cords

• Vocalization is necessary but can slow you down


How much can you comprehend?

• Even speedy readers must take time out to comprehend what they read


One word at a time

• MIT research shows we comprehend each word individually


Comprehension requires consolidation time

• Words you read must be moved from short-term to long-term memory


Speed reading claims don’t hold up

• Eye movements, vocalization, comprehension, and consolidation all slow us down


How can you read faster?

• By cutting down processing time and picking up the PACE

– P: Preparation

– A: Altitude

– C: Clustering

– E: Experience


Preparation: The more prepared you are, the speedier your reading will be

• Overview your assignments

• Use Gibbon’s “Great Recall”

• Try Daniel Webster’s Way


Overviewing providesadvance organizers

• Look at titles, headings, subheadings, captions, and key paragraphs


Gibbon’s “Great Recall”assembles your mental tools

• Devote time to recalling all you know about a particular subject before you begin reading.


Daniel Webster’s Wayinvolves making three lists

1. Questions you expect the reading to answer

2. Knowledge you expect to gain from the reading

3. Where you expect this knowledge will lead you


Altitude: Depending on your purpose, reading can be done at a variety of levels

• Skim at 35,000 feet to get the gist

• Skim at the treetops for general clues

• Skim at ground level for specific information


Skimming to get the gist

• Helps you to determine if a book or article is worth reading

• Read the introduction, summary, and all paragraphs with pertinent topic sentences


Skimming for general clues

• Guess the form that your answer will take

• Skim closely enough to pick up the proper context


Skimming for specifics

• When you know exactly what you’re looking for

• Concentrate and rely on mere recognition to spot what you want


Cluster: Digesting reading more readily but reading words in meaningful groups

1. Use intonation

2. Think in terms of paragraphs

3. Process your reading a page at a time


Use intonation

• Grouping words of a sentence into meaningful, rhythmic clusters will make them easier to manage, comprehend and remember.


Think in terms of paragraphs

• Identify the elements of each paragraph

• Topic sentence

• Supporting sentences

• Concluding sentence

• … and then distill it down to a single, manageable sentence


Reading a page at a time

• Thomas Babington Macaulay improved his comprehension by summarizing each page before moving on to the next one.


Experience: Authors assume their readers share a certain background of knowledge

• To keep up to speed with the writers you read:

– Bolster your background by reading good books and seeing important movies

– Beef up your vocabulary by using the Frontier System explained in the next chapter

improving your reading. copyright © houghton mifflin company. all rights reserved. 6–26–2 ways...

Documents

digesting reading

reading speed limitspick

fixationreading speed

speedy readers

processing time

daniel websters wayinvolves

mental toolsdevote time

general cluesskim