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Speed Reading: Lesson 3

July 6th, 2009

Your Third Speed Reading Secret arriving!

If you’ve been following with me then you’ll have already
learned some valuable reading techniques that you can use to trim your reading time down AND improve your comprehension.

In today’s article, I’m going to give you just a few more tips on how you can use a book’s format to further increase your comprehension.

1. Don’t skip over reading the front and rear jackets of a book. These can really give anyone valuable insights into why the book was written and thus give you some insight into what you can expect.

2. By the same token, always check out the book’s forward and introduction.  Oftentimes these overlooked segments can remove a lot of the confusion that arises when you have no idea about the authors intended direction BEFORE you begin reading.

3. ALWAYS read the table of contents.  It’s the author’s outline and will ‘prime your brain’ to his writing style and thus improve your understanding of his book’s structure.

4. Don’t just let the words ramble on in your mind. Make an effort to *actively read* the book.  This means that you should continuously be asking yourself questions about what you’ve just read.  Attempt to summarize the information you’ve just read at frequent intervals.  By doing this you will soon discover your current level of comprehension and recall.

5. Devour charts and diagrams. If your book contains these features make sure that you stop and take time to actually understand the drawings and diagrams. Spending a few extra moments contemplating these features will
ultimately increase your overall reading speed because you will have a clear visual representation of the information you’ve just read.

6. Make use of the glossary and index usually found at the end of most books.

Effective Study Skills

Speed Reading: Lesson 2

July 6th, 2009

Your Second Speed Reading Secret is here.

Here’s something that you don’t hear everyday:

You CAN comprehend details better at higher speeds!

This is not a prank.  In fact, if you will spend the next few moments reading through this article, I’ll teach you some valuable insights into how you can begin improving your comprehension by leaps and bounds within just minutes.

The key to instantly increasing your comprehension of any book and any topic is to get familiar with the following universal publication tips. (Yes, these tips apply to almost every publication and can be applied
immediately)

1. The first and last chapters of a book introduce and summarize its contents.

2. The first and last paragraph in a chapter introduce and summarize the contents of that particular chapter

3. Some books (such as text books and even most translations of the Religious Books) contain topic and summary sentences within their structure with introduce and summarize its contents

4. The VERBS and NOUNS of a sentence offer the *most
important* information.

5. Be aware and ‘sensitize’ yourself (through practice) to the use of negative words.  Negative words (such as ‘not’, ‘no’, ‘can’t', etc) can reverse the meanings of large groups of words – so keep a lookout for them.

6. By the same token, you also need to keep an eye out for the conditional tense.  Conditional tense words (such as ‘could’, ‘if’, ‘should’, etc) can also affect or change the meanings of a large body of words.

Effective Study Skills

Speed Reading: Lesson 1

July 6th, 2009

Your First Speed Reading Secret!

Before we begin, here’s a concept that you MUST understand about speed reading: shaving just a fraction-of-a-second off every page that your read will create a HUGE difference in your reading rate.

Even if you were able to shave just 1 second off the time it takes you to read a page that would still be FIVE minutes off a normal 300-page book!

So, it’s not always necessary to aim for the spectacular – just a little growth here and there will make a world of difference.

When it comes to speed reading, learning to use your hands correctly and efficiently will require that you train yourself to accomplish the following 3 tasks:

1. Use your hands to guide and pace your eye movements through the text

2. Use your hands to force your eye to constantly scan through new information

3. Use your hands to prevent your eyes from repeatedly reading the same words

The Speed Reading Hand Motion
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Although it may seem uncomfortable at first, the ideal use of the hands of a right-handed person would be to use your left hand to pace your reading and your right hand to turn the pages.

To begin reading, place your hand at the start of a line. Move your hand towards the right hand margin. Make sure to focus your eyes upon the text that your hand is pointing towards.

When you reach the end of the current line, move your hand to the start of the next line.  Repeat this method to the end of the page.  To make paging faster, make sure that your right hand is always positioned at the top right hand corner of the book.

Go ahead and practice this movement.  You don’t need to worry about reading any of the text, just practice the hand motion and paging techniques for now.  Make sure that you are able to rapidly move through the pages of your book.

Believe it or not, you can reach the place where your reading speed explodes to the point that your paging and pacing hands will have a hard time just trying to keep up.

Effective Study Skills