How to learn to understand what you read. Games aimed at the ability to add syllables

Speed ​​reading is a skill that is surprisingly easy to level up. You can improve your speed by using special software or by attending speed reading courses. In this article, we talk about 5 basic speed reading techniques that you can master yourself!

So here they are:

Stop saying words in your head

By the way, many people have an even more terrible habit: to speak the text aloud when reading. This slows down the process of reading more than pronouncing thoughts in your head. Subvocalization is a habit that most people have. When reading, we kind of “hear” all the words with the brain. Try to get rid of this habit and your reading speed will increase significantly! All you need to do is turn off the speech mechanism in your head. Try chewing gum while reading, mooing under your breath (tested on yourself, it helps!) Or even eat.

Avoid "returns"

When we read, we tend to look back and dwell on the word we just read. This slows us down a lot. Unfortunately, the only way to break this habit is to acknowledge that you are doing it and commit when you do it.

Follow the text

One of the most amazing speed reading techniques is meta guiding. Remember how in school, when reading a text, you ran your finger / pencil over it or followed it with the movement of your head? Well, this story is about that. It turns out that this method seriously speeds up the reading process. Don't forget to concentrate on each word if you want to remember the incoming information.

Speed ​​reading, in fact, is not shown to everyone. Most people are able to process a huge amount of read information at high speed, but there are those who cannot. If you're interested, give speed reading a try, but don't be discouraged if it doesn't work out. There are other options:

Skip sections (or even chapters) you don't need

Another trick to increase your reading speed is to skip over unnecessary information. As former British Prime Minister Arthur James Balfour once said, “Man is only half the master of the art of reading, unless he adds to it the ability to skip unnecessary text.”

Skipping unnecessary text is one of the speed reading methods, and although this is not the best way for schoolchildren and students, but, for example, for scientists who are only interested in certain sections of a particular book, the method is a great time saver. Professor David Davis shared his strategy for effective skimming:

1. Begin with an introduction or preface. Read them carefully to understand what the main feature of the book is and where the information you need is located.

2. Read the last chapter or conclusion.

3. Go through all the chapters and read the first and last paragraphs.

Obviously you won't do this with every book. We do not recommend. Skimming is best used on books that you are not very interested in reading, or for skimming through the book and identifying areas that interest you the most for later detailed study.

Listen to audiobooks when you can't read

Listen to audiobooks when you're driving, cooking or playing sports and other times when you can't read. This is a great way to make efficient use of your time.

Read multiple books at the same time

Last year, Jeff Ryan set a goal of 366 books for himself to read in a year. Such a goal seems incredible until you find out how Ryan achieved it:

The idea of ​​reading one book a day from cover to cover quickly fell through. Jeff also had days when he was busy with work and raising children, and he did not have a minute of free time to read. As a result, he used the method of parallel reading and eventually managed to complete his difficult challenge.

Of course, Jeff combined this tactic with the others we've listed here. The technique of reading several books at the same time implies that you can distinguish between the material you are reading and it does not merge into a continuous mess in your head. If there are signs of this behavior, adapt the method for yourself: read books of different genres and formats at the same time (example: comic book, novel and audiobook).

Discard Books That Don't Work for You

The advice seems obvious, but we still dwell on this point in more detail. So, if you have already read several chapters, but you don’t feel pleasure or benefit from reading, then just stop reading it. Think about why you don't enjoy reading. Is it just the wrong book at the wrong time? If so, then just postpone it until better times. Someone recommended a book to you, but you don't like it? Return it to the seller, give it as a gift, or donate it to the library. Don't waste your precious time on books you don't like.

Summary

Take a look at the books you want to read. With the methods described above, you will master them in less time. Set yourself a reading schedule and go!

Without reading it is impossible to imagine the life of a modern person. You read at home, at work, in the subway. Reading helps to learn, learn new information, because even television and radio cannot give us the entire amount of knowledge that is needed for general intellectual development. Of course, not everyone likes to read, but if you learn how to extract the most useful information from what you read, this lesson will not seem so boring.

According to statistics, only 20% of the information remains in the human memory within 24 hours after reading. If you use techniques that help you summarize and remember what you read, these numbers can be increased to 80%. An important role in reading is played by the environment around you and the purpose for which you pick up a book or magazine. Worst of all, a person remembers what he read without motivation, for entertainment. Even if an article in a magazine or newspaper seemed interesting to you, after half an hour you will not be able to remember the details and details.

If you can’t remember what you read, reading is difficult for you, you can use these tips:

1. Psychologists say that information is remembered better if you read quickly. In addition, the text should not be read line by line, but from top to bottom. At first, this will seem like a difficult task, but if you regularly train visual memory, you can achieve considerable success very soon. Try not to go back to already read passages of the text, this worsens the perception of information in general.
   
2. Any new information is best remembered in the morning. Read in the morning or in the afternoon, when the brain is most active. There are people who learn new things better in the evening or even at night. Listen to your inner feelings, because the biological rhythms of people can differ significantly.
   
3. Do not read aloud and do not repeat the words you read mentally, this makes it very difficult to remember new things, tires the nervous system, and strains your eyesight.
   
4. Note-taking helps to remember and systematize the information read. If you read fiction, it will be enough to write down beautiful sayings, excerpts from poems, quotes and aphorisms. This is a great way to improve your vocabulary. If we are talking about technical and scientific literature, you can draw diagrams, write down incomprehensible moments, so it will be easier for you to understand new concepts and terms. In addition, this way you will train your visual memory, because if you look at your notes after a while, you can easily remember what you read earlier.
   
5. Discuss what you read with family or friends. During the discussion, information is remembered more easily and is deposited in your memory for a long time.
   
6. If you are going to read a work of fiction, read carefully the announcement or the opinions of literary critics. So you will understand what will be discussed, and better tune in to reading.
   
7. Retell what you read to relatives or friends, so you will learn how to systematize information, highlight the main points.
   
8. While reading, ask yourself mental questions, involve emotions in the process. If you like any place in the text, think about it, create mental associations and comments on it. So you better remember the information and even after a long time you will be able to remember what you read.
   

Read in a pleasant and cozy atmosphere, be sure to keep an eye on the lighting. Your eyes should not overwork and hurt. If you're tired, take a break. Do not read in a bad mood, because in this way you will remember absolutely nothing, but only waste your time.

Keep a diary in which you will write down interesting quotes and sayings. This is not only interesting, but also useful for your memory and general intellectual development.

Until I finished reading the paragraph, half flew out of my head ... Familiar? Almost all pupils and students face this problem. The fact is that the human brain is not programmed for cramming, and it generally perceives most of what is written in the textbook as noise - useless information that should not be stored in memory. But if you know how these mechanisms work, you can learn to control this process and understand how to remember what you read the first time.

Science of memory

Before any information gets to our "hard drive", it goes through a complex path and undergoes multi-level processing. The first to study and describe these mechanisms was a German scientist. He identified 4 main processes of preservation, reproduction and forgetting.

What is the best way to remember what you read? In this case, the first two stages are of key importance. Therefore, they are worth considering in more detail.

memorization- this is an involuntary imprint of what affected the senses. At the same time, a trace of excitation caused by electrical impulses remains in the cerebral cortex for some time. In simple terms, everything we see, hear and feel leaves physical traces in our brain.

This can happen in different ways. Even in early childhood, the child activates the process of involuntary memorization. We all keep moments and facts that we didn't try to remember: a walk in the park at the age of 5, a first date, frames from our favorite movie... An interesting phenomenon is that we don't remember everything equally well. Why is this happening?

It all depends on the strength of electrical impulses, so we remember only certain types of information best of all:

• something that is of vital importance (pain when you bring your hand to the fire);
• unusual, vivid events and images (a bright costume of an actor at a carnival);
• information that is related to our interests and needs (recipe for a delicious dish);
• valuable knowledge necessary for our activities and the achievement of goals (correct test answers).

At 90%, how well some information is fixed in memory depends on our perception. First of all, what causes strong emotions (both positive and negative) or interest is imprinted.

Then there is intentional memorization, which is the process by which we deliberately try to "write down" certain information, such as dates from a history book or an important phone number.

Preservation is the process of processing, transforming and fixing new information in certain parts of the brain.

First, all information falls into a kind of "buffer", random access memory. Here the material is stored for a short time in its original form. But at the next stage, the information is processed, associated with the already known, simplified and transferred to long-term memory. The most difficult thing is to prevent distortions, to prevent the brain from adding non-existent facts or "throw out" key points. Knowing all this, it is much easier to understand how to remember what you read the first time.

We set clear goals

Even if you read very carefully and thoughtfully, turning the page, you can hardly retell in detail what you just learned.

Back in the 19th century, the Yugoslav psychologist P. Radossavlevich conducted an interesting experiment. The task that confronted the subject was to memorize meaningless syllables. This usually required several repetitions. Then the goal changed - now it was just necessary to read what was written. The subject did this as many as 46 (!) times, but when the experimenter asked to repeat the series by heart, he could not do it. But as soon as I realized that they needed to be learned, it took only 6 times to glance over the syllables in order to accurately retell them. What does it say?

There are some tricks here too. The main goal should be broken down into more specialized tasks. Simply put, you choose what to focus on. In one case, it is enough to highlight the main facts, in another - their sequence, and in the third - to memorize the text verbatim. Then the brain, while reading, will begin to create "hooks" that will help memorize the necessary information.

We create a comfortable environment

And we continue to discuss how to remember the text you read the first time. First of all, it is worth looking around in search of "irritants". In a noisy classroom or public transport, attention is scattered, and sometimes you are not even aware of what is written in the textbook.

In order to fully immerse yourself in the process, it is advisable to sit in a quiet room or find a secluded place somewhere in nature - where nothing will distract you.

It is advisable to study in the morning, when the head is still as clean as possible and new information is absorbed much faster.

Discussing with friends

Although many people do not like retelling in school literature lessons, this is one of the most effective ways to better remember what you read. When you say what you recently read about, the brain activates two channels of memorization and reproduction at once - visual and auditory (auditory).

Learning to read correctly

If you want to know how to learn to remember what you read the first time, you should first of all work on your reading technique. Do not forget that visual memory plays a huge role in memorization: you mentally “photograph” a page, and if you can’t remember something, you just need to imagine it, and the necessary information will pop up in your head. But how can this be achieved?

1. Do not immediately start to read every word, but try to cover the entire page with your eyes.
2. Increase your reading speed. It has been proven that the faster a person studies a text, the more effectively information is absorbed. Try to expand the focus area in order to "grab" not one, but at least 2-3 words with your eyes. In addition, you can sign up for speed reading courses, where you will be taught
3. When you notice that you have been distracted and missed a fragment, in no case do not return to it to reread it. Such "jumps" interfere with the holistic perception of the material. It is better to study the paragraph to the end, and then re-read it completely.
4. Unlearn the habit of mentally pronouncing sentences or moving your lips. Because of these childhood habits, the brain cannot focus on the text, but spends some resources on supporting your "internal speaker".

In the first 3-4 hours it will be unusual and difficult. But as soon as you readjust, not only the speed of reading will increase, but also the amount of information that you will remember from the first time.

We write abstracts

Another option is how to remember what you read the first time. If you don’t just skim through the text, but work through the material and at least briefly write down the main points, later on these notes you can easily restore the necessary information in your memory.

However, it is important to know what and how to take notes, because without a certain system, you will simply get confused in a bunch of fragmentary facts. Here are a few techniques you can use:

• grouping. All material is divided into small fragments, which are then combined according to some criteria (subject, time period, associations, etc.).
• Plan. For each part of the text (paragraph, chapter or paragraph section), short notes are created that act as anchor points and help restore the full content. The format can be anything: key theses, titles, examples or questions to the text.
• Classification. It is presented in the form of a diagram or a table. Allows you to distribute various objects, phenomena or concepts into groups and classes based on common features.
• Schematization. With the help of text blocks, arrows and simple drawings, connections between various objects, processes and events are demonstrated.
• Associations. Each point of the plan or thesis is correlated with a familiar, understandable or simply memorable way, which helps to "resurrect" the rest in memory.

At the same time, try not to get carried away. Remember that this is not a complete summary, but small pointers that will direct your thoughts in the right direction.

5 Best Active Memory Techniques

And now let's move on to the most "delicious" and talk about how to remember what you read the first time, even without preparation. Perhaps you have already come across the concept of mnemonics - these are various techniques that allow you to assimilate a large amount of information in a short time.

1. Visualization

When reading, you should imagine as vividly as possible all the events and phenomena described in the text. The more "alive" and emotional the pictures are, the better.

2. Creative associations

Few people know, but inventing them is a whole art. There are 5 "golden" rules that you need to follow in order to easily remember any information:

• Don't think. Use the first image that comes to mind.
• Associations must have a strong emotional component.
• Imagine yourself as the main character (for example, if a lemon was lying on the table, try to “eat” it).
• Add absurdity.
• Make the resulting "picture" funny.

How it works? Let's say you're studying art and want to remember what pointillism is. In short: this is one of the varieties of neo-impressionism, where the paintings consist of many bright dots of the correct form (the founder is Georges-Pierre Seurat). What association can you come up with here? Imagine a ballerina who smeared her pointe shoes in paint and, circling in the dance, leaves a picture of multi-colored dots on the stage. He moves on and accidentally touches a jar of yellow sulfur with his foot, which falls with a loud crash. Here are our associations: pointe shoes with bright spots - pointillism, and a container with sulfur - Georges-Pierre Seurat.

3. Method of repetition by I. A. Korsakov

This technique is based on the fact that we forget a huge part of the information almost instantly. However, if you repeat the material regularly, it will be firmly fixed in your memory. What should be remembered?

1. New information must be repeated within 20 seconds after its perception (if we are talking about a large piece of text - up to a minute).
2. During the first day, retell the material several times: after 15-20 minutes, then after 8-9 hours, and finally after 24 hours.
3. To remember what you read for a long time, you need to repeat the text several more times during the week - on the 4th and 7th days.

The technique is very simple, but at the same time incredibly effective. Regular repetitions let the brain know that this is not just informational noise, but important data that is constantly being used.

4. Cicero's method

A useful technique for those who want to know how to remember information read in books. The point is pretty simple. You choose a certain "base" - for example, the furnishings of your apartment. Remember how your morning begins, what and in what sequence you do. After that, you need to "attach" some piece of text to each action - again, with the help of associations. So you remember not only the essence, but also the sequence of presentation of information.

For example, while studying a paragraph on history, you can mentally "draw" scenes of battles on the bedside table or "send" Columbus to surf the bathroom.

5. Pictogram method

Get a blank sheet of paper and a pen ready. Immediately in the process of reading, you need to mentally mark key words and points. Your task is to come up with a small pictogram for each that will remind you of what was discussed. You do not need to make sketchy or, conversely, too detailed pictures, otherwise you will not be able to focus on the text and remember it normally. When you reach the end of a paragraph or chapter, try looking only at the pictograms to retell the text you just read.

Back in 1998, Princeton University hosted a Project PX seminar on high speed reading. This post is an excerpt of information from that seminar, gleaned from this article, and personal experience of speeding up reading.

So, "Project PX" is a three-hour cognitive experiment that allows you to increase your reading speed by 386%. The experiment was conducted on people speaking five languages, and even dyslexics were trained to read up to 3,000 words of technical text per minute, 10 pages of text. Page in 6 seconds.

By comparison, the average reading speed in the US is between 200 and 300 words per minute. We have, due to the peculiarities of the language, from 120 to 180 words per minute. And you can easily increase your rates to 700-900 words per minute.

All that is needed is to understand the principles by which human vision works, what time is wasted in the process of reading and how to stop wasting it. When we analyze the mistakes and practice not making them, you will read several times faster, and not mindlessly running your eyes, but perceiving and remembering all the information you read.

Are you ready to start experimenting? Then let's start.

You will need:

• a book of at least 200 pages;
• pen or pencil;
• timer.

The book should lie in front of you without closing (press the pages if it tries to close without support).

For one exercise session, you will need at least 20 minutes. Make sure that no one distracts you during this time.

And before jumping straight into the exercises, here are some quick tips to increase your reading speed.

Make as few stops as possible when reading a line of text

When we read, the eyes move through the text not smoothly, but in jumps. Each such jump ends with fixing your attention on a part of the text or stopping your gaze at areas of about a quarter of a page, as if you were taking a picture of this part of the sheet.

Each stop of the eyes on the text lasts from 1/4 to 1/2 second.

To feel this, close one eye and lightly press the eyelid with the tip of your finger, and with the other eye try to slowly slide over the line of text. The jumps become even more obvious if you slide not along the letters, but simply along a straight horizontal line:

Well, how do you feel the jumps?

Try to go back through the text as little as possible

A person who reads at an average pace quite often goes back to reread a missed moment. This can happen consciously or unconsciously. In the latter case, the subconscious itself returns its eyes to the place in the text where concentration was lost.

On average, conscious and unconscious returns back through the text take up to 30% of the time.

Train your concentration to increase the coverage of words read in one stop

People with an average reading speed use central focus rather than horizontal peripheral vision. Due to this, they perceive half as many words in one jump of vision.

Train Skills Separately

The exercises are different and you don't have to try to combine them into one. For example, if you are practicing reading speed, don't worry about text comprehension. You will progress through three stages in sequence: learning technique, applying technique to increase speed, and reading comprehension.

Rule of thumb: Practice your technique at three times your desired reading speed. For example, if your current reading speed is somewhere around 150 words per minute, and you want to read 300 words per minute, you need to practice reading 900 words per minute.

Step One: Determine Initial Reading Speed

To begin with, we consider how many words fit in five lines of text, divide this number by five and round it up. I counted 40 words in five lines: 40:5 = 8 - an average of eight words per line.

And the last thing: we consider how many words fit on the page. To do this, we multiply the average number of lines by the average number of words per line: 39 ⋅ 8 = 312.

Now is the time to find out your reading speed. We set the timer for 1 minute and read the text, calmly and slowly, as you usually do.

How much did it turn out? I have a little more than a page - 328 words.

Step two: landmark and speed

As I wrote above, returning through the text and stopping the look takes a lot of time. But you can easily cut them down with a focus tracking tool.

A pen, pencil or even your finger will serve as such a tool. After all, when counting words and lines, you probably used a pencil or a finger that helped you not to lose count? We will use it for training.

1. Technique (2 minutes)

Practice using a pen or pencil to maintain focus. Move the pencil smoothly under the line you are currently reading and concentrate on where the tip of the pencil is now.

Set the pace with the tip of the pencil and follow it with your eyes, keeping up with stops and returns through the text. And don't worry about understanding the text, it's an exercise in speed, not comprehension.

Try to go through each line in 1 second and increase the speed with each page.

Do not linger on one line for more than 1 second under any circumstances, even if you do not understand at all what the text is about.

With this technique, I was able to read 936 words in 2 minutes, which means 460 words per minute. Interestingly, when you follow with a pen or pencil, it seems that your vision is ahead of the pencil, and you read faster. And when you try to remove it, immediately your vision seems to spread out over the page, as if the focus was released and it began to float all over the page.

2. Speed ​​(3 minutes)

Repeat the tracker technique, but allow no more than half a second to read each line (read two lines of text in the time it takes to say "twenty-two").

Most likely, you will not understand anything at all from what you read, but this is not important. Now you are training your perceptual reflexes, and these exercises help you adapt to the system. Do not slow down for 3 minutes. Concentrate on the tip of your pen and the technique for increasing speed.

In 3 minutes of such a frenzied race, I read five pages and 14 lines, averaging 586 words per minute. The hardest part of this exercise is not to slow down the speed of the pencil. It's a real block: you've been reading all your life to understand what you're reading, and it's not easy to let go of that.

Thoughts cling to the lines in an effort to return to understand what it is about, and the pencil also begins to slow down. It is also difficult to maintain concentration on such useless reading, the brain gives up, and thoughts fly away to hell, which is also reflected in the speed of the pencil.

Step three: expand the scope of perception

When you focus your eyes on the center of the monitor, you still see its extreme areas. So it is with the text: you concentrate on one word, and you see several words surrounding it.

So, the more words you learn to see in this way with the help of peripheral vision, the faster you can read. The expanded area of ​​perception allows you to increase the speed of reading by 300%.

Beginners with a normal reading speed spend their peripheral vision on the fields, that is, they run their eyes through the letters of absolutely all the words of the text, from the first to the last. At the same time, peripheral vision is spent on empty fields, and the reader loses from 25 to 50% of the time.

A pumped reader will not "read the fields". He will run his eyes over only a few words from the sentence, and see the rest with peripheral vision. In the illustration below, you see an approximate picture of the concentration of vision of an experienced reader: words in the center are read, and foggy ones are marked by peripheral vision.

Here is an example. Read this sentence:

Once, students enjoyed reading for four hours straight.

1. Technique (1 minute)

Use a pencil to read as fast as possible, start reading from the first word of the line and end with the last word on the line. That is, there is no expansion of the area of ​​​​perception yet - just repeat exercise No. 1, but spend no more than 1 second on each line. Under no circumstances should one line take more than 1 second.

2. Technique (1 minute)

Continue to set the pace of reading with a pen or pencil, but start reading from the second word on the line and finish reading the line two words before the end.

3. Speed ​​(3 minutes)

Start reading at the third word of the line and finish three words before the end, while moving your pencil at the speed of one line per half second (two lines in the time it takes to say "twenty-two").

If you don't understand a single line of what you read, that's fine. Now you are training your reflexes of perception, and you should not worry about understanding. Concentrate on the exercise with all your might and don't let your mind drift away from an uninteresting activity.

Step Four: Test Your New Speed

Now it's time to test your new reading speed. Set a timer for 1 minute and read as fast as you can while still understanding the text. I got 720 words per minute - twice as fast as before I started using this technique.

These are great indicators, but they are not surprising, because you yourself begin to notice how the scope of words has expanded. You don’t waste time on fields, you don’t go back through the text, and the speed increases significantly.

If you tried this technique right now, share your success in the comments. How many words per minute did you get before and after?

Speed ​​reading allows you to quickly perceive information using special ways of reading. An ordinary person reads from 120 to 180 words per minute, speed reading increases this figure to 600 or more.

Why read fast? And really: why? Readers are like gourmets who prefer to enjoy a gourmet meal slowly. Possessing a developed imagination, they are completely immersed in the atmosphere of a novel or story, present themselves as the main characters and experience the same feelings as they do.

Someone said that people who read books live many lives before they die, while those who don't read them live only one.

Book lovers often prefer paper books over e-books. True, among them there are already quite a few who have switched to Kindle, Sony Reader, Nook, etc., although they still want to see the works they like most standing on their bookshelf.

And yet the book is a source of not only pleasure, but also useful information. And every year it becomes more and more, no matter what area of ​​knowledge we touch. In search of the necessary information, we search through the mountains of books and articles, which takes a lot of time. Therefore, in order to save it, we must learn to read quickly, and so that what we read is fixed in our head, and does not disappear the next day.

An example of incorrect fast reading is an employee who does not get tired of downloading to her "Sonka", as she calls her e-book, a lot of works on topics of interest to her. It would seem that she should already be a walking encyclopedia, but if she is asked to tell what the book she recently read is about, in most cases she will embarrassedly answer that she only remembers what she read.

So, we read slowly when we want to enjoy reading, and we do it during our private leisure time. However, the ability to read slowly, with taste, is not given to everyone. Reading quickly, but thoughtfully, is also an art that needs to be learned so that in the end it doesn’t turn out “I remember here, I don’t remember here”, but I don’t remember anymore.

Some manage to learn speed reading on their own. Among them are a writer, an American inventor, a French commander, the 26th American president. Each of them used their own speed reading techniques.

By the way, there is an opinion that with fast reading, the eyes get tired less than with slow reading, and the level of reading comprehension is 20% higher.

Learning speed reading

The question of how to speed up the reading process and at the same time understand and remember as much information as possible has been of interest to some scientists since education became widespread. At the same time, they relied on the research of ophthalmologists, because fast reading is based on knowledge of how the organ of vision, the human eye, works.

You can learn to read quickly, while delving into the text and remembering it, using speed reading methods. Anyone who masters them will be able to read about 600 words per minute, that is, 3-4 times faster than normal reading. The results of some people who have learned to speed read are generally impressive: from 100 thousand words per minute and above, and with complete assimilation of the material read.

Among the most common are the following:

1. Read without regressions

The term "regression" means a return, a movement in the opposite direction. Reading regression means that our eyes periodically move backwards, instead of "sliding" forward, in order to reread a paragraph, line, sentence, or word. In most cases, we do this unnecessarily, out of habit and imperceptibly to ourselves. It is worth watching how we read, and we will be surprised to find that regressions in reading are also about us.

Regressions are one of the most common causes of slow reading. On average, there are 10-15 regressions per 100 words of text. Not surprisingly, the reading speed is noticeably reduced.

There are justified regressions when a return to what has been read is necessary for a deeper understanding of the text. However, experts in speed reading advise to go back only after reading the entire text. They argue that avoiding regressions improves reading comprehension and, of course, reduces the time it takes to read a particular text.

So, we observe how we read, and if we find that regressions are a bad habit, and not a desire to better understand a complex text, we take it “on a pencil” and get rid of it;

2. Suppress subvocalization

Subvocalization in the process of reading is no less common than regressions, and in the same way it significantly slows it down. Its essence is that while reading “to ourselves”, silently, we internally pronounce all the words. And, again, we do not notice how we do it.

It only seems to us that we read with our eyes alone, but if we follow ourselves, we will notice that the organs of speech are also involved in reading: the tongue, larynx, lips, which make micro-movements.

Articulation is especially pronounced in people whose reading skills are not developed, for example, in children. It also “turns on” when reading a complex text. It is difficult to get rid of the internal pronunciation of words for people who read aloud a lot.

Speed ​​reading experts differentiate between speaking words with the speech organs and speaking them in the speech center of the brain. From the first, which often manifests itself as mumbling, they advise getting rid of, holding a pencil in your mouth, for example, which will prevent the pronunciation of words.

The second one is harder to get rid of. One of the ways is to divert attention from pronunciation with the help of extraneous rhythmic sounds (the simplest is tapping on the table with a pencil). You can, in parallel with reading, pronounce simple rhymes, tongue twisters or sing a simple motive of a song - it doesn’t matter, to yourself or out loud.

These tips apply to those who have significant subvocalization, which significantly slows down reading. Experts believe that it is impossible to completely get rid of it, and primarily because when we learn to read, we associate words with how they are pronounced - with sounds;

3. Expanding the field of view

Here we mean not the field of view itself, but the ability to capture a certain amount of information with the eye. Each person has a different field of view - on average it is from 4 to 5 cm, and it cannot be expanded by training. However, you can train your eyes so that they read not only the information that is in the area of ​​​​best vision - where the eye directly falls, but also information that is in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bperipheral vision, which the eyes see blurry. Appropriate training allows you to expand it to 10 cm. After training, some people begin to read text of different widths only vertically.

One of the effective ways to expand visual perception is static and dynamic exercises, the main character of which is the green dot. Static ones involve contemplating it in order to learn how to concentrate: we take a sheet of text with a green dot drawn on it, and sit down at the table. The lighting is even, the posture is comfortable and relaxed. We place the sheet at a distance of about 30 cm from the eyes and read the text, and then examine the green dot for 10 minutes, without being distracted by anything else. We go to bed, mentally imagining the same green dot before our eyes.

After a month of static exercises, we move on to dynamic ones: around the green dot, you need to try to examine larger and larger passages of text - first horizontally, then vertically. The text should not be read, but only seen.

You can improve peripheral visual perception using Schulte tables, which are available on the Internet.

The correctness of actions can be judged when we can clearly see the entire page, at least for a few moments. In normal reading, the eyes cover only 2-4 words in one fixation, while expanding the field of view and connecting the peripheral to work, during the same time you can see a line, or even the entire paragraph;

4. Learn to read superficially

The ability to scan the text in order to highlight the main idea of ​​the author in it is one of the most difficult, since many thought processes are involved here. We use it when, for example, we write notes: we determine the key words, and according to them, the meaning of the entire text.

By the way, before you start reading, you should look at the summary, reviews of the book, the preface, the table of contents, and a few lines. Many books do not deserve our time and are only worth a cursory glance. English philosopher, 16th-17th centuries Francis Bacon observed that "There are books that need only be tasted, there are those that are best swallowed, and only a few are worth chewing and digesting."

To learn how to highlight the main thing, it is worth each time after reading a book or article to briefly retell their content to yourself. Preferably aloud. The more often we do this, the easier it will be for us to answer the question, what is the uniqueness of this book;

5. Becoming Mindful

People who are inattentive read slowly because their attention keeps shifting to other subjects. They cannot concentrate, as they read mechanically, thinking "of their own". As a result, they return to the beginning of the page or paragraph again and again. The book they are reading may lie open on the same page for more than one day.

You can learn to concentrate by starting to practice reading or pronouncing words in reverse, or backwards. This is easy to do while walking, without spending "useful" time on this activity. You can add up in your mind the numbers on the numbers of cars passing by.

However, the most effective way to learn how to read quickly, especially if you need it not for personal purposes, but for work, is to enroll in courses or trainings conducted by specialists.

It is useful to read books written by those who are already adept at this matter. The best of them: "Speed ​​Reading at the Speed ​​of Light" by Bennett Joseph, "Speed ​​Reading Textbook" by Tony Buzan, "Speed ​​Reading: How to Remember More by Reading 8 Times Faster" by Peter Kamp, "Speed ​​Reading in Practice" by Pavel Palagin and "Learn to Read Fast" O. Andreeva and L. Khromova.