Speed Reading by Henry Lee

Author:Henry Lee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: speed reading, speed reading for dummies, speed reading for kids, speed reading book, speed reading kids
Publisher: No Fluff Publishing
Published: 2020-03-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4 - The Road to Productivity

Speed reading is not merely for classroom purposes. In fact, reading is a lifelong skill that will help you perform your other tasks. When you read fast, you could do a lot more in a given period. Students who read 300 wpm can proceed to their other assignments. They can also finish reading more books as compared to slow readers who struggle in accomplishing their homework. College students are often bombarded with required readings, and professors usually assign four to five chapters a week. This does not include their other courses.

Lawyers and other professionals who read documents at work also need to read fast to cater to all of their clients. Despite the pile of paperwork they have, they can meet their deadlines because of speed reading.

Comprehension also increases one’s productivity. The time spent on reading is not wasted on checking your dictionary or asking people for clarifications. However, speed reading is a process in itself; it does not happen overnight.

What you can to boost your productivity level is to start reading short paragraphs first. Using the formula for computing the reading rate, measure the time you spent reading each paragraph. As you become used to this method, read longer paragraphs.

When you read, train yourself to get the main idea of the paragraph. You can do a similar exercise by grouping words according to their concepts. For example, the words “lions, cats, tigers, panthers” can easily be summarized as “they are all members of the cat family”. Another example would be “tea, Queen Victoria, omnibus, Big Ben”, which are categorized as “everything British”. This activity will train your eyes to look at words in one glance and immediately see connections between ideas. Comprehension also plays a vital role in this exercise because you have to analyze what the words have in common.

To test yourself how fast you are at summarizing and synthesizing ideas, categorize the following groups of words in five seconds. Don’t forget to use a timer for this activity: 1) girls, ladies, women, hens; 2) sneakers, sandals, stilettos, boots; 3) Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela; 4) baseball, swimming, golf, archery; 5) gelato, chocolate mousse; cake; tarts.

Another way of increasing your productivity level through speed reading is to find information from chapter titles. Consider the following titles from a book on world history: Chapter 1 – The History of America; Chapter 2 – The Rise of Great Britain; Chapter 3—Africa and Marginalization; Chapter 4 – Chinese Dynasties; Chapter 5 – Russia and the Soviet Union. If you were asked to find the chapter where you will see Stalin’s name, you would definitely say it’s in the last chapter, because Stalin was a political figure in Russia. If you want to know about Chiang Kai Shek, the Chinese revolutionary leader, you would browse Chapter 4. This activity saves you the effort of scanning all the chapters; instead, you will just find the keywords and scan a single chapter.

These exercises made use of skimming and scanning, although long texts were not provided.

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