Speed Reading For Dummies

Reading Articles

How to Skim Text

Skimming — getting the essence from reading material without reading all the words — boils down to knowing what parts to read and what parts to pass by. Following are some tips and techniques for recognizing what is important to read in the act of skimming.

Know what you want

Before you start skimming, ask yourself what you want to get from the book or article under your nose. Think of two or three terms that describe what you want to know, and as you skim, keep an eye out for those two or three terms. Aimlessly skimming with no particular purpose can cause drowsiness, and eventually, sleep.

Read vertically as well as horizontally

When skimming, you move your eyes vertically as much as you move your eyes horizontally. In other words, you move your eyes down the page as much as you move them from side to side. Skimming is a bit like running down stairs. Yes, you should take one step at a time, and running down stairs is reckless, but you also get there faster by running.

Think like the author

Every article, book, and Web page is written to make a point of some kind, and if you can detect the author’s strategies for making his point, you can separate the important from the unimportant material in the course of your reading. You can focus on the original, meaningful material and skip over the material that just supports the author’s argument without advancing it.

Detecting the author’s strategies requires you to put yourself in his place. Besides noticing the material on the page, notice how he presents the material. See whether you can recognize how the author places background material, secondary arguments, tangential information, and just plain frippery.

Preread before you start skimming

Examine an article before you read it. By prereading an article before you skim, you can pinpoint the parts of the article that require your undivided attention and the parts that you can skip.

Try to detect the main idea in the introductory paragraphs

The introductory paragraphs usually express the main idea, argument, or goal of an article or chapter. Read these paragraphs closely. They tell you what the author’s aim is, which can help you decide early on whether the article or chapter is worth reading in detail.

Read the first sentence in each paragraph

The introductory sentence of each paragraph usually describes what follows in the paragraph. When you skim, read the first sentence in each paragraph and then decide whether the rest of the paragraph deserves a read. If it doesn’t, move on.

Don’t necessarily read complete sentences

When skimming, you don’t even have to read complete sentences. If the start of a sentence holds no promise of the sentence giving you the information you want, skip to the next sentence. Read the start of sentences with an eye to whether they will yield useful information, and read them all the way through only if they appear to be useful at first glance.

Skip examples and proofs

Authors often present examples to prove a point, but if you believe the point doesn’t need proving, you can skip the examples.

Reading Articles

The Importance of Eye Fixations to Speed Reading

A major component of speed reading is eye fixation, a point where your eyes come to rest as you read. Readers who make fewer eye fixations read faster because they take in more words with each fixation. The number of words you can process in an eye fixation depends on your vision span, your vocabulary, and your familiarity with what you’re reading.

Eye fixations and vision span

The wider your vision span is, the more words you can process in an eye fixation and the faster you can read. Acquiring the ability to see many words at a time is essential for speed reading. To see why, consider this sentence:

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.

A slow reader with a narrow vision span reads this sentence slowly in six to nine eye fixations, sometimes taking in only a single word per fixation. A fast reader with a wider vision span can read the sentence in two or three eye fixations. This reader has a stronger comprehension because she reads the sentence phrase by phrase, and phrases convey more meaning than individual words.

Eye fixations and vocabulary

To see how eye fixations correlate to vocabulary, read these lines carefully and try to understand their meaning:

Sownynge in moral vertu was his speche,

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche.

Unless you understand Middle English or you’re familiar with the writings of Geoffrey Chaucer (these lines come from The Canterbury Tales), you had trouble with these lines because few of the words are in your vocabulary. You didn’t recognize the words, so you had to examine them one at a time and probably read the lines in 15 (or more) eye fixations, one for each word.

Reading this translation of Chaucer’s lines is considerably easier because all or most of the words are in your vocabulary. Notice how much faster you read the translation:

Filled with moral virtue was his speech,

And gladly would he learn, and gladly teach.

You read the translation faster because you needed fewer eye fixations to read it. Because the words were familiar, you didn’t have to dwell on them, and you could read more than one word at a time.

The larger your vocabulary is, the more words you recognize when you read. You can take in more words with an eye fixation when you recognize the words, which is why enlarging your vocabulary is essential to being a speed reader.

Eye fixations and topic familiarity

How familiar you are with a topic is another factor influencing how many words you can see in a single eye fixation. When you read about a topic in your area of expertise or field of interest, you read more confidently, and you’re able to read more quickly with fewer eye fixations because you’re at home with the author’s words and terminology.

Your background, your general knowledge, your education — these factors also determine how fast you can read. People with a breadth of knowledge read faster because more is familiar to them. By making reading more efficient and pleasurable, speed reading encourages you to read, which in turn widens your breadth of knowledge and makes you read even faster.

Reading Articles

Increase Your Reading Speed by Locating Topic Sentences

Going straight to the main idea of each paragraph significantly increases your reading speed. This main idea is the paragraph's topic sentence. You don’t have to read as much to get a firmer grasp of the author’s fundamental ideas if you can find and understand a paragraph's topic sentence. The question is: How do you recognize the main idea in a paragraph amid all the details?

Understanding topic sentences

The topic sentence describes the subject of the paragraph and its main idea. If you can develop a nose for locating topic sentences, you can get the main idea from paragraphs quickly and thereby improve your reading speed and comprehension.

Typically, the topic sentence comes first in a paragraph, and the remaining sentences elaborate on the topic sentence. In the following paragraph, for example, the topic sentence makes a simple assertion, and evidence for its truth follows on the heels of the topic sentence:

Rainfall has been increasing steadily in Yoknapatawpha County since 1995. In that year, annual rainfall was 32 inches. By 2008, it was 40 inches, with an increase each year between 1995 and 2008, except for 1999, when the annual rainfall level fell to 29 inches.

But sometimes the topic sentence isn’t the first sentence in the paragraph. Sometimes it’s buried deeper. In this paragraph, the second sentence is the topic sentence:

Looking at rainfall in Yoknapatawpha County since 1995, a clear trend is evident. Except for 1999, when the annual rainfall level fell to 29 inches, rainfall has increased steadily since 1995. Between that year and 2008, rainfall rose from 32 to 40 inches annually.

The author of the following paragraph is a bit of a windbag and takes his time getting to the main idea. In this paragraph, the topic sentence is the last sentence:

Is it getting wetter or drier in Yoknapatawpha County? A quick look at the record gives a clear answer. Between 1995 and 2008, rainfall rose from 32 to 40 inches annually (although in 1999 it dipped to 29 inches). From this information, it’s plain to see that rainfall in the county has increased steadily since 1995.

Locating the topic sentence

Because the topic sentence can be located anywhere, how can you spot the topic sentence and get to the main idea in a paragraph? Here’s how:

• Read the first sentence carefully. Three times out of five, the topic sentence is the first sentence.

• Consider what basic property or characteristic the paragraph describes. This attribute is the paragraph’s main idea, so the sentence that expresses it is your topic sentence.

• Think about the paragraph’s purpose. The paragraph most likely wants to impart a particular piece of information. If you can figure out what that piece is, you know the paragraph’s topic and can find the sentence that presents it.

Observe the author’s writing style to determine where she likes to put the topic sentence in paragraphs. Knowing your author’s style helps you locate the topic sentence faster.