How to learn speed reading: methods and techniques

Speed ​​reading is the skill of quickly reading texts. Using this technique, any person, be it an adult or a child, can expand his field of vision many times over, learn to filter out the unnecessary and highlight the most important information. It is noteworthy that you can learn to read speed even at home if you practice regularly. We offer you a set of effective exercises and techniques that will allow you to quickly master this technique and avoid common mistakes.

One of the most common problems is that a child reads to himself: that is, he not only moves his lips and tongue, but also reproduces the words in his head, while his eyes can remain on one point. This phenomenon significantly reduces the speed of information perception and reading.

This problem is mainly faced by children. The fact is that a child's eye, in comparison with an adult's, has a relatively small field of view, that is, a child can only see the picture in front of him.

Regression effect often becomes a problem for children and adolescents at the time of reading.... In this case, the eyes constantly return to material that has already been read before - this is considered unacceptable. Let's say more: such a defect is eradicated with great difficulty.It is very important not to confuse regression with reception, the latter is the same regression, but it occurs with the aim of rethinking the text read or its better assimilation. It can be justified if the child has questions about the material.

An important factor is that the vocabulary and general knowledge base of children is small. It turns out that the baby is trying to mentally understand the essence of a word, the meaning of which he does not know, thus, the reading speed decreases. In this situation, it is very important to shorten the path between the text itself and its analysis, for this it is very important to train the perception of information not through hearing, but visually. And finally many children suffer from attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Unfortunately, it is impossible to prohibit the organs of vision from returning to a previously read text; this skill requires constant training. Usually a pointer is used for this - then the eyes will automatically follow it, without being distracted by other text blocks. However, at first, the student will have to force himself not to look up, it will be difficult for him.

For the very first lessons, it is better to choose a bookmark - they put it on the fragment read and continue to slide their eyes down the page. The principle is simple here: the upper text will be hidden, so it is simply impossible to return to it with your eyes. This is how the automatic skill of the regularity of movement only forward is developed.

Suppression of articulation is a useful skill for developing fast reading. In this case, the pronunciation of words and expressions is minimized and even completely excluded, since this is what takes up most of the time during reading. The fact is that speaking makes the brain process the data read as well as the received speech information... Thus, the functional load on the brain increases, and accordingly, this decreases the reading speed.

As practice shows, in order to learn how to suppress articulation, you need at least 20 hours of practical exercises using a special exercise: beating off a given rhythm with a hand or a pencil.

To expand the field of perception of information, you need to take a piece of paper with some text and draw a green dot in its very center. The student should look at her carefully for 10 minutes, and then try to imagine before going to bed. This focusing exercise should be done for two weeks. After that, you can proceed to the next stage - begin to consider the text, which is located vertically and horizontally from the point.

A very effective exercise that can develop the ability to concentrate and improve thinking is training in the so-called gibberish language (Martian verses). In other words, it is reading from right to left. To begin with, you can train such skills using palindromes, that is, words and phrases that are read the same from right to left and left to right. For example, “A rose fell on Azor’s paw”, “Cat will soon be forty days old”, etc. After that, you can start the exercises with the most common text.

You can significantly increase your reading speed with a simple exercise - reading a book upside down. Initially, you need to read a small piece of text upside down, then return the book to its original state and re-read it again. Surely you will immediately feel how much faster and easier you can do it!

Quite an original exercise, it assumes that while reading the student will cover only the beginning of the line and its end, not every word, as is done in traditional reading. Often this is enough to understand the meaning of the information presented. In addition, it significantly increases the speed of reading.

Using diagonal reading methods allows you to perceive the read data using various symbols and images. Of course, you will hardly be able to familiarize yourself with the book of your favorite author using this technique. But for students and pupils, the method can be very relevant. In this case, reading starts from the upper left corner and moves towards the lower right, while the gaze stops at key phrases. Thus, it takes no more than 30 seconds to study each page.

The technique is based on the ability to highlight key phrases and words in the text. Through the exercise, the child learns to formulate the main meaning of the data read. Memory can store a larger amount of necessary information in the head, avoiding memorizing facts and descriptions that are not of fundamental importance.

This technique is not suitable for beginners; it can be used by those students who have already mastered the basics of speed reading. The essence of the technique is to study the text at a certain speed. Such a skill will allow a child to view a large stream of data in a fairly short time and isolate their basic part. Such reading is rather superficial, it is not suitable for assimilating information, but it is optimal when searching for information.

Vertical reading increases the radius of peripheral vision. During exercise the student's gaze moves not along the traditional horizontal trajectory, but vertically exactly in the center of the page. This reading can be mastered using Schulte tables. They look like postcards with numbers written inside. In this case, the numbers can be in any order. - this is one of the most important conditions, it is in it that the development of skills for finding the required number consists.

If there is no table at hand, you can take any text, mentally draw a straight vertical line in the center and read the information presented, focusing your gaze on this line. It is best to start your workouts with narrow texts, such as newspaper columns. As you progress through the training, the text format can be increased.

It should be noted that you can learn speed reading at any age, and if you decide to get this skill as an adult, then your desire is very commendable. This ability will allow you to save a huge amount of time, which can be freed up for other, equally important matters.... However, adult learners face a lot of difficulties as they have to overcome already formed habits. This greatly complicates the process of acquiring skills, however, do not despair - if the motivation is strong enough, then you can master the skills of quick reading at any, even a very mature age.

Parents quite often face a problem when a child reads poorly at school, this significantly affects the speed of homework, which cannot but affect overall academic performance. The situation is exacerbated when, moreover, the child is restless and cannot sit quietly at a book. In this case, mastering the speed reading technique can be salvation.

However, today there is no consensus about the age at which one can begin to master this technique. Some experts advocate early start of classes, motivating their position by the fact that in high school and high school it will be much more difficult to break the formed reading skills. However, we draw your attention to the fact that for full-fledged mental development it is important not only for the kid to be able to read the text, but also to understand it. Do not forget about intonation, which is of fundamental importance when assessing the ability to read in elementary school.

Learning to read quickly can only be started if the child knows the alphabet and has already learned to read in words, not syllables.... That is why, from a logical point of view, the optimal age for the development of speed reading skills will be the period from 7 to 10 years. During this time, most children can read words well, and in addition, they grasp the essence of the text.

The third group of psychologists advises to engage in speed reading only after the child turns 10-12 years old. It is believed that from this age children begin to memorize and understand information at the speed of speech. In addition, at this age it is much better to develop memory, because the student can not only read the text quickly, but also retell it. Anyway - the choice is only for the parents, everyone should proceed from the peculiarities of the development of their child and decide the issue with the beginning of learning to speed reading individually.

It was experimentally found that speed reading greatly contributes to the activation of thought processes. If you are determined to learn speed reading skills and at the same time increase the volume and quality of memorization, then first of all you need to assess the complexity of the task and calculate the amount of information... Focus on the reading speed you need. Estimate in advance the approximate amount of time it will take to assimilate the proposed material as firmly as possible. At this time, a certain period should be allocated for memorization, as well as one more - for repeating what has been learned.

One of the most effective techniques is the figurative grouping method.... Its essence lies in the fact that in the proposed text it is necessary to highlight 7 main semantic blocks. For each block, you should create your own mental image, that is, one or another key picture. Please note that each picture should contain no more than 7 basic details. The selected images should be as vivid and easy to remember, each image is fixed in short-term memory for about 10-15 seconds - this is enough for information about them to come to the long-term memory archive.

Learning to read speed is not a quick process. It requires regular exercise, constant training and repetition.... If we are talking about an adult, as a rule, his self-motivation is sufficient to complete all the necessary tasks in a timely manner. Children do not have such an interest, so many parents begin to put pressure on them. You don't need to do this, any training should take place only in a playful way. If we neglect this requirement, then at best it is possible simply not to achieve the desired result, and at worst to completely discourage the child from learning to read.

You should not sit for hours at a time, training will be much more effective, which will take 5 minutes, but at the same time it will be repeated 4-5 times a day.... Keep in mind that in 20 minutes the child's brain can get very tired, and accordingly, the material will not be absorbed in the required volume.