Read Faster - Unlearn What Your Teacher Taught You!
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Anyone can learn how to speed-read. The fact is you were taught to read slowly. You probably don't know this but as a child your teachers taught you how to read the wrong way. There are much more efficient ways to read than you have probably been doing your entire life. What you need to know is what you were taught that was wrong and how to unlearn it. Let me get to the point and tell you the main things that probably keep you from reading at your maximum efficiency. You do not need to read every word in a paragraph and get this… you do not even need to read every word in a sentence. You do not need to re-read every word in a page to make sure that you understand it. Regression will actually make it harder for you to understand what you are reading. Another thing that slower readers do is they tend to listen to each word in their head as they go. This is unnecessary and can slow you down tremendously. We were also taught that you must read a book from left to right top down and not to skip anything. This is complete crap… to put it lightly. Read bolded text and paragraph titles. If the subject of the contents is something you don't care to read or you already know about… SKIP IT. You don't have to read every paragraph, word and letter to understand or enjoy a book. It will take a lot of practice but if your are mindful of what you have been taught to do wrong then you can easily overcome the inadequacies of your schooling.
The first and worst bad habit that you were taught was that you have to read every single word and letter in a sentence and a paragraph. This is actually not how the brain works. There has been many studies that have show the human brain can look at a sentence and understand its meaning without having to read every word or look at every letter. As you read you need to learn to focus out a little bit and try not to concentrate on reading every word… This is what is called learning in blocks and doings so will lessen listening to the words in your head.
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Most readers as they read tend to listen to all of the words in there head as they read. This takes tremendous amounts of time for the brain to process each and every word into a sound for you to listen to in your brain and then put it all together at the end to form a sentence and then form an understanding of the meaning of the sentence. Just skip all of those steps… look at the sentence and try to understand its meaning without concentrating on every word and listening to every single word. Focus out a little and try not to read every word.
It sounds kind of crazy to hear someone say it but I'm already telling you that your teachers taught you to read the wrong way so I'll continue. Don't concentrate so dang hard on what you are reading … try to look at the big picture. Your brain might surprise you by understanding everything you are looking at as a whole in the paragraph without you having to read the minute details. Just let your gaze soften a little and relax a bit. Just keep your eyes moving down the page in the right direction. Keep reading and moving and let it flow. Don't ever, ever, ever read backwards! If you start to feel like you missed something do not in any circumstances read backwards. Regression or read reading as some might call it is probably the worst habit and the first one you should break. Let your mind soak in what you have read and just keep reading and flowing with the information. The moment that you stop and look back and try to understand everything concisely you will bring you reading to a screeching halt. If after you read a chapter of an informational type of book you still feel that you didn't catch the meaning of the chapter or you don't remember the details that you thing you should then go back and re-read the same chapter in the same manner… still flowing and not regressing. Another thing that you can do when you are reading informational types of books or textbooks is title and keywords scan. You don't have to read every single paragraph of every single chapter. If you read a title and the you think to yourself … I really don't need to read this paragraph or there is no way I am ever going to need that information… anything along those lines… then guess what you don't have to read it. You were taught to read every letter of every word of every sentence of every paragraph or every chapter and you just don't have to do that. You will speed up your reading tremendously just by cutting out the large amount of crap and fluff that there is in most writing. Just because you were taught to read the wrong way by your teachers doesn't mean that you can't unlearn it. It just takes a little practice and understand what you are doing wrong to speed up your reading 100%. Regardless of whether you a avid reader or if you only read when you have to if you implement these tips you will probably find reading much more enjoyable.
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