Speed Reading And Comprehension
In order to gain knowledge through reading one needs to have the ability to read fast and still comprehend the material. Speed reading can thus save lot of valuable time for other important activities. The ultimate purpose or aim of speed reading is to increase reading speed by not cutting down on comprehension levels.
Reading comprehension requires reading the text thoroughly and understanding it completely. For any person, the normal reading rate is considered to be 250 to 350 words per minute with a comprehension level of 75%. However, most untrained speed readers fail massively when it comes to comprehension. Even if a speed reader possesses a rare ability to read 1000 words per minute his comprehension level might be as low as 50%. However, with regular practice of speed reading one can improve his comprehension skills.
A normal college student reads about 300 words per minute but a good reading speed is considered to be 600-700 words per minute. Some of the tips to improve one's speed are to spend minimum time between eye movements, scanning larger numbers of words at each glance and moving forward instead of trying to re-read the lines which one has already gone through. Conscious practices to speed up one's reading can also help them in improving their speed of reading.
Speed reading comprehension skills can help us in distinguishing an active reader from a passive reader. This is because an active reader tries to read and understand the meaning of the text rather than giving much emphasis on the spelling and pronunciation of each word. A skilled reader can actually predict the next line that is expected to come while reading the text by analyzing some basic clues and hints from the lines already read by the reader. He questions himself, tries to relate the lines of the text with those from his previous knowledge. Speed reading not only helps a person in proper understanding of the text but also helps him to retain the text in his memory for a considerable amount of time. The best way to improve our comprehension skill is to read and solve the questions generally given below the text and try to solve those questions within a stipulated time. First we need to scan the whole text and find out the portion of the text where the writer has given maximum importance. If the time is short it will be wiser to skip the lines occupying minimum space. One must read the first sentence of each paragraph and give a glance at the words being highlighted or kept within inverted commas. It's also advisable to read the nouns and prepositions in each line. All in all, speed reading can improve our comprehension skills to a large extent if we practice them. A little bit of hard work always pays off in case of speed reading!
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