These exercises will help you optimize your brain for faster reading and better retention.
Assigned reading—it’s a necessary evil in school. And no matter how good or interesting the book in question is, it’s easy to get burned out when you have hundreds of pages of reading each week.
So what’s the quickest and most effective way to get through reading assignments without pulling your hair out? The reading exercises below can help train your brain to analyse text faster, as well as identify the most important words for memory recall.
Ironically, speed reading isn’t so much about speed—it’s about control. And the reason we have so much trouble with assigned reading lies in our inability to control where our eyes are going on the page.
When faced with a large chunk of text, our eyes tend to wander, exploring the page for keywords or phrases we recognize. This is called erratic eye movement, and it’s killing your reading comprehension.
The best way to read text and process information is to practice directional tracking—either by moving your finger under the text as you read or using an index card to uncover one line at a time. This will strengthen your brain—and your eye’s ability—to move in a straight, left-to-right pattern.
Think of it like a field sobriety test for your eyeballs: the better you can read in a straight line, the more you’re going to remember the next day.
Looking at a blank space sounds counterproductive, right? But by doing this, you’re actually using your peripheral vision to take in chunks of words. Your macular vision—or your central point of focus—only allows you to read one word at a time.
Peripheral vision increases your visual field, conditions your perceptual reflexes, and lets you process more words at a time. Try it out—use your macular vision to look at the space between the words and use your peripheral vision to read the following sentence:
You’re obviously a very intelligent person with quality taste in blogs, and we hope you check out more of our posts and infographics!
If you’re hearing voices inside your head when you read to yourself, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Subvocalization is a common, and seemingly unavoidable, habit that comes with silent reading. It’s the habit of mentally sounding out each individual word to ensure correct pronunciation.
While some subvocalization can be helpful, it’s not necessary for every word. Think about it: if you’re saying every word in your head, that means you’re only reading as fast as you can talk, which is about 150 to 200 words per minute.
Remember, the purpose of reading is the transmission of information, not to learn grammar and vocabulary. It’s about learning ideas, not words. And ultimately, you don’t have to sound out every word to get the big picture.
For instance, take a look at this sentence:
The angry man ran down the street, screaming at the tow truck as it took his new car.
To minimize subvocalization, you could just read, “Man ran down the street screaming tow truck car” and still get the main idea behind the sentence. You were able to get 100 percent of the information from 50 percent of the words.
As a result of minimizing subvocalization, you’ll end up skipping words—and sometimes entire sentences, depending on how familiar you are with the topic.
Keep in mind that the purpose of assigned reading is to gather information, so it makes sense to skip extraneous words or repetitive sentences that don’t add new information.
One method for reading faster is to read the first and last sentence of each paragraph, since new paragraphs start with a new idea and conclude with a summation or key takeaway from that idea.
Go ahead and try it now with a magazine or newspaper article. Read the first and last sentence of each paragraph, and then read the whole article. Then, compare how much information you gained using each method.
Chances are, you’ll be surprised at how much info you gain by skipping sentences.
So now you’re a faster reader, but what can you do to actually retain that swift and sudden intake of information? One of the most effective ways to absorb everything you read is to let it all out—whether it’s on paper or verbally expressed to another person.
Every 20 to 30 minutes, write down, record your voice, or tell someone about the book you’re reading—without looking at the text. This will force you to develop a main idea, as well as organize and summarize your thoughts in a way that makes sense to you.
Scientists have called it “the protege effect,” and it’s been proven to be highly effective in the academic setting. According to Time magazine, student teachers score higher on tests than other students because they work harder to understand the material so they can apply it more effectively for lessons. Another study found that firstborn children are more intelligent than their younger brothers and sisters. That’s because older kids engage in memory recall to show their younger siblings how to do things like read, play games, or tie their shoes.
“What could I learn from reading this?”
That’s the question we should all be asking ourselves every time we have to read something. A good way to acclimate yourself with the material is to read the first and last paragraphs before you dive in, while keeping an eye on headers and subheads in between. This will give you an idea of what to think about as you’re reading, so you can tie the text back to any background knowledge you already have on the subject.
Remember, reading is like a sport—the more you push yourself with these exercise, the better (and faster) you’ll become. Now that you’ve reached the end of this post, we challenge you to go back and speed-read it using the exercises above—don’t forget to time yourself!
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