3 ms·

I forget which speed reading book it was, but it helped me read a lot faster. Here's some of the key points I remember: - Broaden your focus. You don't read ea

by JDDunn9 11y ago

I forget which speed reading book it was, but it helped me read a lot faster. Here's some of the key points I remember: - Broaden your focus. You don't read each letter individually, you recognize the word as a whole. Likewise, you can, with practice, train yourself to focus on more words at a time. Try looking at one word and reading the words on either side, then practice reading half a line of a book at a time, then 1 line at a time. Think of your eyes as sponges soaking up a group of words at a time. - Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head. - Focus on the chapter titles, first / last paragraphs, and any key info (e.g. bold sentences). Read those parts several times and really focus on them. This is where most of the important information lies. You will likely forget the rest of the chapter no matter how fast/slow you read it. - Don't worry if you miss some parts from reading too quickly. Don't go back to re-read anything. Getting the general theme is more important that every single sentence. - Retention is actually higher if you read faster, because your brain can put the big picture together faster. If you don't believe that, try reading a book 1 sentence a day. As for memorizing things for school, look into Memory Palaces, Person-Action-Object, and Mnemonics. Visualizing things helps. Associate things you want to memorize with the absurd and unusual to make it stick out. It also helps to have a dirty mind when making associations. Our brains are wired to prioritize sex, so sexual scenarios are more memorable.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago
> - Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head. This is the part of every speed reading tutorial, book, whatever, that I simply don't get.
- i336_ 11y ago
  I'm not sure what you mean when you say "this", but here's my interpretation of what you mean. Feel free to clarify/reply; I check thread replies on HN every couple days, hopefully others chime in too. The most popular methods to teach language put an incredibly strong emphasis on the link between visual glyphs and the sounds they're associated with. This technique seems highly practical on the surface because it aligns reading and talking, so effort in one area leads to reward in the other. This system isn't perfect (or IMO acceptable/sane), though, because by design, it doesn't teach/provide an "off-switch" for when you want to do one without the other; rather, it conveys the opposite idea that one always implies the other. So either you intuitively figure out the nuances of where and how to differentiate visual and audial yourself, or you end up learning there are kids in the classroom who who can't read silently because they "don't get" (read: weren't taught) how to do that. And then we crash into the whole maximum reading thing speed a few years later, which is so subtle and innate that most people don't even realize they have the issue at all. Just like with silently reading, a lucky few retain enough intuition to keep the visual and audial side of things completely separate in spite of how they were (mis)taught: one of my friends has the ability to look at (ie, read) his entire laptop screen as a single whole. (Of course I've signed up for lessons :P but it remains to be seen whether I can learn... that.) But that's what speedreading is: reading purely visually, not with the clunky, time-based words->sounds->comprehension thing. Quite possibly, as you read this, you're hearing it in your speaking voice or a mental voice. Not only is that capability innately time-based, rendering accent, tone and pause use mental resources. With effort, you can consistently turn this off. It's just really really hard to learn to, 1) because we've been doing it all our lives and 2) because it was ingrained so early. I understand that comprehension speed can go through the roof once this is done, because using the visual parts of the brain to process reading directly - ie, skipping glyphs->sounds->comprehension and going straight to glyphs->comprehension - is basically the way to do it. Sadly, only very few people to this. The read-slow technique is a new one to me, but it seems to work, sort of. A better method I've also read about is to bog-down the sound processing parts of the brain with an activity that completely occupies all sound processing: repeating a sequence of letters over and over, like "A B C A B C A B C A B C ..." while you read. The visual and audial parts of the brain both ultimately do reach the comprehension parts, but the audial parts have the most connections. Bogging down audial processing with a task like the one above means you fall back on the visual->comprehension connections... which is what you want. Rebalancing everything so comprehension is predominantly visual... yeah, that would definitely the subject of some efficiency research, because without some kind of secret-sauce learning method I'd imagine it would take years.

by JDDunn9 11y ago

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

> - Don't vocalize the words. If you have trouble with this, read so slowly that your brain gives up reading words "aloud" in your head. This is the part of every speed reading tutorial, book, whatever, that I simply don't get.

i336_ 11y ago
I'm not sure what you mean when you say "this", but here's my interpretation of what you mean. Feel free to clarify/reply; I check thread replies on HN every couple days, hopefully others chime in too. The most popular methods to teach language put an incredibly strong emphasis on the link between visual glyphs and the sounds they're associated with. This technique seems highly practical on the surface because it aligns reading and talking, so effort in one area leads to reward in the other. This system isn't perfect (or IMO acceptable/sane), though, because by design, it doesn't teach/provide an "off-switch" for when you want to do one without the other; rather, it conveys the opposite idea that one always implies the other. So either you intuitively figure out the nuances of where and how to differentiate visual and audial yourself, or you end up learning there are kids in the classroom who who can't read silently because they "don't get" (read: weren't taught) how to do that. And then we crash into the whole maximum reading thing speed a few years later, which is so subtle and innate that most people don't even realize they have the issue at all. Just like with silently reading, a lucky few retain enough intuition to keep the visual and audial side of things completely separate in spite of how they were (mis)taught: one of my friends has the ability to look at (ie, read) his entire laptop screen as a single whole. (Of course I've signed up for lessons :P but it remains to be seen whether I can learn... that.) But that's what speedreading is: reading purely visually, not with the clunky, time-based words->sounds->comprehension thing. Quite possibly, as you read this, you're hearing it in your speaking voice or a mental voice. Not only is that capability innately time-based, rendering accent, tone and pause use mental resources. With effort, you can consistently turn this off. It's just really really hard to learn to, 1) because we've been doing it all our lives and 2) because it was ingrained so early. I understand that comprehension speed can go through the roof once this is done, because using the visual parts of the brain to process reading directly - ie, skipping glyphs->sounds->comprehension and going straight to glyphs->comprehension - is basically the way to do it. Sadly, only very few people to this. The read-slow technique is a new one to me, but it seems to work, sort of. A better method I've also read about is to bog-down the sound processing parts of the brain with an activity that completely occupies all sound processing: repeating a sequence of letters over and over, like "A B C A B C A B C A B C ..." while you read. The visual and audial parts of the brain both ultimately do reach the comprehension parts, but the audial parts have the most connections. Bogging down audial processing with a task like the one above means you fall back on the visual->comprehension connections... which is what you want. Rebalancing everything so comprehension is predominantly visual... yeah, that would definitely the subject of some efficiency research, because without some kind of secret-sauce learning method I'd imagine it would take years.