READING FACTS – One Word Wednesday

I found another fascinating chart through one of my favorite blogs, Writers Write.  

Looking at the chart, I was fascinated to see the advantages of speed reading.

• Increased comprehension
• Less eye time on the page
• Less eye fatigability

I learned to speed read while I was working on my Masters’ degree. Had to. Those professors thought all I had going on in my life was their class reading assignments!

Reality was I worked full time as a teacher, part time with my antiques business, and full time as a corporate wife and mother to three teenagers! Fitting in time to read hundreds of pages was a very real challenge.

I am a firm believer in the rapid reading, especially in today’s world where we spend so much time reading—emails, web articles, texts, etc.

Two techniques I taught reading/study skills classes are skimming and skipping smaller words, i.e. prepositions and articles. Both skills got me through grad school and continue to be a help with all my reading whether professional or for pleasure.

It does cause a problem in my writing, though.

Because I don’t read prepositions and articles, I tend to leave them out when I write. Thank goodness for great critique partners and editors who put all those three and four letter words back in for me!

Interested in learning more about speed/rapid reading?

Mindtools.com offers great suggestions. http://www.mindtools.com/speedrd.html

More techniques can be found here.  http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/methods.html

There’s even an eight-minute free video on Youtube. Click here to watch.

YOUR TURN: Did the chart hold any surprising facts for you?