ABBY MARKS BEALE
&
THE PRINCETON
LANGUAGE INSTITUTE
10 Days to Faster Reading
Zip Through Books, Magazines, and Newspapers.
Understand and Remember Everything You Read!
SELF-IMPROVEMENT IN ONLY MINUTES A DAY
10 Days to Faster Reading
By Abby Marks Beale (sponsored by The Princeton Language Institute)
Zip through Books, Magazines, Newspapers
Understand and Remember Everything You Read
Self-Improvement in Only Minutes a Day
Printed Version
Produced by The Philip Lief Group, Inc.
Published by Warner Books, A Time Warner Company
Copyright 2001, The Philip Lief Group
ISBN: 0-446-67667-5
E-Book Version
Produced by Abby Marks Beale
Copyright 2008, Abby Marks Beale
www.RevItUpReading.com
The clip art included in this ebook is from Microsoft®.com
The ebook was transcribed by Jon Kaufman and page layout by Joni McPherson.
ISBN: 978-0-9745928-2-4
Introduction
Congratulations! By having this book in your hands, you have taken a very important step in improving your reading skills. Since you probably have not had any reading training since elementary school, now you will learn something new about how to read more efficiently and effectively.
You may be a busy professional looking to get through your reading workload or master new material more quickly, an interested educator looking for strategies for your students, a homemaker or retiree looking to develop your reading skills, or a student who'd like to know the magic involved in faster reading. Whatever the reason, you've chosen the right book. By reading this book and using the information daily, you will learn all you need to know about how to read faster and improve your comprehension.
But what does "reading this book," mean? Like many other "how-to" books, each chapter builds on the previous one. So I encourage you to read at least the first five chapters in the order in which they are presented to maximize your speed-reading potential. After that, you can skip around to the remaining chapters in which you have most interest. This book has these key objectives:
Help you realize the value of what you may already be doing. Throughout this book, you will find many concepts that you are already familiar with yet you may not have known that they were good reading strategies. You will be able to identify several positive things that you are already doing that no one formally taught you, but rather, due to survival or ingenuity, you have figured out on your own.
Introduce you to a wide spectrum of ideas to pick and choose from. There is no one best way to read. But there are many great strategies you can use. This book is not intended as a book of rules but rather as a book of options. This is why you are asked to try the strategies, think about the concepts, and eventually decide which will work best for you. The last page of this book is blank. If you print this eBook, use it to write down your "keepers" – the most important or valuable ideas you personally got from this book. If you are reading on- screen, create a separate word document to keep track of your keepers. Doing so keeps you actively looking for what you want and documents your keepers for later review.
Enhance your level of reading confidence. For many people, reading is something they do, not something they love. Many readers think they are the slowest readers in the world or feel inadequate in their overall reading abilities. True or not, one thing is certain: If you do not feel confident in your reading ability or do not get satisfaction when you read, then you won't choose to read. When you reach a point where you feel like the time you spend reading is worthwhile, because you understand or get what you need from it, then you will choose to read more often. It is that simple.
I also recommend you keep the following materials handy to help you do the exercises in each chapter:
Pencil or pen
Highlighter
Paper
Calculator
Watch with a second hand or stopwatch
Blank 3x5 white index card or the blank side of a business card
Familiar reading material such as favorite magazines or newspapers
You are a reader who wants to learn how to become skilled at speed-reading. A comparable relationship exists between car drivers and those who want to learn how to become skilled at race car driving. Therefore, I have used a race car theme, drawing analogies between speed-reading and car racing. Be reassured that you do not have to be a race car fan to appreciate the connection.
Practice is an important aspect of improving your reading speed. Each day has a practice reading called a Time Trial. Most contain four hundred words, very short in comparison to newspaper or magazine articles, and are followed by a series of ten comprehension statements to answer. You will be able to track your progress in your Words per Minute, which you will add to your Personal Progress Chart.
The comprehension statements ask you to choose among three possible answers: True (T), False (F), or not discussed (N). All your answers need to come from the information in the reading, not from what you may already know.
Though this book will show you how to efficiently read anything, most of the information is focused on reading nonfiction such as business books and periodicals or school textbooks. Nonfiction readers are always looking for ways to read more in less time. Fiction readers, who enjoy reading stories and novels, have a choice. As a result, you will find that all the Time Trials in this book are nonfiction except for one fiction reading on Day 7.
If, after finishing this book, you have lingering questions or concerns or want to share your success with me, please write to me:
Abby Marks Beale Rev It Up Reading
P.O. Box 4212
Wallingford, CT 06492
www.RevItUpReading.com
Enough said. Have fun at the races!
Abby Marks Beale
Day 1: Putting the Key in the Ignition
Think of this book as a key that enables you to jumpstart your reading abilities and test-drive a whole new set of skills and techniques. If you are like many, you already feel confident about having this book in your hand because learning to read faster is a goal you have set many times. Now, by opening this book, you are closer than ever to achieving that goal.
How Will Increasing My Reading Speed Help Me?
As you sit poised in the driver's seat, let's look at the benefits of becoming a faster reader:
Read more in less time. You will double or even triple the amount you read in the same amount of time. At times, you may find that you only have to skim material.
Improve your concentration. The faster you read, the more you pay attention and focus on what you are doing.
Understand material with greater depth and accuracy. As your concentration improves, you will better understand what you read.
Retain information better. You can remember information better because you are paying attention, concentrating, and understanding more.
Enjoy Reading More. The faster reading strategies in this book help you build confidence and competence in your reading abilities, so you quickly find you enjoy reading more.
There are some more little known benefits of learning to read faster — benefits I have personally experienced or participants in my workshops have shared with me. (I know there are more than these and maybe someday you'll let me know what they are.)
Receive higher test scores on standardized tests
Feel more in control of information overload.
Surf the Web more efficiently.
Find a subtitled mov
ie a little more appealing.
Read the informational placards in a museum faster.
Read road signs and billboards quicker.
Reduce reading stress and guilt.
Skim directions on how to assemble, plug in, and/or operate any apparatus, toy, or child plaything you need in a hurry.
Scan and compare nutrition labels with greater ease (cut your shopping time).
Know how long reading really takes and plan accordingly.
Have a sense of what it's like to be "current"
For me, using faster reading skills has greatly benefited my professional life. But the most powerful example I can relate is one from my personal life. When my first child was about nine months old, he woke up in the middle of the night crying with a barking cough that sounded like a seal. Now, as an experienced parent, I know that this is a medical condition called croup, which constricts the airway, making breathing difficult. Inexperienced as I was then, I was terrified. I called the pediatrician's answering service and left an urgent message. While waiting for the return call, I searched through my parenting books to figure out what was wrong and how I could make it better. Within minutes, by scanning the indexes, skimming the text, and applying the advice, my son was on his way to better breathing — and my own breathing began to return to normal as well. This scenario has played itself out time and again. Each time I am acutely aware of how helpful faster reading skills are.
Work with a Pro at Your Side
To really make a difference in your reading abilities, you must experiment with and apply the ideas in this book. Imagine that you are new to car racing and are being groomed to become a race car driver, a faster reader. Though you may already know how to drive a car, already know how to read, driving a race car is a completely different experience. If you were told to get behind the wheel of a race car and enter a competition right now, your current driving skills and knowledge base would be inadequate. However, imagine you were given ten days to prepare for the race. In those ten days you worked with a pro (this book), and discovered through trial and error techniques, tips, and trade secrets from the pros — in short, you'd find what works best for you.
So, put yourself in the driver's seat. Remember, although you will find some great ideas in this book, they will remain just great ideas if you do not turn on the ignition and explore the road- ways of faster reading. YOU hold the key.
Five Reasons to Get in the Race
There are five reasons you might be stuck in neutral with your reading ability:
Reason #1: Your Attitude
Mentally, quickly fill in the blank of the following statement with the word or words that best describes you:
I am a(n) ________ reader.
When I begin a workshop with this statement, I solicit responses from the participants. When asked for their responses, inevitably I hear negative words like "slow," "lazy" and "non-." Others respond with more positive words like "good", "avid" or "voracious." Still others describe their reading level as "poky," "buried," or "sleepy."
If you believe you fit into the more negative category of responses, I venture to guess that reading is not a very satisfying experience for you. You may daydream a lot or believe you read at a snail's pace. You may find yourself re-reading sentences or paragraphs frequently because you didn't get it the first time, or even after re-reading you still didn't get it. You may get bored easily and don't understand why or how people read for pleasure.
I used to feel that way before I learned the secrets of better and faster reading. I procrastinated on school reading assignments and rarely picked up a book for pleasure. I never understood why anyone would want to read a newspaper everyday! I admit I wasn't always the efficient, active reader I am now.
If you wrote in a more positive response in the blank, you are someone who naturally chooses to read more and spend more time reading. You find reading to be a satisfying experience and feel your time is spent wisely when you do read. You may want to increase your reading load at home or work but are not sure the best way to achieve that goal. You may just want to do better, and you've come to the right place.
I believe that the majority of successful people in the world read widely and are voracious readers. Learning and growing through reading helps you to become professionally and personally successful. Being successful doesn't necessarily mean making a lot of money, however, it does mean being competent at what you do. If you ask anyone who is prominent in their field to discuss how they got to where they are right now, I can almost guarantee you that their path to success included a lot of reading.
Throughout this book, I will ask you again to complete the statement "I am a(n) reader." Hopefully, your responses will become more positive as you begin to feel more confident about your reading abilities. Believe that your past is not predictive of your future.
Reason #2: You Are Only Human
With all the technological advancements available to us, many people feel pressure to keep pace with the amazing speed and efficiency of computers. But, let's face it, you can't open the top of your head where your processor — your brain — is, add in a computer chip, and announce you are a Pentium. If you had Pentium abilities, you could read almost at the speed of light while storing information in a massive database. "Oh, I read that article in 1991. I'll pull it right up." Sorry, it just isn't going to happen. But don't despair — you can take your horse and buggy brain and make it into a reading race car.
Reason #3: Lack of Reading Training
When was the last time you had any training to develop or polish your reading skills? If I were to venture an educated guess based on close to two decades teaching this topic, I would say only about one in twenty people may have taken an additional course, read a book, or followed an audiotape course in its entirety for faster reading. If you chuckled when you read the last line, you are probably thinking about the book or tape program you bought years ago that is currently sitting on a shelf half listened to or maybe even unopened. The other nineteen people haven't had any developmental reading training since elementary school.
If you mentally calculate your present age and subtract six, the approximate age you probably began reading, you get the number of years you have been building your current reading skills. For some readers, it's a very long time. I am constantly amazed at how well people learn to adapt to their increased reading workload without any formal training. I have met lawyers, doctors, engineers, financial planners, and other educated professionals who now after all their years of formal education want to learn how to read faster. One middle-aged lawyer I met told me he had finally come to a breaking point managing his reading workload. I asked how he made it through his college courses and certification programs without this essential skill. He said he really didn't know, he just did what he had to do. He believed that reading took him a long time, though he had not figured his reading speed or comprehension, and he found himself rereading information frequently be- cause he didn't understand it the first time. He decided it was time to do something about his poor attitude and his sluggish reading style. It's never too late to do something about your creaky reading skills.
Reason #4: Your "To Read" Pile
Everybody has some sort of a reading pile — magazines, newspapers, mail, printed emails and internet research, trade journals or other reading material for work, novels and how-to books. Some call it the "to do" stack. I call it the "to read" stack. I sometimes call it the "too high to read" stack. These piles are the visual evidence of the information explosion. Not only do you have an explosion of print material but also a massive amount of information available to read on your computer. You look at the pile and either say, "I'm going to save it for 'sometime'", or "Oh, forget it. I'm going to recycle the whole thing. I just don't have time."
The good news is you don't need to read it all. You simply need to make a conscious decision regarding what to read carefully, what to skim, and what to disregard. Throughout this book, I will give
you information on achieving this goal.
Reason #5: Not Having Enough Time
Since most people today juggle a job, kids, carpool, and a myriad of other responsibilities, they don't have time to read. They put their reading on a pile labeled "later." This "later" pile rarely gets smaller because "later" doesn't come, unless time is made intentionally for it.
In this book, you will learn ways to gain control of your reading workload and to eliminate the dismay when you see the ever growing pile of material.
So, now you possess an opinion of yourself as a reader. You are human and working with antiquated skills. You are living in the midst of a burgeoning information tidal wave and you may not be giving reading enough time. What are you going to do?
Instructions for Your First Time Trial
Okay, let's hit the road. First you need to find out how you read with regard to speed and comprehension. The following exercise takes less than five minutes to complete. Follow these simple steps and you will begin to better understand who you are as a reader.
1. Time Yourself. Have a clock or watch with a second hand next to you or a stopwatch or a kitchen timer and time how long it takes to read the passage "All About Reading" on the next page. READ NORMALLY! Write your total time in minutes and seconds in the space provided at the end of the reading.
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