How to learn to read 3 times faster for 20 minutes

Background: "Project PX»

Back in 1998 at Princeton University held seminar on "Project PX» (Project PX), dedicated high-speed reading. This article - an excerpt information from the workshop and the personal experience of acceleration readings.

Thus, the "Project PX» - this is a three-hour cognitive experiment, which allows you to increase your reading speed by 386%. It was carried out on people who speak five languages, and even with dyslexia were taught to read 3000 words per minute technical text, 10 pages of text. Page 6 seconds.

By comparison, the average reading speed in the US is 200 to 300 words per minute. We have due to the nature of language - from 120 to 180. And you may well increase their performance up to 700-900 words per minute.

All that is needed - is to understand the principles of how the human eye works, what to wasting time in the process of reading and how to stop its spending. When we will look at the errors and we practice them not to do, you will read several times faster and do not mindlessly running eyes, and perceiving and remembering all of the read information.

Training

you'll need for our experiment:

• book a capacity of at least 200 pages;
• pen or pencil;
• timer.

The book should lie in front of you, not closing (press page, if it tries to shut down without support).

At one session of exercise, you will need at least 20 minutes. Make sure that no one will distract you at this time.

helpful hints

Before proceeding directly to the exercises, here are a few short tips to help increase your reading speed.

1. Do as little as possible to stop reading lines of text

When we read, his eyes move in the text are not smooth, but irregular. Each jump ends fixation of attention on the part of the text, or stop looking at an area of ​​about a quarter of a page, you seem to take a picture of this part of the sheet.

Each stop on the eye text lasts from ¼ to ½ second.

To feel this, close one eye and gently push the eyelid with a fingertip, and the second eye, try to slowly slide along the line of text. Jumps become more obvious if we slip not spell, but simply in a straight horizontal line:

Well, how you feel?

2. Try as little as possible to go back through the text

Man reading at an average pace, often coming back to re-read the missed time. This can happen consciously or unconsciously. In the latter case, the subconscious itself returns an eye on the place in the text, which has been lost concentration.

On average, the conscious and unconscious refunds can take up to 30% of the time.

3. Better concentration to increase the coverage of the words read in one stop

People with an average read speed using the central focus, not horizontal peripheral vision. Due to this, they take half the words in one of the jump.

4. Train your skills individually

Exercises differ from each other, and you do not need to try to combine them into one. For example, if you train your reading speed, do not worry about understanding the text. You will consistently pass through the three stages: learning techniques, the use of technology to increase the speed and reading with understanding.

The main rule: Practice the technique at a rate three times higher than the desired reading speed. For example, if it is your reading speed is somewhere 150 words per minute, and you want to read 300, you have to train to read 900 words per minute.

Exercises

1. Determination of initial read speed

Who will have to count the number of words and lines in a book, you chose to workout. We will calculate the approximate number of words as to calculate the exact value will be too dreary and long.

To begin, consider how many words are placed in five lines of text, divide that number by five and rounded. I counted 40 words in five lines: 40: 5 = 8 - an average of eight words per line.

Then we count the number of lines on the five pages of the book and divide that number by five. I got 194 lines, I rounded up 39 lines per page: 195: 5 = 39.

Finally, consider how many words fit on the page. For this purpose, the average number of rows multiplied by the average number of words in a line: 39 × 8 = 312.

Now is the time to learn your reading speed. Put the timer for 1 minute and read the text, quietly and slowly as you normally would.

How come? I have a little more than a page - 328 words.

2. Landmark and speed

As I wrote above, the text returns and stopping sight take a long time. But you may well reduce them using a tool to keep track of their focus. As such a tool will serve you a pen, pencil or your finger.

Technique (2 minutes)

Practice using a pen or pencil to lock the focus. Gently lead pencil under the line that read at the moment, and focus on the spot where now is the tip of a pencil.

Set the pace of a pencil tip and eyes watching him, keeping at the expense of the stops and returns the text. And do not worry about understanding, because it is an exercise in speed development.

Try to go through every line in 1 second and every page to increase the speed.

Do not stay on the same line more than 1 second under any circumstances, even if you do not know what it was about in the text.

With this technique I was able to read 936 words in 2 minutes, then 460 words per minute. What is interesting, when the next with the help of pen or pencil, it seems that the sight ahead of a pencil and you read faster. And when you try to remove it, then the vision would become spread as a page, if the focus were released and he began to swim across the sheet.

Speed ​​(3 minutes)

Repeat this technique with the tracker, but to read each line stands out not more than half a second (read two lines of text in the time it takes to say "twenty-two").

Chances are you will not understand anything at all from reading, but it does not matter. Now you train your perception reflexes, and these exercises help you adapt to the system. Do not reduce the speed for 3 minutes. Concentrate on its tip pens and the technique of increasing speed.

3 minutes a frenzied race I read five pages and 14 lines, averaging 586 words per minute. The hardest thing in this exercise - not to slow down the speed of a pencil. This is a real block: you read all my life to understand what you read, and this is not so easy to abandon.

Thoughts cling to lines in an effort to return to understand what they mean, and pencil is also beginning to slow down. It is also difficult to maintain concentration on such a useless reading here, the brain gives up, and thoughts fly far away, which also affects the speed of a pencil.

3. The expansion of the field of perception

When you focus in the center of the monitor view, still see its edge area. And with the text: concentrate on one word, and you can see a few words surrounding it.

So, the more words you learn to see in such a way by means of peripheral vision, the sooner you can read. Enhanced perception of the region can increase reading speed by 300%.

Newcomers to the normal reading speed spend their peripheral vision on the field, that is, run his eyes over the letters of absolutely all the words of the text, from the first to the last. In this case, peripheral vision is spent in the fields, and the person loses 25 to 50% of the time.

Bleed the reader will not be "read field." He will run only through the eyes of a number of words in a sentence and the rest see the peripheral vision. In the illustration below you can see a rough picture of the concentration of the experienced reader: the word in the center is read and marked peripheral vision hazy.

Here is an example. Read this sentence:

Once students have enjoyed reading four hours.

If you start to read with the word "students" and ends with "reading" Save the time to read as many as five of the eight words! This reduces the time to read this sentence more than doubled.

Technique (1 minute)

Use a pencil to read as soon as possible: start with the first line and ends with the last word. That is, while any expansion of the field of perception - just repeat the exercise number 1, but spend on each line of no more than 1 second. Do not, under any circumstances, to one line should not leave more than 1 second.

Technique (1 minute)

Continue reading to set the pace with a pen or pencil, but read the start of the second word in a line and end line to read two words before the end.

Speed ​​(3 minutes)

Start reading from the third word in the line and ends three words to the end, at the same time move your pencil line at a rate of one half a second (two lines in the time it takes to say "twenty two").

If you do not understand anything from reading it properly. Now you train your perception reflexes, and not have to worry about understanding. Concentrate on the exercise you are struggling and do not allow the mind to drift away from uninteresting classes.

4. Check the new speed

Now it's time to test your new speed reading. Put the timer for 1 minute and read at the maximum speed at which you continue to understand the text. I got 720 words per minute - twice as fast than before the start of classes by this method.

This great performance, but they are not surprised, because I start to notice how the words expanded area of ​​coverage. Do not spend time on the field, not back in the text, and the speed is greatly increased.

If you have tried this technique right now, share your progress in the comments. How many words per minute happened before and after?