

Ask HN: Want to Learn Speed Reading. Where to Begin? - fingerprinter

Hello -<p>I want to try speed reading but am not sure where to begin. I've seen others mention it in posts and am curious about programs, methods and results.<p>Thanks!
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brutos
The easiest hack I've found is to inhibit subvocalization through just
repeating "one, two, three" or any other phrase in your mind while reading.

The second "hack" is to try to make reading chunks as big as possible. Try not
to focus on a single word.

The third trick is to minimize eye movement. Try reading the first line
normally and the second line backwards.

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phamilton
Also guide with your finger to maintain speed. The tip of my index finger used
to be all black after big reading assignments.

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cafard
Having been around during speed reading's first vogue in the 1960s, I have to
say that I think it overrated. To the extent that it works, I think that it is
plain old skimming, which people hardly need to be taught. If you can read
something at triple speed and comprehend as much, that text probably had a lot
of padding.

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blyuher
You may start with this rather good and detailed overview of techniques:
<http://muflax.com/experiments/speedreading/>

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adrianp
There are some resources mentioned in this post:
<http://howtolifeguide.com/post/16664436505/how-to-read>

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gregorymichael
Richard Zorn made a book called Speed Reading. I believe it's out of print.
But you can probably find it on Amazon. Small book. I read it in highschool.
It works.

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linguistbreaker
Read a book you've already read. Or a short story. Then read the short story
again, but faster.

Another trick is to read extremely technical papers in a field you're not
familiar with. This can help you to stop subvocalizing as well as teach better
syntactic cue'ing like chunking via prepositions etc.

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metaclass
You just need to spend more time reading and your speed will increase
naturally.

For example, I read a lot and it usually takes me no more than 2-3 hours to
finish an average fiction book(about 0.5 mb in size) in my native language(I
didn't received any training in speed reading)

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kloc
You may find this link useful :
[http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-
readin...](http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2009/07/30/speed-reading-and-
accelerated-learning/)

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DaveGalt
Reading in word-groups has always been the key to reading faster. BUT, you
have to concentrate on MEANINGFUL GROUPS. The secret is learning to see the
ideas VISUALLY. If you concentrate on visualizing the ideas in meaningful
groups of words at a time, the reading becomes more meaningful, more like
WATCHING a movie than LISTENING to a story. And verbalization will fade away
on its own. I could describe this better, but I'm typing this on my little
Kindle screen. But just search on "Reading Thought-Units" at Amazon for some
really great new info on this subject.

~~~
smallhands
one question to see ideals visually. how? I need some examples

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DaveGalt
smallhands, thanks for asking that. First, here's the book I was referring to
earlier: [http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Thought-Units-
ebook/dp/B005GVL...](http://www.amazon.com/Reading-Thought-Units-
ebook/dp/B005GVLF48/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1325185067&sr=1-7)
It's a new method, which makes it very easy to practice doing what reading
improvement instructors have been recommending for over 100 years -- that is,
reading groups of words at a time.

The short answer is, visualizing ideas is actually 'thinking' more about what
you read. Meaningful word-groups form ideas which you can visualized at just
one glance.

The longer answer is… Visualizing ideas is forming a mental picture or
concept. A picture of course is simply imagining a thing or an action. A
concept would be more like imagining an attribute or a description.

For example, look at this line from Alice in Wonderland: "The rabbit-hole went
straight on like a tunnel for some way".

This could be considered as 4 ideas, or 'thought-units':

The rabbit-hole

went straight on

like a tunnel

for some way.

You would look at the phrase, "The rabbit-hole" and imagine a rabbit-hole. And
this doesn't have to be a very exact or detailed picture, but just the act of
picturing it forces you to use the visual part of your mind rather than the
verbal part. This makes what you read more meaningful and therefore improves
your comprehension. It's only by improving comprehension that you can ever
read faster. I mean, if you aren't comprehending something, you aren't really
reading it, are you? You're just sounding out words.

The next phrase, "went straight on" is an action, but also more of a concept.
You would imagine the concept of something going straight.

This idea of concepts is a bit harder to explain. It's just thinking about
what something really 'is'. One exercise which helps understand
'conceptualizing' is to try to look at things, and understand what they are,
but without naming them. This can be surprisingly tricky to do because we are
so used to naming things. But try to look around you, and think about what
things 'are'… without thinking of their names. What's left in your mind when
you don't say words, is the 'concept'. It's getting this 'idea' or message
across which is the goal and purpose of language. The sounds or text are just
the messengers.

Anyway, likewise with the next two phrases. "like a tunnel" can be imagined as
a tunnel or the concept of 'tunnelness'. And "for some way" is another
concept. You imagine the concept of something being of a considerable
distance.

The idea of reading in word-groups has been around since 1879, when it was
discovered that this is how fast readers read. Instructors began teaching
exercises for students to try to increase their 'eye span', but really what
was needed was to 'understand' more words at a time, not just 'see' more
words.

The key to understanding groups of words at a time, is to take 'meaningful'
groups, which form whole ideas. And the key to reading groups of words, is to
visualize the ideas. This is because you can't really 'say' multiple words at
the same time, but you can 'see' one whole idea at a time.

If you think this sounds hard to do or strange, then think of how we read
compound words as single ideas all the time. We think of cupcake as one idea,
not as 'cup' and 'cake'.

That's all this is, reading a group of words as the one idea they represent
together. Fast readers have always done this. In fact they often describe how
they read as "reading in pictures".

Sorry for such a long answer, but I hope it's been helpful.

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noelsequeira
Eyercize is a very interesting resource to get started -
<http://www.eyercize.com/>

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pwpwp
Try scrolling down a web page very quickly and see if you can glean some info
from it.

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funthree
Axiom: The faster you (force yourself to) read, the faster you will be able to
read (and comprehend).

This is just something I have found to be true, and doesnt come backed by all
of the speed reading research (or marketing). As far as I know it to be you
just need to read faster and stop trying to understand every single word and
sentence. Don't try to grok every word just keep reading. The next piece of
reading you do will happen that much faster (and faster, and faster). And when
you come to something you do need to read and consciously comprehend every
word, you'll be able to do that even faster than you could before.

