Growing up, I was insecure about how fast I could read. I have always taken my time to read books, assignments, letters, etc. This has always been a source of frustration in my life, and I have found this is something that is an inconvenience for many people. Timed tests have always been my enemy, and therefore I have always wanted to learn to read faster. How or if this was possible, I was unsure. As a result, I decided to focus on researching methods of how to read more words per minute.
As an employee at the UCWbl, much of my job requires reading in a limited amount of time. I began my research by looking for small tips and tricks that I could apply to my appointments and readings outside of work. There are many different methods out there, and I have discovered that the best way to go about it is to try them all. You will never know what works best for you until you try it. Here are a few that I tried throughout the past few months offered by The Huffington Post and Life Optimizer.
- Read more and faster: In this method, the reader practices reading quickly (skimming) in order to train the brain to absorb information faster. The first few attempts will result in little retention, but the goal is that the retention will grow the more the method is used. Luckily, the UCWbl offers lots of practice for reading.
- Perceptual Expansion: This means being able to have a wider visual focus, leading to consecutive lines being able to read. Many readers spend their time “reading the margins” going from one line of text to the next. Being mindful of this helped my ability to increase my speed, however, my retention would fall if I read too quickly.
- Reading at a Consistent Speed: Simply reading without decreasing or increasing speed will help focus and efficiency in reading quickly. Over time, one can increase this set speed in order to train the brain to read quicker. I found this helpful because it encourages focusing on the material.
- Accelareader: This application flashes words on a screen at a set speed or words per minute. The user can slowly increase this speed over time. I found it tedious and time-consuming to copy and paste anything I was reading into the processor.
- Writing it Down: The goal of this is to help retention, and therefore not require such a close and slow read of the material. For written feedbacks that are great in length, I tried using physical paper and pencil. This method did not work for me personally, but I think it has the potential to help others.
After trying these methods Fall Quarter, I decided to do a little more research on the subject, also focusing on what other universities have published. It had not occurred to me that there were multiple books and articles written strictly on how we read. I was fascinated to find the conclusions that these authors had made about how humans process written language.
Looking at other universities, I decided to focus on UNC Capel Hill (a classic) and BYU. Here is what I took away from both of these publishings:
- UNC-Chapel Hill: It is important to focus on priorities in your reading. I realized that we already do this as tutors when we are looking for agenda items. This helps the reader to only spend time on what will need to be retained. This article was really more about understanding the material rather than increasing wpm. That being said, it did offer useful insight on how to prepare for a reading assignment by focusing on why something was written and why you are reading it.
- BYU: This article interviewed an instructor of a speed-reading class at the university. Here are Benjamin D. Bascom’s principles behind speed-reading:
“Posture: Sit up straight in a chair and have your feet on the floor. Hold the book in your dominant hand at a 45-degree angle. Read inadequate lighting.
Preview: Flip through the book to get familiar with its genre, character names, and places.
Pacing: Use a Readmate, metronome, or loud clock—anything that provides a consistent beat—to push your reading. Train yourself to read one line for every beat. Move your free hand across the page as you read to help keep you on pace.
Periodically map: After reading for five minutes, stop and write down all the things you can remember from your reading.
Practice: Go through the previous four steps in 20-minute sessions, three times a week. Push yourself to read faster and faster as you get more experienced. Eventually, you won’t even need to use a metronome or your hand to move your eye along the page”.
“How to Read Faster” BYU Magazine.
Reflecting on these theories, I have come to pick and choose the ones that work best for me. A final resource that I like to refer back to is an article from The New York Times by Malia Wollen. Here are the key concepts I took away from that article.
- Word Frequency Effect: This is the idea that the more times you come across a word, the easier you will come to understand it, and the faster you will be able to read it. This helps to reassure me that if I am reading a paper on a topic I am unfamiliar with, that it is okay if it takes me longer. This also helps me to budget my time and to understand that in order to give quality feedback, I will need more time reading if the topic is foreign to me.
- No Shortcuts: In reality, there are no real cheats for reading faster without compromising comprehension. It is truly practice that makes perfect.
I decided to take this last point to heart going into Winter Quarter. I was taking a few heavy reading classes, and with my schedule, it was the perfect time to practice “speedy reading” I would push myself to read more words per minute, and then analyze my comprehension of each section. Throughout these classes, I read about nine books or more this past quarter. I have noticed that my reading with speed in mind has actually helped my ability to read quickly significantly. Before, there was a significant difference between skimming and actually reading and comprehending the material. Now, I am able to explore the in-between in order to tackle each piece that I read. Instead of one or the other, I have developed a spectrum.
Overall, I am grateful for doing this project, because it is something that I have always wanted to work on. I think that this was definitely applied in my work in Writing Fellows because as I read more papers on the same topic, I noticed my rate of reading on comprehension improve over time. I hope to continue to be cognizant of this growth and continue to push myself steadily to read and comprehend a little faster every quarter.
References:
Emmen, Johnathan. “How to Read Faster and Remember More- 5 Strategies” Life Optimizer. 5 Apr 2015. https://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2016/04/05/how-to-read-faster-and-remember-more/
Ferriss, Tim. “How I Learned to Read 300 Percent Faster in 20 Minutes” HuffPost. 13 Jul 2014. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/speed-reading_b_5317784?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHkx38-4s2a0TbH2h_KFUTknW3ceuDv8v35hZbXhJFMuntZTxPfpOJQAxNagQKPaUsDLXqiXG-ukYdP0zhdpaJzzGZETLC_lj3fhlIDBUjjKLSxjRdWECrmH9iqeSv92JAX6nHEbnuSXUh7Frs_bMOuIjBD6RYECC9FvOOmGNC4Y
“How to Read Faster” BYU Magazine. 2009. https://magazine.byu.edu/article/how-to-read-faster/
“Reading to Write” The Writing Center University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 2020. https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-to-write/