Objectives Part Six offers practice in developing comprehension and increasing reading rate.

Part Six, Rapid Reading and Comprehension

McGraw-Hill/Irwin © 2013 McGraw-Hill Companies. All Rights Reserved.

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If you feel you are reading your college assignments too slowly or ineffectively,

factors other than reading speed are probably responsible.

• Perhaps you don’t know where and how to look for main ideas and key supporting details in a textbook chapter.

• You may need to work on reading comprehension skills and skim reading skills.

• You may need to learn more about study skills such as textbook previewing, marking, and note-taking.

• You may have to learn to read flexibly. This means that you adjust your speed and style of reading to accommodate your purpose as well as the level of difficulty of the material.

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There is much more to effective reading than an increase in speed alone.However, some students do benefit from working to improve reading speed.

Eye reading speed can be increased using the following techniques:

Reduce the number of fixations per line. People who make 8 stops per line are not reading as quickly as those who make 4 stops.

To read faster, learn to take in several words at each stop rather than only one or two.

This helps reduce the tendency to sub-vocalize and to read one word at a time.

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Speed can be increased by reducing the duration of each pause or stop by increasing the speed of the return sweep.

Speed can be increased by cutting down on the number of backward eye movements or regressions.

With improved concentration, the eyes can be made to read with greater accuracy as well as speed.

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The key to rapid reading

• Consciously try to read faster.

• Consciously force your eyes to move and work at ever higher and higher speeds.

Rapid reading is making your eyes and brain work together to

process words at a high rate of speed.

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Keep rapid reading in perspective.

• It is different from slow and leisurely reading, in which your purpose is pleasure.

• It is different from skim reading, in which your purpose is to locate the main points in an article or chapter.

• It is different from the slow study reading you do to increase your understanding of a difficult selection.

• It is but one of many skills of an effective reader, and it is useful at certain times for certain reading purposes.

• If your comprehension rate drops even after repeated efforts to read quickly, you may reasonably decide that rapid reading is not for you. You may then focus on developing your comprehension skills.