Enhanced reading skills

I have practised speed reading techniques, from a book and with the help of a software, for a week now. I haven´t superincreased my ability to read, but from the earlier online test were I scored 142 ewpm I score today 270 ewpm (measured with the software). The test with the software is similar, a short text to read and 10 questins to measure the comprehension.
While using the software I have read text at the speed of 600 wpm with ease, but I don´t know how well I comprehend the text since that was just for practising. Probably I read a lot slower knowing I will be tested later.
I will continue practising speed reading until I come up to a speed I´m happy with. Increasing the reading speed benefit a lot of areas in your life. I merely wish I could find a software in Swedish!

Why do you read slowly?

The reason people read slowly is because while reading they try to pronounciate every word. Even if you don´t read out loud the vocal cords are moving as if you were speaking. This comes from when we learned to read as children by slowly pronounciating every syllable out loud, mainly so the teacher could hear that it was correctly read. The vocal cords are controlled by muscles and muscles can only move so fast, so this has to stop if you want to read faster.
Also the eye movement has to change. There are certain eye movement techniques that increase the ability to see text differently than most people do today while reading, scanning actually instead of reading.
So if you want to read faster, get on with it! We have learned the wrong way to read,  it´s time to correct it.

Get better eyesight while learning to speed read

While practising speed reading I read a text about the software I´m using. It says that speed reading excersises the software use are well based upon experience and scientific research since long. Also that speed reading techniques are commonly used in Japan since decades, specially in private schools and companys. People reading 300-600 wpm read after a month up to 20 000 wpm.
Not only does the software teach you to read faster, the eye movement exercises also strengthen the eyesight. I have very poor eyesight and after a session I see much clearer. My grandmother used to do eye exercises to strenghten her eyesight. She got that from a book and also I bought the book after a while. The problem was that to really gain good vision you had to loose the glasses for long periods which I wasn´t able to do since I couldn´t manage without the glasses at work. I didn´t continue with the exercises, instead I did an eye surgery in 1996. Unfortunately didn´t the operation succeed to a 100 %. I still had to wear lenses afterwards and since then the eyesight has slowly gotten worse. Hopefully while learning  to speed read I will strenghten the eyesight aswell.

More speed reading

I´ve downloaded a speed reading program that I will work with this week. The program is in English aswell, I really wanted one in Swedish but haven´t found one and I don´t even know if they exist. I´m still puzzled over that it´s possible to enhance the speed in reading that much, and yet it´s not known to the public. If so everyone would exercise speed reading. I will most definitely teach my kids speed reading if I succeed in learning it.

Speed reading

I found some speed reading tests online and did this one. I chose it since it had a normal text to read and it also measured the comprehension afterwards. According to the test I read real slow, 157 wpm, but the reading comprehension was good, 91 %. 157 x 0.91 gives an ewpm of 142 which is average.
It is really amazing if it´s true what the text said, that an average reader is compared to a pianist playing every day of the week for 20 years and only able to play music like a beginner, or a racing driver never exceeding 30 mph. Since we do most of our learning by reading we should learn first and foremost speed reading in school. This should be a subject as well as studying techniques.

The fifth weekly challenge

This week´s challenge is going to be to learn to read faster. I have a book about speed reading which I started to read and study today. Now I have to measure how fast I read and then compare it to the result at the end of the week and see if I managed to speed it up a bit.
Mentally it has been a slow day, the fasting does that everything takes longer time do. Now I have just eaten and besides the headache I feel I am back to normal again.