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If you want to handle texts efficiently then you cannot only focus to reading speed, but you have to remember what you read. Otherwise there is no point in reading. There exist many methods for improving comprehension. Today I will show you how to use SQ3R. This method was introduced in 1946 by Francis Pleasant Robinson in his book, Effective Study.

SQ3R is a reading method, which includes 5 steps.SQ3R means Survey, Question, Read, Recite  and Review. There are many variation of this method, here I will introduce you the basic version of it. The main point is that you will not just read the text but you will work on it through these five steps. I will explain you how you should do it.

• Survey. Look through the text before starting to read it. It means that you will make a quick preview of it. Search for the headings and subheadings; see what the structure of the text is. If there is an introduction or conclusion then look them trough at fast pace. Do not spend much time on that phase and avoid starting to read paragraphs from the text. You should get only a fast and brief overview of the text, which will help you to comprehend later.
• Question. Before you start reading ask yourself questions about the text. What do you think the text is about? By now you have already gained some information about the text and if you question yourself then it activates your brain for reading. You may write the questions down in order to make this step more efficient.
• Read. Now you are ready for reading the text. Concentrate while reading. The better your focus, the better your comprehension will be.
• Recite. Take a sheet of paper and write down the most important facts and keywords. You should write them in your own words. Rephrase the main ideas. This phase activates your knowledge. If you apply newly acquired information through reciting it then it will significantly improve your comprehension.
• Review. Look at the keywords you have written down. They will reflect the most important information from the text. Try to recall what the linkages between these keywords were. If it comes out that you have forgotten something then you can look it up from the text. You should repeat the review on the next day in order to harden the information. Later you may look through your notes from time to time in order to brush up your memory.

This method allows you to remember texts better. However, following this method will not guarantee that you will get the information from text within the shortest possible time period. SQ3R is not a speed reading method, its primary target is improving comprehension.

However, SQ3R can be combined with speed reading, if you apply speed reading techniques at step 3. Steps 1 and 2 lay a good ground for being able to comprehend well while reading at fast pace.

Not all the texts are worth applying SQ3R. Use this method only for text which you need to remember very well. If you are satisfying with only getting the main points from the text and if you need not remember them far in the future, then SQ3R will be a waste of time.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, concentrate, reading method, reading speed, sq3r, texts

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A common argument against speed reading is that it is not possible to remember the content of the text when you are reading too fast. It comes from the experience of many people who have noticed that if they read too fast then they will not remember much of what they have read. Therefore they think that there is no point in increasing your reading speed. It just cannot be that you can comprehend well at fast reading speed.

It leads to an argument that the slower you read the text the better you will understand it. So if you want to remember the text then you have to be slow and careful when reading. Many people were also taught at school that if you need to understand the content very well then you should not rush when reading.

However, in the most cases poor comprehension is not caused by too fast reading speed but low concentration. In order to obtain information from the text you have to keep your mind focused to it. If you let your thoughts wander away from the text then your brain has difficulties in memorizing that information.

It may sound unbelievable but reading faster will help you to focus better. If you make a conscious decision to read at fast pace then it keeps your thoughts concentrated to the text. If you want to read fast and at the same time still be able to follow the text then you just do not have time for thinking on other issues except the content of the text.

You are more likely to get bored when reading at slow pace. Reading faster will create excitement and make you happier. In addition, if you are reading too slowly then it is more difficult to keep a stable reading pace.

Can we improve our comprehension if we decrease our reading speed? It is difficult to do although our reading speed should depend on the difficulty of the text. If you read deliberately slowly then it is more difficult to focus to the text. You thoughts will tend to drift away.

It is natural that for more difficult text your reading speed will be somewhat slower. For example, it is ok, if you read newspaper articles at 300 words per minute and in case of scientific text you decrease your reading speed to 200 words per minute. But you are not likely to comprehend better if you decrease your reading speed to 100 words per minute.

If you want to remember the text well then it is more useful to read the text repetitively than to read if very slowly. In the previous example you will remember the text better if you read it twice at 200 words per minute in comparison to reading it at 100 words per minute only once. In many cases you will only need to read the text partially for the second time as you will only look over the most important parts of it.

For improving comprehension you will also benefit from knowledge activation. When you are reading the text twice then ask yourself questions about the text or write down keywords between to readings.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, concentration, reading speed, speed reading

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I have been asked many times for the tips for preparing and taking SAT Critical Reading Test. How to get the maximum result out of that test? How to avoid getting into time trouble and how to answer all questions correctly?

The first thing I would say is that it is not likely that you will get a good result without decent preparation. You need many skills to do well on the Critical Reading. I would say that the most important skills for the test are vocabulary, comprehension, concentration skills. In addition reading speed plays some role in the test taking, but it is not so critical as if you allocate your time wisely then there is enough time to perform the test.

You should really work on your vocabulary. It does matter a lot as many questions in that test call for good understanding of meanings of not so every day words. For increasing the vocabulary you should read different types of texts before the exam. You should read fiction, newspapers, journals etc. in order to build a large vocabulary. Look up words you don’t know while thinking about the author’s purpose, tone, etc.

Reading different texts improves also your reading comprehension. In order to improve your comprehension further try practicing sample reading comprehension tests. Reading comprehension is strongly related to concentration. You will not memorize what you have read if your concentration is poor. For getting good concentration you should learn to read without thinking on any other things except the text. Your concentration abilities on the exam day will depend on your energy level. Therefore get a good night’s sleep the night before the test Eat breakfast. You’ll be at the test center for many hours and if you get hungry then your stomach will distract you.

The critical reading test consists of Sentence Completion and Reading Comprehension tests.

Sentence Completion questions provide you with a sentence missing one or more words and require you to choose the best word to fill in the blanks. In order to do well on that part of the test then follow these tips:

• Before you look at the answers, try to complete the sentence with words that make sense to you. If what you come up is one of the answer choices, select it as your answer. If you have developed good vocabulary then following your intuition will usually lead to correct answer.
• If following the previous tip did not give the correct answer then read all the answer choices before selecting one. Find which one suits the best. If there are two words to fill in the blanks then be sure that both of these words have to fit to the sentence. If you see that one of the words does not fit then this cannot be the correct answer.
• Use the context of nearby words to figure out unknown words. If you’re really stuck for the meaning of a word, try to think of other words that have similar prefixes, roots, or suffixes

Reading Comprehension test questions your understanding of the content and style of specific reading passages. You will be asked to answer 48 multiple-choice questions based on short and long passages. In order to answer the questions correctly you will benefit from these tips:

• Before reading the passage make a quick preview of it. It means that you will scan it with your eyes at fast pace. You will get the most important keywords and information from it within few seconds and it will prepare your mind for reading it. During the preview read the italicized introductory text.
• Now read the passage. During reading fully focus to the text. Do no think on any other things. Be active while reading. You may underline some keywords, which you think are the most important.
• Keep in mind that your answers should be based solely on what is stated or implied in the passages. Do not fantasize. If it is not in the text then it is not relevant to the answer.
• While answering the questions then there is often giving a reference line number. Then look at this line, but remember to read also the preceding and following lines in order to put the answer to the context.

If you don’t know the answers then try to guess it. This holds true for the both parts of the Critical Reading Test. However, you should be able to rule out one of the answers in order to benefit from guessing the answers as you will get 0.25 points deducted for the wrong answer. Still you will get 1 point for the correct one and if you can rule at least one wrong answer out then you will benefit from guessing among the remaining ones.

You should also keep in mind that all the questions give 1 point for the correct answer regardless of the difficulty of the question. Therefore begin with the easiest questions. In case of Sentence Completion test the first questions are easier. If you find trouble answering a question, then do not spend too much time on it but move to the next question. If you have time left then come back to that question. On the general you should spend only seconds on the easiest questions and not more than 1-2 minutes on even the hardest ones.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, concentration skills, critical reading, reading speed, SAT

Mind map

Source: Wikipedia

Every day we read all kinds of texts and we attain new information. Sadly, we forget much of it afterwards. An average person will forget 50% of the acquired information within the first hour after the completion of reading. After one day we remember only 10% of the content of the text. Of course, this holds true for an average person and an average text. If we consciously try remember something or pay more attention to the reading material then we will not forget that much, but still forgetting is a big problem which bothers you especially if you read for study reasons.

What can we do to decrease forgetting? We have to make changes to our reading process. We can improve in three different areas:

• Activities before reading. If we are more fresh and relaxed then we will remember the text better. Applying previewing techniques to the text will also help to increase comprehension.
• Activities during reading. We have to keep our thoughts concentrated to the text and avoid distractions. If we let out mind to wonder away from the text then we will memorize the content poorly and will forget it easily.
• Activities after reading. We can prevent forgetting by activating our knowledge.

If we want to store something in our memory for many years, then we have to activate the knowledge after reading and revise the text afterwards. For activating the knowledge we have to put it into some kind of application. There are several possibilities for doing that:

• Write down the keywords. After completion of the reading take a sheet of paper and take a few minutes to write down keywords, which associate with the text. For example these can be “market share”, “brand” and “advertising channel” if the text is about marketing
• Ask yourself questions about the text? What was the main idea? What did the author want to tell with the text? Which were the key facts?
• Discuss the text with others. If you have to retell the content to other people, then it will help you to store information in your brain. It is extremely efficient to discuss study material with other students, when you are studying for high school or university.
• Draw a mind map. It is a hand written diagram, which visually connects the keywords. You can see an example of a mind map on the picture in this post.

Besides knowledge activation you need to revise the text for remembering it well in the future. Revision is time consuming and I definitely will not suggest you to re-read all kinds of texts. You should revise only these texts, which are most important for you.

If the text is worth it then after you have activated knowledge then you should revise it on the following day. For revision you should not read all the text, but instead of that read through the keywords, answers to the questions or study the mind map, which you did before. In addition you can just quickly review the text. If you notice that you have forgotten some parts of the text then re-read these passages.

7 days after reading spend about 5 minutes thinking about the main points of the text, if you feel that you do not remember something then look the text through again. 2 month afterwards repeat that kind of a revision process.

That kind of revision process guarantees that you can remember the key issues of the text many years after reading it.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, memory, revise, studying

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If we want to read fast then we have to concentrate to our reading material. Poor concentration will lead to slow reading speed and low comprehension. For achieving good concentration the external environment plays an important role. All kinds of distractions such as incoming phone calls, visitors, noise etc. will disturb us and have a negative effect on our reading performance.

Traditionally, people have been working at the offices and spending leisure time at home. During the recent years, working at home has become an alternative to working at the company’s office. As for many employees their work tasks include a lot of reading, then it leads to a following question: Is the best to read at work or at home?

The answer to that question depends in which environment you have better conditions for interruption free reading. If you have to share your office space with many colleagues then there can be many disturbing factors, which will turn your focus away from the text you read. If you want to do serious reading then finding a quiet place will help a lot. If your office is noisy then you should find another room or go to a library or if the weather is fine to a nearby park for your most demanding reading tasks.

Working at home can offer you more possibilities to spend time together with your family. For example, you can eat lunch with them and you can be with them the time you would spend commuting between work and home. At the same time your family can be also a distraction. You may find it difficult to concentrate to work or have a temptation to make pauses for chatting with them and so on. Kids can be an awfully disturbing factor if they are not taught to not disturb you while working. Some people may find it mentally challenging to get into the working rhythm at home as home reminds them leisure. If you have no co-workers at sight then you may start wasting time on watching TV, cleaning your room etc. Working at home needs good time management habits and self-motivation.

The amount of time you can spend working at home depends on your job. For some jobs there is no possibility for working at home. For some other jobs you can work for the most of the time at home. Although there may be many disturbing factors at the office, there are some benefits of being there. You can get information faster if you are at work instead of being at home. It is easier to ask help from co-workers in the office.

So, finding a balanced between working at home and in the office can be a solution. It may be wise to work some days a week or some hours a day at home. At home you should perform those tasks, which call for individual work and concentration. Many reading tasks belong to this group. If you have to do some research work then it could be more efficiently done at home. For tasks that require active communication with your co-worker it may be better to stay in the office.

I personally work most of the time at home. The people at the university are really very talkative and I try to avoid getting into conversation with many of them as it is clearly a waste of time. I do not have children yet, so it is easy to concentrate to the work at home. I also plan my time carefully and motivate myself to work efficiently, therefore dedicating to work is no problem. In addition, as I spend most of my working time on not university related tasks, then it is also better to do them at home.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, concentration, working at home

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Reading books is most important source of information for many of us. No matter if we read books, magazines, journals or texts from the web it is reading. During the recent years there has risen up an alternative to reading texts, which is listening to audio books. Audio books are recordings of the contents of a book provided either on tape, CD or in digital format.

As the popularity of listening to audio books is increasing then it leads to a question, is it better to read a book or listen to an audio book. Although there may be several arguments for and against both of these, here I will approach his question from the viewpoint of efficiency.

What is the better way of obtaining information? Which one is faster and allows you to remember the text better?

If talk about reading speeds, then the average reading speed for books is about 200-250 words per minute for an average reader. For audio books the listening speed is about 120-140 words per minute. It is almost two times slower. In addition, there are more possibilities for increasing your reading speed than your listening speed. By learning to speed read you may be able to read at 500 or 700 words per minute. In case of audio books you can speed the listening speed up if you have software for doing it, but you cannot increase it that much in comparison to reading if you want to follow the text. Think about the auctioneers, who speak roughly at 250 words per minute. You cannot follow the speech if it is much faster.

In case of books, you can look them through at fast pace. You can scan the text for searching the keywords and headlines. It is also easier to read text selectively. For example, for some texts you would want to read only the introduction and conclusion of it. Or you may want to read only some chapters. In case of audio books it far more difficult to listen to them selectively.

While reading is faster than listening to audio books, except for very slow readers, then in case on comprehension the picture is not so clear. It depends on the type of memory. If you have visual type of memory then you will comprehend better while reading. If you have auditive type of memory then you remember better the texts you will listen.

But the comprehension will also depend on your concentration. On the general it is easier to concentrate on reading as it is more active process than listening. Although there can be some individual differences, the possibility that you thoughts will wander away is greater for listening to audio books.

The benefit of listening to audio books is that they will allow multi tasking. In case of reading I would not recommend dealing with other things simultaneously, but for listening as a less active and slower process this can be done. You can listen to audio books while driving, jogging, cleaning your apartment etc. The concentration can be a problem, but if you get more experience in listening audio books, then it will improve.

I personally prefer reading to listening in most cases as it is much faster and I have visual type of memory. Still, I would not count out audio books as the will allow to save time through multi-tasking. I listen to audio books while driving longer distances.

kristjan Speed Reading audio books, comprehension, efficiency, reading books, reading speed

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Have you ever wondered how fast reader you are? Maybe you are so fast that you even do not have to learn to speed read? What is your reading speed?

If you have thought about these questions then you have probably also thought about measuring your reading speed. How can it be tested and what should you do for that?

Fortunately, testing your reading speed is relatively easy. Reading speed is usually measured by WPM (words per minute). It indicates the number of words you read in one minute. For example 200 WPM means that you read 200 words in one minute, which about 3 words in one second.

For measuring your reading speed you will need a text and a stopwatch.

1. Select a text.
2. Count the number of words in the text
3. Read the text and measure time with your stopwatch.
4. Calculate your reading speed

So you will have to choose a text for testing your reading speed. You can choose both text from a paper for that purpose or you can read from the computer. The choice of the text will have an impact on your reading speed. If you choose a difficult text then your reading speed will be slower. Similarly, if you choose a longer text then you reading speed will be somewhat slower. It is logical as if you choose to run a mile then your average speed will be slower in comparison to running 100 yards.

Usually reading speed is tested with ordinary types of text. It means that the content is not too difficult. So, technical and scientific texts are not used. I would recommend you to use an article from a newspaper for testing your reading speed.

After reading the text you have to count the number of words in the text. You will have to do it manually if you are reading a text on paper. But if you are reading an electronic text then you may use your word process for word count.

Measuring your reading speed is not an exact science and therefore it is not that important that you will count the exact number of words. It does not make so big difference if there are 780 or 796 words in the text. So you can calculate the approximate number of words as follows:

1. Count the number of lines in the text.
2. Count the number of words per line. Choose an average line for that where the number of words in that line is typical for that text. So do not choose a line where there are very long words in it.
3. Multiply the number of lines by number of words per line.

Now start the stopwatch and read the text from the beginning to the end. If you read the end of the text then stop the stopwatch and see what the time is.

Calculate your reading speed by dividing the number of words in the text by your reading time. For example if you complete a 750 word text in 3 minutes then your reading speed will be 250 WPM. Note that the time is measured in minutes and minutes should be treated as decimal here. So if you read a text for 3 minutes and 15 seconds, then it is 3.25 minutes.

The average reading speed is for an average text written in English is about 180-250 WPM. If you get more than 350 WPM then you will be doing really well. Speed readers read at 500 WPM and faster. Top class speed readers can even reach above 1000 WPM.

No matter how fast your reading speed is, there will be always room for improvement. Even if you are reading at 1200 WPM then it is possible to increase it to 1250 or 1300 WPM when practicing speed reading.

Besides reading speed comprehension is also vital. There is no point in super fast reading if you don not understand or remember the text you read. Reading comprehension is measured in the percentage of the text you can recall. 100% comprehension means that you can fully recall the text.

Reading comprehension is usually measured by answering to the questions about the content of text after completing the reading. For that you will need questions about the text. If you are doing it with your own text then you may let your friend to prepare questions about the content of the text. After completing the text then you will answer to these questions. Reading comprehension will be measure by the percentage of correct answers.

As it is troublesome to do so, then I will recommend you to choose an online speed reading test. In that case the questions for testing comprehension are already there and you do not need a friend to help you. There are many tests out there in the internet and you may try out several of them. Be sure that the test includes also the comprehension test. Sadly it is often not the case. If you want to be sure that you can test both your reading speed and comprehension and get an evaluation about your present level of reading speed then you can use this free speed reading test.

In many cases achieving 100% comprehension is not necessary. Our job tasks often require finding information from many sources or getting the central idea of the material. We do not have to remember all the details. In case of speed reading 70% comprehension can be regarded as satisfactory.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, reading speed, speed reading test, test your reading speed, words per minute

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For most people, learning to speed read means learning speed reading techniques, such as reading without regression or vertical reading. In the learning process you will change your old and inefficient reading methods with better and more rational ways to read texts. While this is absolutely true, speed reading can be also viewed at a broader scope. It is more than methods and techniques.

To benefit from speed reading techniques you should apply them into practice. In one previous post I discussed why most people do not learn speed reading http://www.startspeedreading.com/why-most-people-do-not-take-speed-reading-courses/

In addition to that there are many people who have learned to speed read but do not apply it in practice. If we test their reading speed then it is will be above the average as in case of a test they use speed reading methods. But while reading texts in their every day life they seldom apply speed reading. Some people are not confident in their speed reading skills, they worry about their comprehension. These people usually speed read only the easiest text or use it only for the reading tasks, which are not critical for their job performance or reading for leisure.

To benefit the most from speed reading you should apply it every day and for the majority of the texts you are reading. While it is not recommended to use it for non-fiction texts then you can use it virtually for every text you read on your job. Only if there are some texts, where you have to remember the context very precisely, you should slow you reading speed down, but for most of us this in not the case for the job-related reading material.

Regular application of speed reading techniques requires a change in ones mindset. It means that whenever you encounter a text you take an attitude that you will read it fast and focused. You are ready to attack the text, concentrate to it and read it with fast speed. It is a life-style, in which you want to be always fast and sharp.

If you make a decision to always apply speed reading when it is possible then reading at fast speed becomes natural to you. You do not have to tell yourself that now I am going to speed read. You just read the text and application of speed reading methods becomes automatic. Reading itself is so ordinary process for us that we do not even notice that we are reading. If we see a text, we just look at it and get the meaning of the words from the text. It is possible to achieve the same state with speed reading too, if you develop it into a habit.

The speed reading life-style allows us to read texts at fast speed, thus it enables us to work fast. We will be always attacking the texts and eager to complete our reading tasks in short time. Our reading process is active, our mind is focused and we do not even notice how fast we can fly with our eyes over the text. Being fast builds us confidence and reduces stress as we know that we can go through pig piles of texts in short time. It really makes our life easier and happier so it is worth developing speed reading habits in yourself.

kristjan Speed Reading comprehension, concentration, reading courses, regression, speed reading techniques, stress