10 Days to Faster Reading

Ten days ago I started following the day by day lesson plan of a little book called 10 Days to Faster Reading, by Abby Marks-Beale and the Princeton Language Institute. The original post can be found here. The purpose of the book is pretty well summed up in the title. Yesterday, I finished the program.

So, William, are you a faster reader now than you were before you started? The short answer is yes; significantly. The long answer is a bit more complicated.

The Book

I'm generally not a fan of books that make huge promises and claims in the title (i.e., Your Best Life Now). I always expect them to read like an inaudible infomercial. "In only fifteen-minutes a day, you could be on your way to so much money you'll want to puke!" The cover of our current book, while modest in its design (purple, white and black), reads in a manner that's difficult not to hear in the voice from the guy on the Oxy Clean commercials. If you can't tell, self-help type books don't generally sit well with me. However, despite my judging this book by its cover, it proved itself in its pages.

The book stays largely academic; something I appreciate. Where many books in its genre sound something like a hokey life coach speaking, this one sounds more like a patient, caring school teacher. The book is divided evenly into ten chapters. The chapters generally focus on breaking old habits and forming new ones. Each chapter includes a benchmark to test your speed and comprehension. Each day introduces you to some new techniques to help build speed and comprehension and encourages you to practice those techniques, then of course to try the techniques you're comfortable with on the next benchmark.

The beginning of the book focuses mostly on the bad habits we form when we first learn to read. Marks-Beale gives some helpful advice for breaking those habits; advice which I will attest is surprisingly effective. Things such as not reading to yourself out loud or in your head; that one I found especially effective. As she presents some helpful hints for breaking those habits, she also offers some useful techniques to replace those habits. Pacers, key-wording, reading between the lines, are among them.

Toward the end of the book, she starts to move away a bit from the academic topic and more into, what feels sometimes, like out of place life advice. For example, how to prepare for a board meeting you weren't ready for or how to determine what emails you should and shouldn't read. Per Ms. Marks-Beale's advice, I skipped these sections altogether.

My Experience

On day one, I was reading at 185 words per minute, at 70% comprehension (technically a slow reader). Newly aware of my bad habits and actively trying to implement good habits, by day two, I was up to 220 words per minute with 90% comprehension (just barely making the cut as an "average" reader.) Clearly by the second day I was seeing results. Throughout the program, I fluctuated with my speed and comprehension because of experimenting with different techniques, but finally I ended at 345 words per minute with 70% comprehension (finally a "good" reader). At nearly twice my original reading speed, I'd say that the program was a wild success.

Each chapter Marks-Beale shares a new "pacer" method to help speed up your reading. Of the many offered, I felt the most comfortable using the white card method. The idea is to use an index card to keep track of where you're reading. The only difference here is instead of placing it, in the traditional way, under the words your reading, she suggests placing it above the words your reading. This helped stop me from rereading things I'd already read. It also helped stop me from day dreaming.

Another technique she suggested was to read between the lines. As ridiculous as it sounds, it ends up working shockingly well. Much of the idea of speed reading comes from the thought that we can read word chucks, not just words. Every time our eyes stop, our mind picks up information. The more information you can pick up on one stop, the faster you can read; it's reading with your peripheral vision. Reading between the lines is literally just that. Instead of placing your eyes directly on the words you're reading, look right above them at the white space. This helped me to stop focusing on specific words and pick up more information in one glance.

My eye span I think is my biggest problem. I don't confidently pick up as much in my peripheral vision as I probably could. The solution to that? Exercise. Throughout the book, there are various eye exercises to help expand your eye span; helping you become better at picking up more information in one glance. One problem, however, was that the exercises weren't really adequate. They were often too short and once I memorized them, I wasn't really gaining much. However, this has not been a problem thanks to a great program, Ace Reader, which Marks-Beale suggests in one of the later chapters. The program is full of tests to help build speed and comprehension, but most helpful, I think, are the games to help expand your eye span. The program alone I think would be insufficient to dramatically increase reading speed. Ace Reader is available for 30 days free from their website; then $49.95 if you want to keep it.

As a whole, my reading clearly became faster in the ten day period. I definitely learned some great new techniques for reading faster, which will only open the roadway for me to continue to improve my speed and I became aware of some really bad habits that were blocking me from reading faster. I would say this book lives up to its title and anyone who will stick with this reading program will almost definitely experience an increase in speed and comprehension. You'll have to stick with it though!

Kudos Abby Marks-Beale; you've written an effective and useful book!

This book is just plain ridiculous. The main point is you can read faster if you try, and that's about it. The "valuable tools" you learn are just different positions to hold your hand or pencil while reading. Otherwise the books keeps repeating points over and over and giving you commonsensical advice like "it's easier to read without distractions" and "it's easier to read technical stuff if you get familiar with the jargon first". Wow, really?

The only value for me was realizing that it's ok to preview texts before reading (or even instead of reading). But that's a bit of a personal realization and any speed-reading guide probably would've given me that. Admittedly I've never read a speed-reading book (apart from a few articles) so this one might be better than the others, but there's nothing here for a college-educated regular reader. If you read every day, you've figured all of this stuff yourself.

I have read many books on speed reading and tried various techniques. I did improve my speed from 150 wpm to around 240 wpm but no more.

The approach of this book is very practical and to the point. I improved from 240 wpm to 400 wpm retaining 70% comprehension and about 600 wpm with 20% comprehension. I can see the comprehension is slowly improving. I have started reading books that I always wanted to but was too slow/lazy to read.

You should read the book slowly to understand till chapter 4 where most of the techniques are explained. The rest of the book can be read faster using the same techniques that you learnt.

Some of the techniques are
- Read group of words ignoring a, an, the, this, as
- Read thought groups
- Read only important words in a sentence and you can still understand pretty well
- Try to read vertically rather than horizontally
- Make 2-3 stops per line and gradually reduce the number of stops
- Start reading from 2nd word from left margin and read till 2 words before the right margin. You will still see the remaining words

The best of all are called right and left pull, where you place your finger (pacer) besides left or right margin and slide your finger down one line at a time. For me, this was the real golden tip.

This book goes with very high recommendations, you will get much more than your money is worth. It actually gives results in 10 days if followed properly. The results are not dramatic but significant. I am pleased that bought this book.

This is the only practical and realistic book or course I have seen
that provides you the tools needed to increase your reading speed. I followed the instructions and did the exercises. I continue to use two of
the pacers, look for keyword/phrases, and preview techniques for all
of my reading. I doubled my reading speed and my comprehension level has
improved. I work in a highly technical field and enjoy reading classic
literature. I apply the techniques learned in this book while reading materials in both areas. You will be surprised how quickly you can increase
your reading speed. I have no affiliation with the publishers or author.

Steve
slcidc@hotmail.com

I'm currently a junior in college and can honestly say that this book is awesome. One of my biggest problems was that my eyes would dance around the page (like to stuff I just read) and I would forget what I was reading.

This book teaches you awesome tips like the two hand pull, phrase reading, and other things to not only read faster but drastically help comprehension. Your comprehension might take a dip after learning the tips, but if you keep it will rebound considerably. The race car analogies get a little tiresome, but help keep an upbeat tempo. When I started, I was at about 200 wpm, now I'm at about 600.