How to learn to read quickly? Techniques for fast reading books. How to remember what you read? Fast reading with a high level of memorization. Best practices

Read­ing is the great­est abil­i­ty, a com­plex psy­cho­log­i­cal process, 100% men­tal work. From the out­side, this may seem easy, but if you look at how dif­fi­cult read­ing lessons are for kids, how hard it is for a per­son to mas­ter a skill after suf­fer­ing injuries and brain dis­or­ders, it becomes clear that this is a lot of work.

Read­ing speed is not just a desir­able qual­i­ty for many peo­ple, but also an excel­lent psy­chophys­i­o­log­i­cal test. To turn black and white icons into mean­ing­ful infor­ma­tion, the brain strains, decodes the char­ac­ters. The more a per­son reads, the more this process accel­er­ates. For peo­ple with speed read­ing, it takes the small­est frac­tion of a sec­ond, but for peo­ple with poor read­ing skills, they have to pro­nounce the words to them­selves.

Know­ing that even intel­lec­tu­al games (for exam­ple, chess) do not exceed read­ing in terms of the effi­cien­cy of the thought process, one wants to read quick­ly, a lot, lit­er­al­ly grasp­ing infor­ma­tion on the fly. And this real­ly can be learned.

Speed ​​read­ing is a skill that is achieved pri­mar­i­ly through prac­tice. And you need to start train­ing it with a sim­ple action: do not pro­nounce the words to your­self, but sim­ply slide your eyes over the lines. At first it seems dif­fi­cult, it is dif­fi­cult to fol­low the mean­ing, but grad­u­al­ly every­thing falls into place.

And (there’s no get­ting away from it) speed read­ing is about the qual­i­ty and quan­ti­ty of read­ing. If you open a book once a week, don’t expect high results.

Experts give the fol­low­ing advice on accus­tom­ing your­self to read­ing a lot:

• read in trans­port, in line to the doc­tor, in the bath­room, in the kitchen, while the soup is being cooked — so the forced time of “down­time” you do not just while away, but spend it with ben­e­fit;
• tele­phones and com­put­ers — the same books, elec­tron­ic “read­ers” may not be visu­al­ly, by sen­sa­tions, but the prin­ci­ple of infor­ma­tion enter­ing the brain is the same;
• do not be lazy to re-read books, return to your favorite works of youth;
• do not try to mas­ter the list of “100 books that every­one should read”, it’s just a race, the qual­i­ty of read­ing can suf­fer great­ly dur­ing it;
• be sure to read any poems (but bet­ter — good ones), this devel­ops mem­o­ry, makes the brain work even more inten­sive­ly and has a good psy­cho-emo­tion­al effect on a per­son.

Speed ​​read­ing is nec­es­sary for so that you do not spend a lot of time on one book, but can read a whole stack of use­ful and inter­est­ing works in a month. And if you start read­ing sev­er­al books in par­al­lel, then, rel­a­tive­ly speak­ing, you will write out a gold­en card for your brain in the “intel­lec­tu­al sim­u­la­tor”.

There are a lot of speed read­ing meth­ods: you can start with any one that is most attrac­tive to you. The main rule is to read every day. You can work with dynam­ic read­ing, with diag­o­nal read­ing — each tech­nique involves a num­ber of sim­ple tricks. They allow you to read the text quick­ly and with under­stand­ing.

The first step is sub­vo­cal­iza­tion sup­pres­sion. You may not read the text aloud, but inside you still pro­nounce it. If you are asked to read a pas­sage of text in 1 minute, you are unlike­ly to be able to say more than 180 words dur­ing this time. But when the speed of per­cep­tion of lit­er­al infor­ma­tion increas­es, then you will not be able to quick­ly pro­nounce words, and sub­vo­cal­iza­tion will inter­fere with the teach­ing of speed read­ing.

How to get rid of the inter­nal pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the text:

• while read­ing, just press your tongue to the sky;
• clamp the tip of the pen­cil with your teeth;
• put your fin­ger on your lips.

It takes time to mas­ter this skill, but watch your read­ing every day.

The next step is the rejec­tion of regres­sions. This means that you should not return to read frag­ments. The eas­i­est way to do this is to lead along the lines with your fin­ger (as in the first grade). Read­ers may have spe­cial pro­grams that high­light text with col­or. Over time, you will real­ize that the fol­low­ing text will help the brain fill in the gaps if you missed some­thing on the pre­vi­ous pages.

Increas­ing the con­cen­tra­tion of atten­tion also helps to increase the pace of read­ing. And it’s a great work­out too. A sim­ple exam­ple: print the names of col­ors on a sheet, but to “con­fuse” the brain, high­light them with oth­er col­ors. For exam­ple, print the word “red” in blue and the word “white” in orange. And the train­ing of con­cen­tra­tion of atten­tion lies in the fact that you need to say out loud not a word, but the col­or in which it is print­ed.

Also use­ful in increas­ing the pace of read­ing are spe­cial appli­ca­tions that devel­op periph­er­al vision. You only need to train on one line, where words with a let­ter high­light­ed in a cer­tain col­or in the mid­dle appear at dif­fer­ent speeds. So a per­son learns to per­ceive the word as a whole.

Read­ing is work. It can be pleas­ant, excit­ing, inspir­ing, loved, but it is still work. You can learn to read quick­ly only if you have a high con­cen­tra­tion on the goal. And the main ene­my on this path is the habit of being dis­tract­ed.

What hin­ders read­ing:

• mul­ti­task­ing — if you read, then at the same time you don’t need to climb social net­works, look into instant mes­sen­gers and get dis­tract­ed by cof­fee too often;
• link­ing the rit­u­al of read­ing to food, for exam­ple: of course, you will pick up a book more often if you do it in the process of eat­ing, but it is bet­ter not to form such asso­cia­tive con­nec­tions (it is dan­ger­ous for the fig­ure, and the qual­i­ty of read­ing suf­fers);
• poor con­di­tions — insuf­fi­cient light­ing, uncom­fort­able pos­ture, late hours of the day lead to the fact that your health wors­ens and this forces you to pick up a book or “read­er” less often;
• lack of pleas­ant rit­u­als — for a start they are nec­es­sary, it can be a burn­ing aro­ma can­dle, cozy paja­mas, silence in the house.

help you and read­er diaries. Get your­self a beau­ti­ful note­book in which you will be a lit­er­ary crit­ic.

You can review the mate­r­i­al before read­ing. This will form an idea of ​​​​the con­tent of the text and even become an assess­ment of whether you should take on the read­ing. And to pre­view the mate­r­i­al, try read­ing the entire first para­graph, the first sen­tence of each sub­se­quent para­graph, and the entire last para­graph.

How else to change the way you read:

• pay atten­tion to head­ings, high­light­ed words and bul­let­ed lists — this does not give a com­plete under­stand­ing of the text, but it struc­tures it well, a plan for read­ing impor­tant points is already form­ing in your head;
• look for the main words — iso­lat­ing key words helps to cap­ture the essence of the mate­r­i­al with­out being dis­tract­ed by details (when study­ing large amounts of infor­ma­tion for an exam or test, this is a very valu­able skill);
• skip those parts of the text that you already know;
• con­nect the ideas of the text with those things that you already know;
• use a high­lighter when read­ing (this applies main­ly to edu­ca­tion­al lit­er­a­ture).

Tim Fer­riss, author of “How to Work 4 Hours a Week…” devel­oped a tech­nique that triples your read­ing speed. And the whole method­ol­o­gy, in fact, con­sists of two defin­ing tech­niques.

• Pen­cil. It’s sim­ple — while read­ing, you use a pen­cil, which helps you fol­low the text and which also sets the pace. This helps not to jump over the lines with your eyes, not to return to what you read (refusal of regres­sion).
• Not at first. Start each new line in the text not with the first, but at least with the third word. And fin­ish read­ing the line also three words before it ends. Try to think of the rest of the words using the con­text, or even bet­ter, cap­ture them with periph­er­al vision. Even if the mean­ing eludes you at first, per­se­vere with it—the eyes need to adjust to the new read­ing speed. In time, under­stand­ing will come.

To read flu­ent­ly, eas­i­ly, atten­tive­ly, main­tain­ing a rhythm is an excel­lent goal. It will suit an adult, but school­child­ren can also try to train the skill.

There are 10 great speed read­ing exer­cis­es.

• Read­ing with a point­er. The pen­cil method is basic, so you can’t get away from it. And in order not to feel like a school­boy (if you are not a school­boy), replace the pen­cil, for exam­ple, with a sushi stick, a brush, a skew­er. This sim­ple exer­cise boosts read­ing speed.
• “Green Dot” In the cen­ter of the page with any text, draw a green dot, look at it for 10 min­utes. Men­tal­ly imag­ine this point even before going to bed, even with your eyes closed while lying in bed. And do this con­cen­tra­tion on the point dai­ly for 7–10 days. After that, start look­ing at the text that sur­rounds the dot. You don’t need to read the words — you just need to see them.
• Read upside down. Cheer­ful chil­dren’s fun per­fect­ly trains the brain and pro­motes speed read­ing. Try read­ing a sen­tence first, then a para­graph, then two.
• Print any unfa­mil­iar text. Seal some of its places (small, not wider than 1 cm) with col­ored stick­ers. Read the text to your­self, restor­ing it in your mind. In the next les­son, glue more frag­ments already.
• Map the text in your mind. To do this, just skim through the page, take a look around it. Your brain has already begun to mem­o­rize the text.
• Before you storm the text, remem­ber every­thing you already know about this top­ic.. It is only inter­est­ing what is already com­pa­ra­ble with expe­ri­ence, with the infor­ma­tion avail­able. There­fore, inter­est must be aroused by a pre­lim­i­nary assess­ment of exist­ing knowl­edge.
• Take any text, draw a wavy line on the page (two bends). You can use a point­er to help you move your eyes while read­ing. When there is a feel­ing that the eye is able to catch most of the words, the gen­er­al line can be straight­ened.
• Read with­out short words. There are such sim­u­la­tors: the pro­gram auto­mat­i­cal­ly removes prepo­si­tions, pro­nouns, inter­jec­tions from the text. And you need to read this text.
• Read texts writ­ten back­wards. Ety­atich yts­ket, eyn­nasi­pan modaz derepan.
• Read texts that are miss­ing let­ters. The brain will begin to build words, and this is also a great way to train speed read­ing. It could also be poet­ry.

How great it is not only to be able to read a lot and quick­ly, but also to remem­ber what you read. And in this case, you need to under­stand that the pre­rog­a­tive will be the train­ing of atten­tion. This is the key con­cept of a high lev­el of mem­o­riza­tion.

Char­ac­ter­is­tics of atten­tion fac­tors:

• con­cen­tra­tion — the lev­el of your con­cen­tra­tion;
• resilience shows how long you can con­cen­trate;
• switch­ing atten­tion — how quick­ly you can change the object of con­cen­tra­tion;
• vol­ume - the num­ber of items cap­tured by atten­tion, pro­vid­ed they are quick­ly pre­sent­ed.

The dai­ly manda­to­ry norm of atten­tion is 2–3 news­pa­pers, 1 mag­a­zine, 100–150 pages of any book.

Now con­sid­er the most inter­est­ing tech­nolo­gies of read­ing with mem­o­riza­tion.

• Retelling. Read a page of any text at your max­i­mum speed. Put the book aside. Retell what you read aloud. If you do this, then the like­li­hood that after 3–7 days you will remem­ber what you read is high. If you ignore the retelling, the resid­ual infor­ma­tion after a week can be a cou­ple of lines.
• Accus­tom your­self to work with text man­u­al­ly for the first time. High­lights, under­lin­ing, strokes of impor­tant places in the text are used. If you are also a visu­al per­son, this is a par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able habit for you. It is bet­ter to mem­o­rize infor­ma­tion by divid­ing it (main thoughts, impor­tant clar­i­fi­ca­tions), and the high­light­ed frag­ments are eas­i­er to remem­ber visu­al­ly.
• Read a page of text very quick­ly. Try (you can in front of a mir­ror) to remem­ber the con­tent of the first para­graph, and then the last. Read the text again. Write on a piece of paper 5–6 the­ses of the text, which allow not only to under­stand its mean­ing, but serve as a sup­port for retelling.
• Make it a good habit to mem­o­rize poet­ry. This is suit­able for both adults and chil­dren. The stan­dard norm is one poem per week (at least 5 “columns”). For chil­dren, this is one of the best mem­o­ry train­ings, as well as the devel­op­ment of speech, an emo­tion­al atti­tude to read­ing, etc. Adults, too, after a cou­ple of months of week­ly mem­o­riza­tion of vers­es, will notice that their mem­o­ry has improved. Sur­pris­ing­ly, the read­ing speed will also increase.
• Read at night. In a calm, qui­et envi­ron­ment, with­out “sea­son­ing” read­ing with some­thing tasty, with­out turn­ing on the TV in the back­ground. 30–60 min­utes of con­cen­trat­ed read­ing. Then take a show­er and go to sleep imme­di­ate­ly. And in the morn­ing, try to repro­duce what you read to your­self. This helps a lot — the text is remem­bered in detail.
• Write sum­maries. Repeat this school exer­cise 2–3 times a week. Read­ing an arti­cle, one page of a book, or one part of a train­ing para­graph. Read quick­ly, once, and then write a sum­ma­ry of this text (you can also print it). The point is not that you have to write close to the text, but in the con­scious replace­ment of words with syn­onyms, the restruc­tur­ing of the text. This exer­cise will allow you to learn how to read in such a way that infor­ma­tion is remem­bered not as it appears in the text, but in a way that is more con­ve­nient for you to under­stand and repro­duce.

There are lit­tle secrets that you might not know about before that will help you suc­ceed in speed read­ing.

• Half an hour a day is a must. This is the min­i­mum you should nev­er devi­ate from. Over time, you will see that time man­age­ment may need to be worked on. Count how much time you spend on social media, brows­ing news sites, and watch­ing videos. The answer may amaze you, and after that it will be embar­rass­ing to say that there is no time left for read­ing.
• Read books on links. For exam­ple, you are inter­est­ed in the his­to­ry of Ancient Egypt. Pick 5–6 books rec­om­mend­ed by experts on this top­ic and read them in a month. First­ly, you get ver­sa­tile infor­ma­tion, not lim­it­ed to one source. Sec­ond­ly, you learn to ana­lyze, com­pare, draw con­clu­sions. Third­ly, appetite comes with eat­ing — I want to read more.
• Take pic­tures of books read in a giv­en peri­od. A stack of books on the table — and a pho­to. And keep these pic­tures in a sep­a­rate fold­er. Sub­con­scious­ly, you will want to increase the stack. If you read e‑books, make lists of what you read for a month, a year, and also take pic­tures.
• Have an open book­shelf at home. This tech­nique is espe­cial­ly use­ful for chil­dren. Books on this shelf are placed not spine first, but cov­er. The child sees not the “bar­rel” of the book, but its cov­er, and this in itself attracts, forces him to take the book in his hands.
• If you want to teach your child to read, the most effec­tive method is very sim­ple — read for your­self.. If a child sees that par­ents often sit at home with a book, he will inevitably copy parental behav­ior. If you are con­tent only with mor­al­iz­ing and exam­ples from your child­hood, this does not work.
• First the book, then the movie. Some­times it can be the oth­er way around. But the first option is more inter­est­ing and more use­ful for the brain. When you read a text, you visu­al­ize it in your head, con­struct it, and car­ry out seri­ous men­tal work. And then you can com­pare your views and how the direc­tor saw it.
• Get start­ed today. Do not rely on Mon­day, New Year, vaca­tion. Pick up a book today and start read­ing. Knowl­edge is not super­flu­ous, men­tal work is new neur­al con­nec­tions.