The jobs skills have slowly changed through the years. Today, we are being bombarded with hundreds of email and letters and in turn we have to write a large number of simple notes and messages. This is the characteristic of todays world and I do not think the number will get any lesser.
Such situation require us to process the message faster, and it it will help if we can read faster. The techniques used in speed reading with help us to scan the email and capture the message.
There had been questions on the value of speed reading.
a. Is it possible to read faster?. The average reading speed is about 250 words per minutes. and the speed can be improved to double your present rate. In an international competition, a participants can attain about 4000 words per minutes.
b. Do you still enjoy your reading? Yes and in fact more, as you can speed it up.
c. Some people think that speed reading will lower the comprehension. This is not true, as the faster reading is not attained by skipping the contents but by capturing the information faster. You get rid of the bad habits.
Some of the Bad Habits in Reading.
You can show improvement and read better and faster by getting rid of your bad habits such as:
* Reading word by word. This will come naturally as we had been trained to read word by word when we were small. That habit reminds with use throughout our life and nobody teach us otherwise. Speed reading requires us to capture more words at a glance by increasing the the eye span.
* Re- reading what we had read. The word used to describe this is called regression. It does not have any value as we are repeating our reading.
* Vocalizing the words. This is like reading it loudly, every words has to be properly pronounced and that will make it slower. There is no need to vocalize it, as what you need is the understanding of the message.
Technique to read better and faster.
The followings are the ways to improve the speed:
a. Measure your speed: The saying goes, what you cannot measure, cannot be improved. Most will will not have any idea of the reading speed. So before you start the improvement work, have the baseline and measure your reading speed, then embark on the project and keep a monthly track of the progress.
Measurement can be roughly done by reading a page of book. Count the estimate words, i.e words per line times the number of line. Measure the time you take read the page. Get the figure into words per minute.
b. Get rid of the bad habits.
Start you work on the three bad habits, reading word by word,rereading and vocalizing your words. Break your self training in weekly assignment and handle a topic at a time. After 3 topics, do all three for a week. That complete you one month cycle.
** week 1 - practice not to read word by word
** week 2 - practice to avoid rereading
** week 3 - practice not to vocalize your words.
Time you speed, and you will be surprise of the improvements.
week 1. Increase your eye span.
Draw 4 vertical lines with pencil on your page. Train your eyes to focus on the words within the columns. By doing this you are training your eyes to read the words chunk by chunk. Once you are very comfortable with the 4 lines, reduce the columns to 3 pencil lines.
c. Read with objectives
The reading will be faster if you are looking for specified informations. Then you can just scan the page looking for the specified data. The specified informations will depend whether you are reading it for pleasure, for examinations or looking for specific informations.
d. Avoid distraction.
When your concentration left the page, you will need to reread to recapture the mood. This is a waste of time. The more distraction you have the slower your reading is.
Improving your reading, will definitely increase your job efficiency. There are organisation that require the staff to speed reading classes and typing classes and provide the assessment tools. It will be good to have some sort of annual event and award for the top 3 typist or speed readers to promote the skills in your organisation.
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