The Speed Reading Course

By Peter Shepherd

& Gregory Unsworth-Mitchell

Email: [email protected]

Web site: Tools for Transformation

Copyright © 1997 Peter Shepherd

The Basics of Reading

Introduction

We all learn to read at school, after a fashion. But for most of us, this is not an

optimal use of our brain power. In this course you will learn to better use the left

brain's focused attention combined with the right brain's peripheral attention, in

close harmony. Good communication between the brain hemispheres is a pre-

requisite for creative thinking and also a sense of well-being, where thoughts and

feelings are integrated.

As you probably expect, this course will also teach you to read much faster and at

the same time, to remember more of what you have read. These are obviously

great advantages.

There is another major benefit. Most of us, as we read, 'speak' the words in our

heads. It is this subvocalisation that holds back fast reading and it is unnecessary.

It is possible to have an inner speech, a kind of 'thought awareness,' that isn't

linked to the tongue, mouth and vocal chord muscles, and this is much faster and

more fluent. Cutting out the identification of vocalisation and the stream of

thought gives a surprising by-product. Many of us think that our constant

subvocalised 'speaking voice' is who we are. Finding out that you can think and

be aware without a vocal stream of words, opens up your consciousness to the

usually unrecognised domain of intuition and spiritual awareness. You'll have a

better sense of who you really are. Try it and see!

The Definition of Reading

Reading may be defined as an individual's total inter-relationship with symbolic

information. Reading is a communication process requiring a series of skills. As

such reading is a thinking process rather than an exercise in eye movements.

Effective reading requires a logical sequence of thinking or thought patterns, and

these thought patterns require practice to set them into the mind. They may be

broken down into the following seven basic processes:

1. Recognition: the reader's knowledge of the alphabetic symbols.

2. Assimilation: the physical process of perception and scanning.

3. Intra-integration: basic understanding derived from the reading material

itself, with minimum dependence on past experience, other than a

knowledge of grammar and vocabulary.

4. Extra-integration: analysis, criticism, appreciation, selection & rejection.

These are all activities which require the reader to bring his past experience

to bear on the task.

5. Retention: this is the capacity to store the information in memory.

6. Recall: the ability to recover the information from memory storage.

7. Communication: this represents the application of the information and may

be further broken down into at least 4 categories, which are:

* Written communication;

* Spoken communication;

* Communication through drawing and the manipulation of objects;

* Thinking, which is another word for communication with the self.

Many problems in reading and learning are due to old habits. Many people are

still reading in the way that they were taught in elementary school. Their reading

speed will have settled to about 250 w.p.m. Many people can think at rates of 500

w.p.m. or more, so their mind is running at twice the speed of their eyes. A

consequence is that it is easy to lapse into boredom, day-dreaming or thinking

about what you want to do on the weekend. Frequently, it is through this type of

distraction that you find you have to re-read sentences and paragraphs, and you

find as a result, ideas are difficult to understand and remember.

The basic problem - the mismatch between thinking speed and reading speed -

arises for the most part from the inadequate methods by which reading is taught.

Since the War there have been two main approaches: the Look-Say method and

the Phonic method. Both methods are only semi-effective. In the Phonic method

a child is first taught the alphabet, then the different sounds for each of the

letters, then the blending of sounds and finally, the blending of sounds which

form words. This method works best with children who are left-brain dominant.

In contrast, the Look- Say method works best with children who are right-brain

dominant. It teaches a child to read by presenting him with cards on which there

are pictures of objects, the names of which are printed clearly underneath. By

using this method a basic vocabulary is built up, much in the manner of learning

to read Chinese. When a child has built up enough basic vocabulary, he

progresses through a series of graded books similar to those for the child taught

by the Phonic method, and eventually becomes a silent reader. In neither of the

above cases is a child taught how to read quickly and with maximum

comprehension and recall. An effective reader has usually discovered these

techniques all by himself.

Neither the Look-Say method nor the Phonic method, either in isolation or in

combination, are adequate for teaching an individual to read in the complete

sense of the word. Both these methods are designed to cover the first stage of

reading, the stage of recognition, with some attempt at assimilation and intra-

integration, but children are given little help on how to comprehend and integrate

the material properly, nor on how to ensure it is remembered. The methods

currently used in schools do not touch on the problems of speed, retention, recall,

selection, rejection, concentration and note taking, and indeed all those skills

which can be described as advanced reading techniques.

In short, most of your reading problems have not been dealt with during your

initial education. By using appropriate techniques, the limitations of early

education can be overcome and reading ability improved by 500% or more. For

example, skipping back over words can be eliminated as 90% of back-skipping is

unnecessary for understanding. The 10% of words that do need to be

reconsidered are probably words which need to be looked up in a dictionary and

clearly defined.

GOLDEN RULE: When studying this course, and indeed, whenever reading

passages that you want to understand and make use of, make sure never to

pass by a word or concept that you do not understand. If you do pass by a

misunderstood word or concept, the rest of the text will probably become

incomprehensible, and you will feel distracted and bored. If it's worth

reading at all, then you owe it to yourself to define any word you're not sure

of, or find the misunderstood word(s) in the concept that is unclear and sort

that out before going further. If your studies bog down, go back to where

you were doing well, clear up your understanding and start off again from

that point.

Techniques in this course will reduce the time for each fixation (the assimilation

of a group of words simultaneously) to less than a quarter of a second, and the

size of fixation can be increased from one or two short words to as many as five

words or half a line. Your eyes will be doing less physical work; rather than

having as many as 500 tightly focused fixations per page, you will be making

about 100, each of which is less fatiguing, and reading speed will exceed 1,000.

w.p.m. on light material.

The Eye and its Movements

In order to understand how we read and how reading may be improved, we must

first look a little at how the eye works. Light entering the eye is focused by the

lens onto the retina, which lines the inside of the eye. The retina itself consists of

hundreds of millions of tiny cells responsive to light. Some cells - the cones -

respond to specific colours; others - the rods - to the overall light intensity. These

cells are connected to a web of nerves extending over the retina, which relay

information to the visual cortex.

The centre of the retina, called the fovea, is a small area in which the cells are

much more tightly packed, so that the perception of images falling on the fovea is

much sharper and more detailed than elsewhere on the retina. When we focus our

attention on something, the light from that item is focused onto the fovea - this is

called a fixation.

A reader's eyes do not move over print in a smooth manner. If they did, they

would not be able to see anything, because the eye can only see things clearly

when it can hold them still. If an object is still, the eye must be still in order to

see it, and if an object is moving, the eye must move with the object in order to

see it. When you read a line, the eyes move in a series of quick jumps and still

intervals. The jumps themselves are so quick as to take almost no time, but the

fixations can take anywhere from a quarter to one and a half seconds. At the

slowest speeds of fixation a student's reading speed would be less than one

hundred w.p.m.

Thus the eye takes short gulps of information. In between it is not actually seeing

anything; it is moving from one point to another. We do not notice these jumps

because the information is held over in the brain and integrated from one fixation

to the next so that we can perceive a smooth flow. The eye is rarely still for more

than half a second. Even when you feel the eye is completely still (as when you

look steadily at a fixed point such as the following comma), it will in fact be

making a number of small movements around the point. If the eye were not

constantly shifting in this way, and making new fixations, the image would

rapidly fade and disappear. The untrained eye takes about a quarter of a second at

each point of fixation, so it is limited to about four fixations per second. Each

fixation of an average reader will take in two or three words, so that to read a

line on this page probably takes between three and six fixations. The duration of

the stops and the number of words taken in by each fixation will vary

considerably, depending on both the material being read and the individual's

reading skill.

Although the sharpest perception occurs at the fovea, images that are off-centre

are still seen, but less clearly. This peripheral vision performs a most valuable

function during reading. Words that lie ahead of the current point of fixation will

be partially received by the eye and transmitted to the brain. This is possible

because words can be recognised when they are in peripheral vision and the

individual letters are too blurred to be recognised. On the basis of this slightly

blurred view of what is coming, the brain will tell the eye where to move to next.

Thus the eye does not move along in a regular series of jumps, but skips

redundant words and concentrates on the most significant (useful and

distinguishing) words of the text.

Immediate memory span depends on the number of 'chunks' rather than the

information content. When we read, we can take in about five chunks at a time.

A chunk may be a single letter, a syllable, a word, or even a small phrase - the

easier it is to understand, the larger will be the chunks.

In the case of a skilled reader, the fixation points tend to be concentrated towards

the middle of a line of print. When the eye goes to a new line, it does not usually

start at the beginning, instead it starts a word or two from the edge. The brain has

a good idea of what is to come from the sense of the previous lines and only

needs to check with peripheral vision that the first few words are as anticipated.

Similarly, the eye usually makes its last fixation a word or two short of the end

of a line, again making use of peripheral vision to check that the last few words

are as expected.

The rhythm and flow of the faster reader will carry him comfortably through the

meaning, whereas the slow reader will be far more likely to become bored and

lose the meaning of what he is reading. A slow reader, who pauses at every word

and skips back reading the same word two or three times, will not be able to

understand much of what he reads. By the end of a paragraph the concept is lost,

because it is so long since the paragraph was begun. During the process of re-

reading, his ability to remember fades, and he starts doubting his ability to

remember at all.

There is a dwindling spiral of ability. The person re-reads more, then loses more

trust in his memory and finally concludes that he doesn't understand what he is

reading. For over a hundred years, experts in the field of medical and

psychological research have concluded that most humans only use from 4% to

10% of their mental abilities - of their potential to learn, to think and to act.

Speeding up a process such as reading is a very effective method of enabling a

people to access a larger proportion of the 90-95% of the mental capacity that he

is not using. When a person is reading rapidly, he is concentrating more, and

when he can raise his speed of reading above about 500 w.p.m. with maximum

comprehension, he is also speeding up his thinking. New depths of the brain

become readily accessible.

In addition, accelerated reading can reduce fatigue. Faster reading improves

comprehension, because the reader's level of concentration is higher, and there is

less cause for him to develop physical tensions such as a pain in the neck or a

headache. A further benefit is the improvement of the completeness of thought.

E.g. try watching a 90 minute video tape in 9 ten-minute sections; comprehension

will be much less than it would be had the video been presented in its entirety.

There is an optimum reading speed for maximum comprehension, which is

proportional to your top speed. This rate will vary from one type of material to

another, and finding the best rate for the material you are reading is critical for

good comprehension.

Test of Reading Speed

Choose a novel or book that you are interested in and can read easily. Measure

the time it takes to read five pages. Your reading speed can then be calculated

using the following formula:

w.p.m. (speed) = (number of pages read) times (number of words per average

page), divided by (the number of minutes spent reading).

Are you a Left-Brain Reader or a Right-Brain

Reader?

Recently researches were carried out in the United States to determine the

difference between a left-brain reader and a right-brain reader. A special

apparatus was constructed, consisting of a television screen to present the reading

material, with a cursor that the subject had to fixate upon. Eye-movements were

monitored electronically, so the cursor would move when the subject moved his

eyes. The equipment could be set up in two modes. In the first mode, material to

the left of the cursor would blank out on the screen, if the subject attempted to

move his fixation point to the right of the cursor. In the second mode, material to

the right of the cursor would blank out, if the subject attempted to move his

fixation point to the left of the cursor.

In the first (left-brain) mode, when words to the left of the cursor blanked out,

preventing the subject from regressing or back-skipping, this duplicated the

habitual pattern of a left-brain reader, who always reads one or more words ahead

of a particular fixation point. In the second (right-brain) mode, when words to

the right of the cursor blanked out, preventing the subject from anticipating by

reading one or two words ahead of the fixation point, this duplicated the habitual

pattern of a right-brain reader, who tends to re-read the words leading up to a

particular fixation point.

This equipment was tested on a group of 30 subjects. When the equipment was

set- up in the left-brain mode, the maximum observed average reading speed of

the group was 1600 w.p.m., and when the equipment was set-up in the right-

brain mode, the maximum observed average reading speed of the group was 95

w.p.m.; a difference of 17:1. Note: with material presented in the left-brain mode

the average reading speed of the group was raised from 500 w.p.m. to 1600

w.p.m.; it was more than trebled.

Without the specialised equipment described above, this test is somewhat

subjective, although it should give you a good indication. The steps are as

follows:

1. Take a novel and read this silently whilst running your finger along the line

of print as you read it.

2. Note carefully: How far are you reading ahead of your fixation point? The

fixation point is determined by your finger position.

3. Do you find that it is difficult to read ahead of the fixation point? Do you

find that you are holding on to the two or three words you have just read?

If the answer to 2. is yes, and you are reading ahead of the fixation point, you are

a left-brain reader. If the answer to 3. is yes, and attention is drawn back to the

words that you have already read, then you are a right-brain reader.

Visual Guides

A visual guide is a pointer, such as the end of a pencil or a fingertip, moved

along underneath a line of print. The reason children are discouraged from

pointing to the words as they read them, is that stopping to point at each

individual word can indeed slow down reading. But if instead, the finger is

moved along smoothly underneath the line of text, it can help to speed up reading

considerably, for three reasons:

1. If the eye is trained to follow the visual guide, then most unnecessary back-

skipping is eliminated.

2. Deliberately speeding up the visual guide will help the eye to move along

faster.

3. As the eye moves faster it is encouraged to take in more words with each

fixation. This increases the meaningful content of the material - each chunk

makes some sense - so that comprehension actually approves.

The following practical procedures are divided into six sections:

A. Preliminary Exercises, to teach a better method of inner speech.

B. Speed Perception, to improve your capacity to duplicate;

C. Pacing & Scanning Techniques, to improve your initial understanding

at speed;

D. In-Depth Reading Techniques, including the use of keywords and

mindmaps to improve depth of understanding;

E. Visual Reading Techniques, to improve retention and recall.

F. Defeating the Decay of Memories, to apply the newly acquired speed

of thought to learning new information.

Therefore, the following selection of exercises reflect the three dimensions of

Duplication, Understanding, and Memory.

A. Preliminary Exercises

Subvocalisation & the Thought-Stream

There are two types of reading: the first type is a compulsive speaking aloud of

words as they are read. This may be at an inaudible and sub-conscious level, but

is nevertheless expressing perceived words in equivalent movements of the tongue

and larynx - a kinaesthetic representation. We will call this process

'subvocalisation' on this course. The second type we will call 'thought-stream',

and this is consists of understanding and imagery only, with no vocal or subvocal

expression.

Generally speaking, subvocalisation is unnecessary to the adult reader, except

perhaps when reading poetry (in which case rhythm, rhyme, and alliteration are

an important component, and so subvocalisation may be more enjoyable when

poetry is read silently). However, subvocalisation limits the maximum reading

speed to about 300 w.p.m. +/- 20%. In contrast, a trained reader may read at

more than 1000 w.p.m. with a pure thought-stream.

A thought-stream is essential for full understanding. Although it may be possible

to read light material such as a novel without using a thought-stream at all,

memory will be impaired. The thought-stream is particularly important when

reading abstract material that cannot be easily visualised, and when long and

complicated sentence constructions are used. When this type of material is read

and the thought-stream is suppressed, it is nearly impossible to preserve word

order and syntax. When the material is difficult to visualise, syntax and word

order may be the only guides to meaning and understanding.

Before a student can learn to let go of subvocalisation without at the same time

suppressing inner speech altogether, he has to learn to differentiate between

subvocalisation and the thought-stream. This first step can be done by a process

of localisation. Most people will experience subvocalisation as being connected

with the mouth or the throat, and also the breath. When asked to attend to it

fully, a person will tend to look down.

The thought-stream will be experienced more in the top of the head, without

connection to the vocal organs or breath; it is a kind of thought awareness, based

on an understanding of the stream of words being read. Differentiation between

the two types of reading may be achieved through the following steps:

Step 1. Choose a page from a light novel. Easily understood material is required

because even when a good reader is reading something that he finds difficult to

comprehend, there will be a tendency to revert to subvocalisation, when a phrase

or sentence containing unfamiliar or foreign words is presented. Unfamiliar

words can only be held in mind either by having extremely good powers of

auditory visualisation or by rehearsing them subvocally.

Note: a reader using thought-stream, rather than subvocalisation, will find he is

able to detect misunderstood words more easily, because he will revert to

subvocalisation as he strives to give meaning to the unfamiliar. If you find

yourself suddenly subvocalising when you would otherwise use thought-stream,

this is a strong indication that you have just gone past a word that is

misunderstood, or a group of words forming a concept that does not make sense.

Misunderstood words should each be defined and then the concept re-evaluated.

Step 2. Count out loud from one to ten repeatedly, whilst reading the page

silently using thought-stream. Counting out loud will occupy the motor-vocal

system, so that the mind is unable to subvocalise.

Step 3. When you are able to read silently whilst counting out loud, then begin to

read silently using thought-stream and to count silently at the same time using

sub-vocalisation.

An alternative method to counting is to say or subvocalise a repeated "Eee ... eee

... eee ..." which has the same effect of occupying the vocal-motor system. Get

plenty of practice with Steps 2 & 3, so that this skill is fully acquired and you can

easily recognize the difference between 'spoken' subvocalisation and the thought-

stream.

Step 4. Once you can read silently whilst counting silently, begin to increase

your reading speed. When your reading speed exceeds 360 w.p.m., the two types

of subjective reading will become more differentiated. (Test). By using thought-

stream you can read much faster, whereas subvocalisation is limited by the speed

of motoric response.

Step 5. Now that you can easily read with thought-stream, leaving behind any

subvocalisation, it is time to add more character to the inner speech, so that it is

not just a silent stream of thought but is also a stream of visualisation. Image the

dialogue of the novel, adopting different voices in your inner speech to suit the

characters. This should further differentiate your thought-stream from

subvocalisation, which would always tend to be a reflection of your own voice.

At the same time, visualise the scenarios of the story, hear the environmental

sounds, smell all the various scents, and feel the emotions portrayed.

Continue with the above exercises until you have a reality about the two types of

reading (subvocalised and thought-stream) and can choose between them. This

approach is better than trying to suppress subvocalisation altogether.

By suppressing both types of subjective reading, one can learn to skim at more

than 2000 w.p.m., however, there will be very little retention of what has been

read. This type of reading is valuable only when one is searching for a particular

datum, or when one is doing this as a perceptual exercise.

Maladaptive Scanning Patterns

Since the left hemisphere is better at verbal tasks, whatever lies in the right visual

field will have its verbal content processed more quickly than that which lies in

the left. If a person is reading from left to right, the material that has not been

read, but which is nevertheless being processed peripherally, is being received by

the left side of the brain, more specialised at verbal processing. Reading right to

left, or looking back over what has been read, will therefore be processed by the

right hemisphere, resulting in confusion.

The following diagram illustrates the visual processing of a line of text. When

reading left to right, the material yet to be read is taken in with peripheral vision

and analysed for content by the linguistic left hemisphere. This helps the brain

decide the best next point of fixation and increases the efficiency of reading.

Book-worms are nearly always using the right hand visual field (connected to the

left hemisphere), and dyslexics use the left visual field (connected to the right

hemisphere). Both these extreme cases tend to have maladaptive scanning

patterns, because they are nearly always using one side of the nervous system

exclusively. Maladaptive patterns will include back-skipping, missing lines, and

reading the same line twice. Practicing the speed reading techniques as presented

in this course should help to correct these patterns.

B. Speed Perception

Many speed reading courses currently available operate by changing a student's

motivation and by the suggestion that the course will be successful. With focused

conscious intention, reading speed can be increased by about ten percent per

session, and it may sometimes be doubled during a course of 10-20 sessions.

However, this is the absolute limit for this type of approach. The length of time it

takes to make a fixation and the number of words fixated are changed but little,

most of the improvement has occurred because there is less mind wandering and

back-skipping. The gains from this type of reading course are seldom stable,

because the underlying problem of perception remains unhandled.

In contrast, by turning pages as fast as possible and attempting to see as many

words per page as one can, perception and the will are conditioned into much

more rapid and efficient reading practices. This high speed conditioning can be

compared to driving along a motorway at 100 miles per hour. Imagine that you

have been driving for an hour at this speed. Suddenly you come to a road sign

saying 'Slow down to 30 m.p.h.' Now imagine that your speedometer is not

working; what speed would you actually slow down to? The answer would

probably be 50-60 m.p.h.

The reason for this is that your perceptions have become conditioned to a much

higher speed, which becomes 'normal'. There is a ratchet effect by which

previous 'normals' are more or less forgotten as the result of the perceptual

conditioning. The same principle applies to reading; after high speed practice,

you will often find yourself reading at twice the speed, without even feeling the

difference.

Speed Perception

1. Point with your index finger or a pen to the words you are reading. Try and

move your finger faster, this will aid you in establishing a smooth and

rhythmical reading habit.

2. As you move your finger along the line that you are reading, try and take in

more than one word at a time.

3. When you have reached the limits of the previous exercise, then take some

light reading material and try to read more than one line at the same time.

Magazine articles are good for this purpose because many magazines have

narrow columns of about 5 or 6 words, and often the material is light

reading.

4. Various patterns of visual guiding should be experimented with. These

include diagonal, curving, and straight-down-the-page movements. Exercise

your eye movements over the page, moving your eyes on horizontal and

vertical planes and diagonally from the upper left of the page to the lower

right and finally, from the upper right to the lower left. Try to speed-up

gradually day by day. The purpose of this exercise is to train your eyes to

function more accurately and independently.

5. Practice reading as fast as you can for one minute, without worrying about

comprehension. Don't worry about your comprehension this is an exercise of

perceptual speed.

6. For this exercise you are concerned primarily with speed, although at the

same time you are reading for as much comprehension as possible. Reading

should continue from the last point reached. Do this for one minute and then

calculate your reading speed (see Test ) - call this your highest normal

speed.

7. Practice reading (with comprehension) for one minute at approximately 100

w.p.m. faster than your highest normal speed.

8. When you can do that, continue increasing your speed in approximately 100

w.p.m. increments. If you calculate how many words there are on an

average line, then it is easy to convert w.p.m. into lines per minute. E.g. if a

line has 10 words and you are reading at one line per second, then you are

reading at 600 w.p.m.

9. Start from the beginning of a chapter and practice reading three lines at a

time, with a visual aid (such as a card) and at a fast reading speed, for 5

minutes.

10. Read on from this point, aiming for comprehension at the highest speed

possible. Do this for five minutes, then calculate and record your reading

speed in w.p.m.

11. Take an easy book and start of the beginning of a chapter. Skim for one

minute using a visual guide at 4 seconds per page.

12. Return to the beginning of the chapter and practice reading at your

minimum speed for five minutes.

C. Pacing & Scanning

Techniques

The previous Speed Perception exercises involving reading three lines at a time

or a page in four seconds, may be called 'skimming' - this is a superficial way of

reading, more a perceptual exercise than reading for meaning. Pacing, the next

reading technique to be learned, describes an unconventional way of reading a

page, which can reduce the amount of work by more than half without

significantly reducing the comprehension. The following Scanning technique is a

two-step process that involves collecting related facts and ideas and arranging

them in a meaningful sequence. This involves the skill of summarising.

Pacing

A plastic ruler or strip of transparent plastic 5 cm wide, is placed vertically down

the page, as shown below, to delineate the section of the page where your Pacing

Technique will be used.

By fixating only the words in the pacing zone, you reduce your reading time by

about one half. But you don't reduce your comprehension by one half because

you are forced to think beyond the words your eyes are seeing. When your

thoughts are on the same subject as the material you are reading, the addition of

your personal experience to the reading increases your understanding and

memory.

If you read within the pacing zone by sliding back and forth in a Z or S-type

pattern to the bottom of the page, you will find that you have read about 200

words with no more than 50 or 60 fixations. All the time you are reading in this

way, your eyes are seeing and picking-up the odd word from peripheral vision

and you are thinking all the time and putting together ideas, because the mind

abhors a vacuum.

Using a 5cm transparent plastic ruler:

(see next page...)

(Text from 'Wordpower' by Edward de Bono)

The first 10-15 times you use this technique, expect to be frustrated. At first you

may remember only 3 or 4 words from each reading, but your objective is to go

past the literal act of remembering isolated words, to collecting and relating

ideas. This takes a lot of practice, so don't give up! Once you have become used

to this manner of reading, you can develop the use of the technique further by

letting your eyes stray beyond the boundaries of the ruler, selecting from the page

the words that are most informative. As you practice in this way, try to fixate on

parts of speech, i.e. nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc. You will find that you start to

see more and more through peripheral vision, and as a result you will find that

you are concentrating more and speeding-up your thinking.

Pacing Exercise

1. Place the book you intend to read in front of you and place the plastic ruler

or strip as above.

2. Use your right index finger or a pen as a pacer, moving it smoothly down

the centre of the page, over the transparent strip. This may be helpful until you

have disciplined your eyes to 'pace the page'. You may find that moving a 3 x 5

cm card down the plastic strip will be less distracting. The reason to use either the

card, a pen, or your fingers in this way is to keep your eyes moving down.

3. When you reach the bottom of the page, jot down any words you

remember. If you do not remember any words at all, don't let this upset you -

you will improve with practice. Eventually you will remember thoughts and

groups of words. By pausing frequently to mentally summarise what you have

read, you will organise your thoughts and improve retention.

To acquire the skill of rapid reading requires you to break old habits and form

new ones. The most important habit to break is the habit of reading word-by-

word, whilst expecting complete comprehension. Many reading exercises require

you to forget comprehension and concentrate all your efforts on the physical skill

of speed reading.

To master the Pacing Technique you must understand the training you are going

to give your mind. You are being asked to look at words so fast that you cannot

possibly pronounce them, and so fast that you cannot understand them either.

Every time you do the above exercises you will comprehend a few words. As you

continue with these exercises, you will begin to grasp thoughts and eventually,

you will read at a much higher speed. When performing this type of exercise, you

should always go back and re-read the passage at a comfortable rate, i.e. at a rate

at which you can obtain understanding.

Every time you do a speed-exercise and then return to what appears to be your

normal speed, you will find that your normal speed has become faster.

Since written English is often highly redundant, i.e. much of the material can be

omitted without any loss of meaning, a large proportion of information in a text

can be absorbed through peripheral vision. Words that are highly likely to occur

in a given context do not have to be checked by looking directly at them -

peripheral vision can check that they are what is expected even while the eye is

fixating elsewhere. The Pacing Technique helps prepare you to read in this

expanded way, reading not along each line, but from side to side of the centre of

the page, taking in most of a line in one glance, and also peripherally absorbing

several further lines beneath it.

Making fuller use of peripheral vision, the skilled reader is able to get a better

idea of the general sense of what is to follow, and this helps to speed up reading

as well as to understand and integrate the material. This is why many students

find that as soon as they become adept at speed reading, their comprehension

actually increases. They have a broader perspective of what they are reading, and

since they are reading faster, the short-term memory for what has just been read

goes back several sentences further and the words currently being read are

understood within a larger context.

High-speed training has two further advantages: It encourages you to see the key

words in the text; and it brings the right hemisphere (which controls peripheral

vision) into the reading process, increasing integration and thereby facilitating the

right-brain's ability to synthesise relationships within the material.

Scanning

A scan is a fixed pattern of search. Scanning is a useful preliminary action, to

preview material rapidly before reading it in-depth. This gives you more of the

context of what you go on to read and having viewed it once already, it will have

some familiarity and retention will be improved.

1. Make a rapid scan of a light novel. Start at a rate of 15 seconds per page.

Later, with practice, this time can be reduced to 12 or 10 seconds per page

or even less.

2. You are scanning for significant people, events and conflicts. At the end of

each chapter stop to review what you have just read. Then try and speculate

about the contents of the next chapter.

3. When you have scanned several chapters, no more than five, then you will

probably need to ask yourself some questions relating to missed events and

information, in order to be able to follow the development of the story.

Speculate on these answers, then go back and re-read these chapters

normally, to see if you were correct.

4. When you have reached the end of the book in the above manner, take some

time to summarise the story mentally. Form and answer any unanswered

questions about the story and evaluate what you gained from this book.

By using the above exercises you will soon find that you have much greater

concentration and retention. Through these procedures you will have developed a

lasting and very useful skill.

D. In-Depth Reading Techniques

Scanning techniques are not really useful for fiction - because you don't want to

know what's going to happen ahead of time! With serious and non-fiction

material they are useful to assess the contents and quality, to provide a context for

your study, to find a particular datum or to decide whether to actually study the

material. But it is of little value to be able to read at 2,000 words per minute if

half an hour later 90% of the information has been forgotten. Reading, as

described earlier, includes not only the recognition and assimilation of the written

material, but also understanding, comprehension, retention, recall and

communication.

The most common approach to the study of a new text is the 'start and slog'

approach. The reader opens the book at page 1 and reads through to the end. This

might seem the most obvious approach, but it is in fact an inefficient use of the

reader's knowledge and time and has a number of disadvantages:

1. Time may be wasted going over material that is already familiar, or that is

irrelevant to the study in question, or which may be more conveniently

summarised later.

2. The reader has no overall perspective until he finishes the text, and possibly

not even then.

3. Any information that is retained is usually disorganised; it is seldom well

integrated with the rest of the book nor with the reader's whole body of

knowledge.

4. Motivation is low and the reader tends to become bored, dull and tired,

leading to poor reading efficiency.

A linear approach to study is like going shopping by systematically walking along

each street, going into every shop, hoping to find something but not knowing

what.

The holistic approach to study parallels the normal activity of shopping: one

prepares a list of what is required, goes only down the relevant streets (noticing

other shop windows on the way in case they contain unexpected items of

interest), and visits only those stores that contain all that one needs, with time and

energy to spare.

In-Depth Reading or 'study' is the most complicated and slowest of the reading

processes. After an initial survey or pre-reading (scanning), gathering the context

and main concepts, the in-depth reading involves critical and analytical thinking

to interpret, evaluate, judge, and reflect on information and ideas. There are four

main aspects to in-depth reading:

1. Gathering facts and ideas.

2. Sorting facts and ideas for relative importance and their relationship to one

another.

3. Measuring these ideas against one's existing knowledge base.

4. A process of selection, separating the ideas into those that you wish to

remember or act upon, and ideas that you wish to reject.

In-depth reading techniques are a form of Self-Questioning. As we read we try to

answer questions of HOW and WHY together with the implied suggestions:

explain, describe, evaluate, interpret, illustrate, and define. When reading non-

fiction and other serious material, the full procedure is as follows:

1. Establish Purpose

Answer the following question as carefully and completely as possible: What do I

want to learn from this material?

Your answer to this question is your purpose for reading. It may help at this stage

to review your current knowledge of the subject. This increases expectancy of

what is to come, and exposes gaps in one's knowledge and a corresponding desire

to fill the vacuum.

2. Survey

A book or publication should be surveyed as follows:

Read the title, any subtitles, jacket summaries (in the case of a book), and

identify the source of the publication, i.e. the author and publisher.

Read the date of publication or copyright. The book may well have gone

beyond its sell-by-date, e.g. a book on electric motors written in 1950

would be irrelevant, unless perhaps you were trying to mend Grandma's

lawnmower.

Analyse the Index. The particular concepts listed and the way in which

they are organised will tell you a particular author's bias and whether or

not the book will cover the ideas that you are trying to get wise on.

Frequently, the Index is a better guide for these purposes than the

Contents page.

Read the Preface. Nearly always written last, it will often provide an

excellent summary, and usually a statement of purpose for the book and a

note on the author's perspective on the subject. Also scan the Forward and

Introduction.

Read the Table of Contents. Note the sequence and check for Chapter

summaries. Chapter summaries are an abstract of the Chapter contents.

They will frequently inform you whether or not a particular publication is

suitable for your purposes.

The next step is to look at the visual material. Read the maps, graphs,

illustrations, charts, and bold headings.

Get a close feel for the actual contents of the book by looking at

beginnings and ends of chapters, subsection headings and anything else

which catches the eye - bold print, italicised sections, etc. Read any

summaries the author may have provided. If there are study questions at

the end of each chapter, you should look at these also. This will give you

an indication of the level of the book in relation to your present

knowledge.

Now you have completed these steps, then decide to use the book or not.

3. Revise Purpose

Once you have surveyed the material and gained more information and if you

have decided to use the book, then revise your original purpose for reading the

book. Ask yourself: Why am I reading this? This will establish your specific

learning objectives.

4. Study in Depth

Keeping in mind what you want to learn, speculate on what the material will tell

you. Begin to read with the satisfaction of your objectives in mind. Sometimes it

is inappropriate to start at the beginning, so decide where to start reading. Your

overall purpose for reading the material is your best guide. Note: the manner in

which the author presents his ideas will demand that you constantly vary the rate

of reading and the reading technique you are using, if you wish to be efficient. If

you continue reading at the same rate for a prolonged period, it is a good

indication that you are not reading flexibly and that you are allowing yourself to

become inefficient.

Make notes, jot down main ideas and Key Words and use Mind Maps (see later

chapters). It also helps to mark or underline key words and concepts in the book

itself, with a soft lead pencil that can easily be erased, to aid review. If it is your

own book, do not be afraid to use different coloured pens; it helps memory and

distinguishes different themes and topics.

Be prepared to omit sections that are irrelevant, already familiar, padding,

repetition, outdated, or excess examples. Also reject false arguments, such as:

generalisation from the particular; false premises; undefined sources; misuse of

statistics, etc.

Continually ask WHO, WHAT, WHY, HOW, WHERE and WHEN questions, as

an interactive dialogue between yourself and the study material, in order to

extract the important facts.

The Who question helps you to hold in mind any significant people. Why

classifies purposes. How classifies cause and effect sequences, time sequences,

procedure or process instructions or where the new information fits into your life.

The Where question points to where the action is taking place or where the new

information can be used. The When question can both denote when a subject

takes place and when you can use the information. Finally, the What question

allows you to take a quick survey of your current knowledge.

Take regular breaks every thirty or forty minutes. After each short rest break,

take a minute to review the previous work: this consolidates the retention.

5. Evaluation

Your thoughts should be organised in such a way as to describe the things that

you have learned that definitely focus on your primary purpose. Your thoughts

may be organised in the following way:

* State the most important idea or concept pertaining to your reading

purpose.

* List related key words, facts, and information in order of importance -

using as few words as possible - that pertain to your learning objectives.

* Finally, jot down important words or phrases in relation to the ideas

listed above. The most important things to jot down are key people,

important events, places, and dates. These will act as thought joggers or

memory clues, which relate directly to the primary and secondary ideas

listed.

For more about the inter-relationship of left and right brain functions, see

Two Ways of Knowing in 'Transforming the Mind'. Also the Bilateral Meter site

contains information of profound significance in the field of psychotherapy.

Words & Meanings, Semantic Development and The Semantic Differential are

chapters in 'Transforming the Mind' that offer further insight into the power of

words, as does Ken Ward's Notes on Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics.

This is taken further in The New Life Course - the complete personal

development program - where many exercises reveal how false thinking entraps

us in conditioned thought.

Key Word Noting

A lot of people are dissatisfied with their note taking. They realise that they take

down too many words, which in turn makes it difficult to get an overview. They

find it difficult to sort the essential facts out of a lecture, a meeting or study

materials. Very few people have had a satisfactory training in effective note

taking, so the purpose of this article is to improve this skill.

Association plays a dominant role in nearly every mental function, and words

themselves are no exception. The brain associates divergently as well as linearly,

carrying on thousands of different actions at the same time, searching, sorting and

selecting, relating and making syntheses as it goes along, using left and right

brain faculties. Thus a person often finds that in conversation, his mind is not just

behaving linearly, but racing on in different directions, exploring to create new

ideas and evaluating the ramifications of what is being said. Although a single

line of words is coming out, a continuing and enormously complex process is

taking place in the mind throughout the conversation. At the same time subtle

changes in intonation, body position, facial expression, eye language, and so on,

are integrated into the overall process.

Similarly the listener or reader is not simply observing a long list of words; he is

receiving each word in the context of the ideas and concepts that surround it, and

interpreting it in his own unique way, making evaluations and criticisms based

upon his prior knowledge, experience and beliefs. You only have to consider a

simple word and start recognising the associations that come into your mind, to

see that this is true.

Words that have the greatest associative power may be described as Key Words.

These are concrete, specific words which encapsulate the meaning of the

surrounding sentence or sentences. They generate strong images, and are

therefore easier to remember. The important ideas, the words that are most

memorable and contain the essence of the sentence or paragraph are the key

words. The rest of the words are associated descriptions, grammatical

constructions and emphasis, and this contextual material is generally forgotten

within a few seconds, though much of it will come to mind when the key word is

reviewed.

Because of their greater meaningful content, key words tend to 'lock up' more

information in memory and are the 'keys' to recalling the associated ideas. The

images they generate are richer and have more associations. They are the words

that are remembered, and when recalled, they 'unlock' the meaning again.

When a young child begins to speak, he starts with key words, especially concrete

nouns, stringing them together directly - for example, 'Peter ball' or 'Anne tired'.

It is not until later that sentences include grammatical construction, to give

expressions such as 'Please would you throw me the ball' or 'I am feeling tired'.

Taking Notes

Taking notes performs the valuable functions of:

* Imposing organisation upon the material.

* Allowing associations, inferences and ideas to be jotted down.

* Bringing attention to what is important.

* Enhancing later recall.

Since we do not remember complete sentences, it is a waste of time to write them

down. The most effective note taking concentrates on the key words of the

lecture or text. In selecting the key words, a person is brought into active contact

with the information. The time which would have been spent making long-

winded notes can be spent thinking around the concepts. He is not simply copying

down in a semi-conscious manner but is becoming aware of the meaning and

significance of the ideas, and forming images and associations between them.

This increases comprehension and memory. Because the mind is active,

concentration is maintained, and review of the notes becomes quick and easy.

The ability to pick out the most appropriate word as a 'key' word is vital if you

want to remember the most important information from any text. We mainly use

the following parts of speech when we pick key words:

Nouns: identify the name of a person, place or object. They are the most essential

information in a text. 'Common nouns' are whole classes of people or things, e.g.

man, dog, table, sport, ball. 'Proper nouns' name a particular person or thing, e.g.

Beethoven, the 'Emperor' Concerto, Vienna.

Verbs: indicate actions, things that happen, e.g. to bring, kiss, exist, drink, sing.

Adjectives: describe qualities of nouns (people and things) - how they appear or

behave, e.g. old, tall, foolish, beautiful.

Adverbs: indicate how a verb (activity) is applied, e.g. gently, fully, badly.

A key word or phrase is one which funnels into itself a range of ideas and images

from the surrounding text, and which, when triggered, funnels back the same

information. It will tend to be a strong noun or verb, on occasion accompanied

by an additional key adjective or adverb. Nouns are the most useful as key words,

but this does not mean you should exclude other words. Key words are simply the

words that give you the most inclusive concept. They do not have to be actual

words used in the text - you may have a better word that encapsulates and evokes

the required associations, and a phrase may be necessary rather than just a word.

As an example, suggested key words have been indicated in bold type throughout

the following text, starting on the next page. There may be words you do not

understand, even when taking account of the context; in this case it is certainly

necessary to look these up in a dictionary. Psychological terminology like

'intrapersonal' may not be in your dictionary, but the prefix 'intra' means within,

so the meaning can be derived.

Though there is no way to place oneself within the infant's skin,

it seems likely that, from the earliest days of life, all normal

infants experience a range of feelings, a gamut of affects.

Observation of infants within and across cultures, and

comparison of their facial expressions with those of other

primates, confirm that there is a set of universal facial

expressions, displayed by all normal children. The most

reasonable inference is that there are bodily (and brain) states

associated with these expressions, with infants experiencing

phenomenally a range of states of excitement and of pleasure

or pain.

To be sure, these states are initially uninterpreted: the infant has

no way of labelling to himself how he is feeling or why he is

feeling this way. But the range of bodily states experienced by

the infant - the fact that he feels, that he may feel differently on

different occasions, and that he can come to correlate feelings

with specific experiences - serves to introduce the child to the

realm of intrapersonal knowledge.

Moreover, these discriminations also constitute the necessary

point of departure for the eventual discovery that he is a distinct

entity with his own experiences and his unique identity. Even as

the infant is coming to know his own bodily reactions, and to

differentiate them one from another, he is also coming to form

preliminary distinctions among other individuals and even among

the moods displayed by 'familiar' others. By two months of age,

and perhaps even at birth, the child is already able to discriminate

among, and imitate the facial expressions of, other individuals.

This capacity suggests a degree of 'pre-tunedness' to the

feelings and behaviour of other individuals that is extraordinary.

The child soon distinguishes mother from father, parents from

strangers, happy expressions from sad or angry ones. (Indeed,

by the age of ten months, the infant's ability to discriminate

among different affective expressions already yields distinctive

patterns of brain waves.)

In addition, the child comes to associate various feelings with

particular individuals, experiences, and circumstances. There are

already the first signs of empathy. The young child will respond

sympathetically when he hears the cry of another infant or sees

someone in pain: even though the child may not yet appreciate

just how the other is feeling, he seems to have a sense that

something is not right in the world of the other person. A link

amongst familiarity, caring, and the wish to be helpful has

already begun to form.

Thanks to a clever experimental technique devised by Gordon

Gallup for studies with primates, we have a way of ascertaining

when the human infant first comes to view himself as a separate

entity, an incipient person. It is possible, unbeknownst to the

child, to place a tiny marker - for example, a daub of rouge -

upon his nose and then to study his reactions as he peers at

himself in the mirror. During the first year of life, the infant is

amused by the rouge marking but apparently simply regards it

as an interesting decoration on some other organism which he

happens to be examining in the mirror. But, during the second

year of life, the child comes to react differently when he beholds

the alien colouring. Children will touch their own noses and act

silly or coy [embarrassed] when they encounter this unexpected

redness on what they perceive to be their very own anatomy.

Awareness of physical separateness and identity are not, of

course, the only components of beginning self-knowledge. The

child also is starting to react to his own name, to refer to himself

by name, to have definite programs and plans that he seeks to

carry out, to feel efficacious when he is successful, to experience

distress when he violates certain standards that others have set

for him or that he has set for himself. All of these components of

the initial sense of person make their initial appearance during the

second year of life.

(From 'Frames of Mind' by Howard Gardner)

Looking at the marked key words separated from the text, the sense of the

passage can be re-constituted:

infants

feelings

facial expressions

universal

specific experiences

intrapersonal knowledge

identity

other individuals

distinguishes

ten months

empathy

helpful

amused

second year

embarrassed

name

plans

standards

Exercise

Read the Introduction to 'Transforming the Mind' and write down the words that

you consider to be key words. Then from your notes, try to reconstruct the full

information of the text. In retrospect, then see if you could have made a better

choice of key words. Then choose another text and repeat the exercise.

When you practice picking out key words, you will probably find that you tend

to take down too many words, 'just in case'. Try to reduce the number of key

words, and concentrate instead on finding key words that hold many associations,

and which remind you of the meaning of the text.

The more that notes consist of key words, the more useful they are and the better

they are remembered. Ideally, notes should be based upon key words and

accompanying key images, and incorporate summary diagrams and illustrative

drawings. This concept is further expanded in the next article on 'Mind Maps'.

Mind Maps

Meaning is an essential part of all thought processes, and it is meaning that gives

order to experience. Indeed the process of perception is ultimately one of

extracting meaning from the environment. If the mind is not attending,

information will go 'in one ear and out the other'; the trace it leaves may well be

too weak to be recalled in normal circumstances. If concentration is applied, i.e.

there is conscious involvement with the information, more meaning is extracted,

more meaningful connections are made with existing understanding, the memory

is stronger, and there will be more opportunity to make meaningful connections

with new material in the future.

Associative Networks

Memory is not recorded like a tape recording, with each idea linked to the next in

a continuous stream; instead, the information is recorded in large interconnecting

associative networks. Concepts and images are related in various ways to

numerous other points in the mental network. The act of encoding an event, i.e.

memorising, is simply that of forming new links in the network, i.e. making new

associations. Sub-consciously, the mind will continue to work on the network,

adding further connections which remain implicit until they are explicitly

recognised, i.e. they enter the pre-conscious as relevant material, and are picked

up by the spotlight of consciousness.

Such associative networks explain the incredible versatility and flexibility of

human information processing. Memory is not like a container that gradually fills

up, it is more like a tree growing hooks onto which the memories are hung. So

the capacity of memory keeps growing - the more you know, the more you can

know. There is no practical limit to this expansion because of the phenomenal

capacity of the neuronal system of the brain, which in most people is largely

untapped, even after a lifetime of mental processing.

Mind Maps

Because the brain naturally organises information in associative networks, it

makes sense to record notes about information you want to remember in a similar

way. Using the method of Mind Maps, all the various factors that enhance recall

have been brought together, in order to produce a much more effective system of

note taking. A mind map works organically in the same way as the brain itself, so

it is therefore an excellent interface between the brain and the spoken or written

word.

Paradoxically, one of the greatest advantages of Mind Maps is that they are

seldom needed again. The very act of constructing a map is so effective in fixing

ideas in memory that very often a whole Mind Map can be recalled without going

back to it at all. Because it is so strongly visual, frequently it can be simply

reconstructed in the 'mind's eye'.

To make a Mind Map, one starts at the centre of a new sheet of paper, writing

down the central theme very boldly, preferably in the form of a strong visual

image, so that everything in the map is associated with it. Then work outwards in

all directions, adding branches for each new concept, and further small branches

and twigs for associated ideas as they occur. In this way one produces a growing

and organised structure composed of key words and key images (see the previous

article on 'Key Words').

Exercise

For more information about Mind Mapping and many examples, visit these web

sites:

BrainLand | Peter Russell | Creative Mindmap

Shared Visions | Learn Mind-Mapping

When you've got a good reality on Mind Mapping, read through this Speed

Reading Course and at the same time, based on your growing understanding,

build up a Mind Map displaying the main ideas and how they connect.

E. Visual Reading Techniques

People who find it easy to follow instructions, create a visual movie of

themselves doing the task. This enables them to 'see' if more information is

required before they begin. Immediate mental feedback creates a trial run which

eliminates mistakes before they are made.

Ineffectual reading typically leaves out visually constructed imagery from the

thought-stream. As a result the reader has a poor memory and poor contextual

analysis skills. Without imagery to 'reality test one's comprehension, one may

pass a totally anomalous word and fail to notice that it does not fit. Once the

reader has a richly detailed internal picture, which includes colour, sound and

movement, he will no longer be able to read past words and concepts that

obviously do not make sense, because these will seem strange in the picture or

movie that he has made. For example, a student reads: 'The child was made to do

the maths problem in front of the class upon the skateboard.' From his prior

picture of a classroom, the student will realise immediately that the word should

be 'blackboard', instead of skateboard, and will self-edit the word.

One of the characteristics of visual storage is speed, so increasing the pace at

which material is covered, with the assistance of speed-reading exercises, usually

increases the powers of visualisation. Those students who can adapt to the visual

mode of representation successfully are multi-sensory; however, there are some

students who have difficulty. These are students who have failed to make the

transition between an auditory mode of representation and a visual mode of

representation. In normal development this transition occurs at about the age of

ten. In the case of these students, retention can be so poor that one sentence later

they are unable to remember what they have read. These students will attempt to

retrieve the rote sound of words; they will try to store an auditory sequence of the

word without transferring the words into pictures in their minds. A student with

this problem will frequently state, 'I don't remember what it said.'

It is now known that reading involves both sides of the brain: the left side

specialises in coding and decoding, the right side in synthesis of overall meaning.

By using this as an operational definition, you can determine which side of a

student's brain is deficient when diagnosing his reading ability, and it can be used

to formulate a prescriptive plan of how to improve his reading. For example,

when a student is able to code and pronounce words disproportionately to his

comprehension, his left brain is working in excess of his right brain.

The following technique addresses those students who fall in between the two

extremes of the good visualiser and the student who has no visual capacity at all.

1. The first step is to check that you have the ability to picture in your mind's

eye. Look at your desk and pretend that this desk is really your bedroom, and that

you are on the ceiling, looking down at the four walls and everything contained

inside. Mentally point to the wall where the bed is, the walls with windows, the

door, the shelves, and so on. Do this exercise again with the layout of the whole

house. This exercise will validate that you can make mental pictures of concrete

objects, a right-brain skill.

2. Read a phrase or sentence out loud. The sentence is the easiest

grammatical unit to use for this particular method. A sentence should be chosen

that uses nouns that are concrete and action verbs, rather than abstract nouns and

the verb 'to be', as these will prevent the use of right-brain picturing abilities.

As soon as you have stopped reading the sentence, close your eyes and picture in

your mind what the sentence described. Notice the colour, size, shape,

foreground, and distance of the picture in your mind. This will give you a further

idea of your basic capacity to visualise. Used as a repetitive exercise, this will

improve your visualisation.

3. Once you can form a reasonably good mental picture from a sentence you

have just read, the next goal is to find how many pictures you can hold on to.

Read out between 3 and 9 visualisable sentences. If you go beyond your capacity,

you will lose the first and second picture. This will tell you your capacity for a

sequence of separate pictures. Practice will improve this ability. People who find

it easy to create pictures and take in large amounts of information have the

facility to take information spread out over several pictures and sequence this

information into a movie. when you can do this well, you will have a seemingly

infinite memory capacity, taking advantage of the right brain's incredible powers

(you will probably have noticed how much easier it is to remember peoples' faces

than their names).

Those who have done little visualisation in the past, tend to make pictures which

are sparse in detail and poor in quality. They may leave out submodalities, the

major components of our senses. A partial list of submodalities follows, under the

headings of three sensory systems (modalities):

Visual

Auditory

Kinaesthetic

shapes

volume

pressure

colours

pitch

temperature

black/white pace of speech

movement number of sounds speed of movement

size

location of sound location of felt sensation

perspective rhythm

texture

When reading a novel, many people fail to make adequate use of auditory

imagery, even when they are good visualisers. If you use your auditory imagery

to give all the 'he said ...' and 'she said ...' dialogue, then your memory of the

story will be vastly improved. When you read a book and use all the forms of

imagery, you will experience the story as a three-dimensional movie in

stereophonic sound, with imagery of emotion and movement, touch, taste and

even temperature. You will be totally at one with the book and your subsequent

recall will be nearly perfect. You will hardly be aware of reading the words,

unless there is a gross printing error.

It may be difficult to construct concrete images when reading abstract material

such as philosophy. A student who has both high right-brain and left-brain

capacity will tend to form abstract patterns, rather like modern art, to hang the

words and pictures upon. Modern physics has little that can be visualised as

concrete imagery, however, when a psychologist asked Einstein about his

thinking processes, Einstein replied, 'I think in a combination of abstract visual

patterns and muscular sensations; it is only later, when I wish to speak or write to

another person, that I translate these thoughts into words.'

F. Defeating the Decay of

Memories

The decay of memory capacity is such that an hour after trying to memorise,

approximately fifty percent of the facts may have been forgotten. A day later

nearly everything related to the memory exercise may have evaporated. A graph

drawn to show the way in which people forget would show a sudden, dramatic

downward curve starting about five minutes after the attempted memorisation.

This assumes that full attention was given to the spoken or written materials, with

understanding; obviously if little attention was paid or the material was not

understood, there would be little to be remembered! The amount of forgetting

passes the fifty percent mark at one hour and falls to 90% after a day. The curve

then levels off at about 90 - 99%.

Suppose instead one could turn this curve around and increase the amount of

remembered facts with the passage of time. Studies have been carried out by Dr

Matthew Erdelyi of New York University which showed that volunteers trying

out his ideas, found themselves remembering twice as much information the day

after the learning had taken place than five minutes after. From these studies

practical techniques have been evolved which enable anyone to reverse the usual

forgetting curve and remember things better as time goes by.

The method is as follows. Suppose you have to attend a lecture or meeting where

it is not possible to take notes or make a recording, yet it is vital to recall the

salient points which were discussed. To ensure effective recall you must set up a

programme in your mind which will act as a store for information. Therefore, as

the session proceeds make a mental note of key points which are raised by

repeating these subject headings to yourself in numerical order. Repeat this list

from the beginning as each new heading is added. In this way you can keep a

running total of all the successive points that have been raised. This is possible

because your inner thought-stream is much faster than the vocalised speech that

you are listening to, so you can fill in the gaps with your review programming. It

also helps to accompany each heading with a visual representation of the subject

matter, particularly if that image is striking or humorous, i.e. memorable.

Five or ten minutes after the session ends, find a quiet place where you can sit

down and relax, then go through these key topics in your mind. Do not worry if

in this short space of time quite a lot of the material seems to have been

forgotten. Spend a couple of minutes on this exercise and never strain yourself to

recall elusive items. Just make an educated guess about anything you cannot recall

at that time. Repeat each of the topics to yourself just once and make a written

note if you can. This helps the initial neurological consolidation of the memories

from short term to permanent long term recordings.

About an hour later, have a second recall session, exactly as before, going

through all the topics without undue strain, repeating them to yourself. New

aspects and data will reappear by association. The third session should take place

about three hours later, the next after six hours, preferably before going to sleep.

This makes maximum use of the consolidation occurring during the dreaming

process. Repeat the recall procedures three or four times on each of the second

and third days, spacing the sessions out evenly through the day.

Matthew Erdelyi found that his subjects recalled information most easily if they

were able to call up mental images associated with a particular topic. It seems that

the mind handles images, especially vivid and unusual ones, far more effectively

than it deals with words, numbers, or abstract concepts. You can make use of this

fact by briefly forming a picture of each major topic when it is initially described

and later as you review the topic; this will enhance retention and recall.

If you get stuck at any point make use of the picture association to jog your

memory. Remain relaxed and think of the first thing that the previous item you

were able to remember reminds you of. This should produce an association of

some kind that can be used as a trigger, leading on to the next link in the chain.

After perhaps up to ten such links have been pulled out of your mind, one of the

missing topics will reappear, like a rabbit out of the conjurer's hat.

Try this review system as an exercise at the earliest opportunity in a real-life

situation. Compare the gain in remembered facts with what you were normally

able to hold in your mind over a period of three or more days. Your memory and

your ability to learn are much, much greater than you may have supposed. The

effect of such a review programme is to reduce greatly the rate of forgetting.

Instead of the memory dropping off rapidly by about 80% over the first 24

hours, it can be reinforced by reviews at the critical consolidations periods and at

subsequent intervals, and it can be raised back towards and then above, that which

was initially retained.

The same technique can be applied whenever you study materials that you intend

to remember. It may be thought that with continued study of a subject, the

reviews would accumulate and take over most of your study time. Actually, this

is not the case. Supposing a person studied every day for one hour a day, and in

addition set up a review programme for this study. On any one day he would

need to review the work from the study session just finished (immediately after, a

few hours after and before going to bed), and also material from one day, one

week, one month and six months before.

Review of work done:

Time taken:

Same day

5 minutes

1 week before

3 minutes

1 month before

1 minute

6 months before

1 minute

Maximum review time

on any one day:

10 minutes

Thus a person spending one hour a day on study would need to spend only a

maximum total of 10 minutes a day to complete all the necessary reviewing, and

improve his memory many times over. Thus a few minutes devoted to review

makes the hours spent studying effective and worthwhile.

When you have acquired the discipline of organised review of previously studied

materials, and received the benefits, the procedure will become automatic and

easy.