Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (12 page)

This alphabet was then adapted by the Romans about twenty-seven hundred years ago to form the Latin alphabet. Then Latin was adapted by the English around sixteen hundred years ago to form the Old English alphabet. The Old English alphabet continued to be modified until around two hundred years ago when we arrived at the English alphabet used today.

Spaces and Punctuation

Originally there was no punctuation. It wasn’t until about twenty-two hundred years ago that the most basic punctuation marks were invented by Aristophanes of Byzantium, the director of the Library of Alexandria. This punctuation consisted of a single dot either at the bottom, middle, or top of the line to let readers know how long to pause between sentences.

Even spaces had to be invented. Until they were, words ran together in an unending stream of capital letters known as
scriptio continua
. ASYOUCANSEEITISNOTVERYEASYTOREADLIKETHIS

About thirteen hundred years ago, Irish monks began using spaces to separate words in Latin and, for the first time ever, we had individual words.

Before spaces, text functioned more like musical notes, and a person reading a scroll was more like a player piano, translating the scroll into sounds. In fact, well into the Middle Ages, reading was an activity generally carried out aloud; text was usually spoken as a kind of performance. The performers would practice and repeat their performances, and the text only had to serve as a reminder.

But by adding spaces and punctuation, text became more meaningful as ideas instead of just sounds; and rather than replicating speech, some readers began to read completely in their heads—especially in the monastery libraries where they had to be very quiet.

Over time, further improvements were added to make written language easier to read. By around twelve hundred years ago, spacing had become popular and the catalog of punctuation marks had grown richer. By this time, the page provided enough information for silent reading finally to become common.

Printing Press

After the printing press appeared in the late 1400s, the popularity of reading absolutely exploded. The printing press was like the World Wide Web of the day; suddenly, the world was full of information that had never been available before. As more and more information became available, more and more people began to read.

Although many could read silently, most reading was still considered simply a form of entertainment, and—just like television entertainment today—was best enjoyed when shared. People would read to each other, and public reading performances were a common form of entertainment. The wealthy even hired people to read to them at home—the audio book of the time.

But as the amount of reading material available continued to grow, and the time available for reading remained relatively fixed, the ability to read faster became increasingly desirable.

However since reading was considered a verbal performance, how would it be possible to read faster than you could speak? Even if you only thought the words internally, how could you think them faster without it sounding like gibberish? The answer is to concentrate on the whole ideas being expressed rather than the sounds of the spoken words. This means that it is not enough to just read silently or even to avoid sub-vocalizing, but to concentrate on imagining
what
is being communicated instead of the
words
used to communicate it.

Practice Exercise #6

As you read the next practice exercise, make sure to see each phrase as a complete, meaningful piece of information. Just as spaces divide letters into distinct words, phrases divide words into complete and independent ideas. Concentrate on these ideas rather than the words. You are not performing the text; you are absorbing ideas.

When you’re ready, begin reading the first thousand words of

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by L. Frank Baum

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Dorothy lived
in the midst
of the great
Kansas prairies,
with Uncle Henry,
who was a farmer,
and Aunt Em,
who was
the farmer’s wife.
Their house was small,
for the lumber
to build it
had to be
carried by wagon
many miles.
There were four walls,
a floor
and a roof,
which made one room;
and this room contained
a rusty looking
cook-stove,
a cupboard
for the dishes,
a table,
three or four chairs,
and the beds.
Uncle Henry and Aunt Em
had a big bed
in one corner,
and Dorothy
a little bed
in another corner.
There was no
garret at all,
and no cellar—
except a small hole
dug in the ground,
called a cyclone cellar,
where the family could go
in case
one of those
great whirlwinds arose,
mighty enough
to crush any building
in its path.
It was reached
by a trap door
in the middle
of the floor,
from which a ladder
led down into
the small,
dark hole.

When Dorothy
stood in the doorway
and looked around,
she could see nothing
but the great
gray prairie
on every side.
Not a tree
nor a house
broke the broad sweep
of flat country
that reached
to the edge of the sky
in all directions.
The sun had baked
the plowed land
into a gray mass,
with little cracks
running through it.
Even the grass
was not green,
for the sun
had burned the tops
of the long blades
until they were
the same gray color
to be seen everywhere.
Once the house
had been painted,
but the sun
blistered the paint
and the rains
washed it away,
and now the house
was as dull
and gray
as everything else.

When Aunt Em
came there to live
she was a young,
pretty wife.
The sun and wind
had changed her, too.
They had taken
the sparkle from her eyes
and left them
a sober gray;
they had taken the red
from her cheeks and lips,
and they were gray also.
She was thin
and gaunt,
and never smiled now.
When Dorothy,
who was an orphan,
first came to her,
Aunt Em had been
so startled
by the child’s laughter
that she would scream
and press her hand
upon her heart
whenever Dorothy’s
merry voice
reached her ears;
and she still looked
at the little girl
with wonder
that she could
find anything
to laugh at.

Uncle Henry
never laughed.
He worked hard
from morning till night
and did not know
what joy was.
He was gray also,
from his long beard
to his rough boots,
and he looked stern
and solemn,
and rarely spoke.

It was Toto
that made Dorothy laugh,
and saved her
from growing
as gray as
her other surroundings.
Toto was not gray;
he was
a little
black dog,
with long silky hair
and small black eyes
that twinkled merrily on
either side of his funny,
wee nose.
Toto played all day long,
and Dorothy
played with him,
and loved him dearly.

Today,
however,
they were not playing.
Uncle Henry sat upon
the doorstep
and looked anxiously
at the sky,
which was even grayer
than usual.
Dorothy stood in the door
with Toto in her arms,
and looked
at the sky too.
Aunt Em
was washing the dishes.

From the far north
they heard a low wail
of the wind,
and Uncle Henry
and Dorothy could see
where the long grass
bowed in waves
before the coming storm.
There now came
a sharp whistling
in the air
from the south,
and as they
turned their eyes
that way
they saw
ripples in the grass
coming from
that direction also.

Suddenly
Uncle Henry stood up.

“There’s a cyclone
coming, Em,”
he called to his wife.
"I’ll go
look after the stock."
Then he ran
toward the sheds
where the cows and horses
were kept.

Aunt Em
dropped her work
and came to the door.
One glance told her
of the danger
close at hand.

“Quick,
Dorothy!”
she screamed.
“Run for the cellar!”

Toto jumped out of
Dorothy’s arms
and hid under the bed,
and the girl
started to get him.
Aunt Em,
badly frightened,
threw open the trap door
in the floor
and climbed down
the ladder
into the small,
dark hole.
Dorothy caught Toto
at last
and started
to follow her aunt.
When she was halfway
across the room
there came a great shriek
from the wind,
and the house
shook so hard
that she lost her footing
and sat down suddenly
upon the floor.

Then a strange thing
happened.

The house whirled around
two or three times
and rose
slowly through the air.
Dorothy felt
as if she were
going up in a balloon.

The north and south winds
met where
the house stood,
and made it
the exact center
of the cyclone.
In the middle
of a cyclone
the air
is generally still,
but the great
pressure of the wind
on every side
of the house
raised it up
higher and higher,
until it was
at the very top
of the cyclone;
and there it remained
and was carried
miles and miles away as easily as you could carry a feather.

It was very dark, and the wind howled horribly around her, but Dorothy found she was riding quite easily. After the first few whirls around, and one other time when the house tipped badly, she felt as if she were being rocked gently, like a baby in a cradle.

Toto did not like it. He ran about the room, now here, now there, barking loudly; but Dorothy sat quite still on the floor and waited to see what would happen.

Once Toto got too near the open trap door, and fell in; and at first the little girl thought she had lost him. But soon she saw one of his ears sticking up through the hole, for the strong pressure of the air was keeping him up so that he could not fall. She crept to the hole, caught Toto by the ear, and dragged him into the room again, afterward closing the trap door so that no more accidents could happen.

Hour after hour passed away, and slowly Dorothy got over her fright; but she felt quite lonely, and the wind shrieked so loudly all about her that she nearly became deaf. At first she had wondered if she would be…

Chapter 7: Modern History

So, what is “speed reading,” and where did the idea of speed reading come from? There are almost as many definitions of what speed reading is as there are courses and books on the subject, and the history of speed reading is clouded with many myths and misconceptions. However, knowing the real story of speed reading will further clarify the process and goal of real reading improvement.

Speed Reading

Origins

The speed of normal spoken English is about one hundred fifty words per minute. The way to read faster than you speak is to do away with this speech and replace it with ideas. Instead of internally verbalizing the words, why not simply think the thoughts? This would allow more than one word at a time to be read, and it would omit the necessity of internal verbalizing, because once the idea was understood, the reading job would be done.