Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (3 page)

I enjoy receiving comments like these. It has been terrific to be able to improve my own reading, but it’s been fantastic to hear from other people who have also enjoyed and profited from these ideas.

Layout of This Book

Each chapter of this book starts with instructional material. These explanations will give you an understanding of what reading with the right brain is and how it can be applied to your reading.

The instructional material also includes information about the history of and the mental processes involved in reading. This overview of reading will help you stay on the straightest path to faster reading and better comprehension.

At the end of each chapter there is an exercise to practice what you have learned. Each exercise consists of the first thousand words of a separate popular classic novel.

The text in these exercises is specially formatted in a way that makes it easy to see the thought-units. This is done by indicating the separate units of meaning with alternating black and gray text. This will identify the phrases for you, so you can concentrate more on seeing the meaning of each phrase.

Here is an example of this technique.

Alice was beginning
to get very tired
of sitting by her sister
on the bank,
and of having
nothing to do:
once or twice
she had peeped
into the book
her sister was reading,
but it had no pictures
or conversations in it,
‘and what is the use
of a book,’
thought Alice
‘without pictures
or conversation?’

In this example, “
Alice was beginning
” is the first unit of meaning, “
to get very tired
” is the second, “
of sitting by her sister
” is the third, etc.

The alternating black and gray text helps you quickly focus your eyes on each phrase, making these phrases easier to grasp at a glance.

Each exercise is one thousand words long. The first eight hundred words are highlighted in black and gray, and the last two hundred words are displayed normally. So after reading thought-units with the help of the highlighting, the last two hundred words give you practice picking out thought-units on your own. In effect, the first eight hundred highlighted words will give you a bit of a running start at the remaining unformatted text.

Practice these exercises and concentrate on reading whole ideas. Reading text in larger chunks this way will transfer greater amounts of information per glance, like a high-speed broadband form of reading. It will also make reading easier and faster because you will be concentrating on the larger, more meaningful concepts. Reading these larger ideas will put more emphasis on what has always been the true bottleneck of reading speed:
comprehension
.

Comprehension must come first. Instead of pushing your speed while simply trying to retain your comprehension, faster reading will come as the
natural result
of better comprehension. Rather than focusing on
speed reading
, you will be focusing on
speed comprehension
.

In addition to the practice exercises in this book, you can also find other tools and lessons in the free online course at
www.readspeeder.com
. Helping ReadSpeeder users was how this book started. This book originated from the desire to give a more in-depth explanation of the techniques and theories demonstrated in the ReadSpeeder course. Another reason for this book was to supply a more natural reading experience to make reading practice more comfortable and realistic.

Of course, as with any skill, it will take practice to embed it into your subconscious and really make it your own, but as concentrating on ideas becomes a habit, it will soon replace your old habit of reading words and sounds.

Repeating Exercises

For the maximum benefit, try to read each exercise in one sitting. But if you need to stop in the middle of an exercise because of a distraction, start over again at the beginning when you are ready to continue. The exercises are short enough that starting over should only take a little more time, but the best way to benefit is if you do the exercises long enough to stretch your reading muscles.

You might be concerned that starting an exercise over would distort your speed measurements because you would already be familiar with the material. It is true that you would most likely read faster the second time, but that concern misses the main purpose of the practice. Although an accurate measure of your reading speed may be useful feedback, the primary benefit comes from the practice itself.

Plus there are other benefits to repeating an exercise. Rather than having an unfair advantage on the second reading, you will actually be further reinforcing your skills in new ways. You will be able to practice visualizing concepts faster the second time since it will be easier for you to come up with visuals, which will therefore allow you to more easily experience the type of reading you want to have, and to see what it feels like to fly over the words with excellent comprehension.

Practice Exercise #1

The shift into higher reading speeds comes as a result of learning to read with the right brain, reading whole ideas rather than words. The methods and theories of this technique will be further explored throughout the book, but in this first practice segment, just pay attention to how the text is segregated into distinct and independently meaningful chunks of information. Without even trying, you should begin seeing phrases as whole ideas.

Don’t be too concerned about your speed, or about bad habits such as regression or vocalizing. Just read through the text and let the special formatting guide your eyes to the meaningful phrases.

To determine your reading speed, measure the time it takes from start to finish and then use one of the formulas below to calculate your words per minute. Since each exercise is exactly one thousand words long, the calculations will be simple and the results will be easy to compare.

Here are two ways you can calculate your WPM for these exercises:

1. Divide 1,000 by the number of minutes (1,000 / MINUTES)
   
2. Divide 60,000 by the number of seconds (60,000 / SECONDS)
   

You can download a simple
form
for recording your speed results at
www.readspeeder.com/reading-speeds.html
.

In this first exercise the text will be displayed in slightly shorter units of meaning than in the exercises that follow. The word-groups in this exercise will be no longer than three words each, to give you an easier introduction to reading word-groups.

As you begin this first exercise, do not be overly concerned with how you are reading. The black and gray highlighting should automatically guide you to the larger blocks of information. At this stage, just get used to seeing text divided into meaningful thought-units.

When you come to the unaided portion of the text, try to continue seeing the words in meaningful groups on your own. Don’t worry about exactly which words you group together, because there are no perfect groupings. Just try to continue seeing meaningful phrases, regardless of the phrase lengths you choose. What is most important is that the phrases make sense to you and are easy to imagine.

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

The Velveteen Rabbit
by Margery Williams

The Velveteen Rabbit

There was once
a velveteen rabbit, and in
the beginning
he was really
splendid.
He was fat
and bunchy,
as a rabbit
should be;
his coat
was spotted
brown
and white,
he had real
thread whiskers,
and his ears
were lined
with pink sateen.
On Christmas
morning,
when he sat
wedged
in the top
of the Boy’s
stocking,
with a sprig
of holly
between
his paws,
the effect
was charming.

There were
other
things
in the stocking,
nuts and oranges
and a
toy
engine,
and chocolate almonds
and
a clockwork mouse,
but the Rabbit
was quite
the best
of all.
For at least
two hours
the Boy
loved him,
and then
Aunts and Uncles
came to dinner,
and there
was a great
rustling
of tissue paper
and unwrapping
of parcels,
and in
the excitement
of looking
at all
the new presents
the Velveteen Rabbit
was forgotten.

For a long
time he lived
in the
toy
cupboard
or
on the
nursery
floor,
and no one
thought very much
about him.
He was
naturally shy,
and being only
made of velveteen,
some of
the more
expensive
toys
quite
snubbed him.
The mechanical toys
were very superior,
and looked down
upon everyone else;
they were
full of
modern ideas,
and pretended
they were real.
The model boat,
who had
lived
through
two
seasons
and lost
most of
his
paint,
caught the tone
from them
and never missed
an opportunity
of referring
to his rigging
in technical terms.

The Rabbit
could not claim
to be a model
of anything,
for he didn’t
know that
real
rabbits existed;
he thought
they were all
stuffed
with sawdust
like himself,
and he understood
that sawdust
was quite
out-of-date
and should never
be mentioned
in modern circles.
Even Timothy,
the jointed
wooden lion,
who was made
by the disabled
soldiers,
and should have
had broader views,
put on airs
and pretended
he was connected
with Government.
Between them all
the poor
little
Rabbit
was made
to feel himself
very insignificant
and commonplace,
and the
only person
who was
kind to him
at all
was
the Skin Horse.

The Skin Horse
had lived longer
in the nursery
than any
of the others.
He was
so old
that his
brown coat
was bald
in patches
and showed
the seams underneath,
and most
of the hairs
in his tail
had been pulled
out to string
bead necklaces.
He was wise,
for he had
seen
a long succession
of mechanical toys
arrive to boast
and swagger,
and by-and-by
break
their mainsprings
and pass away,
and he knew
that they were
only toys,
and would never
turn into
anything else.
For nursery magic
is very strange
and wonderful,
and only
those playthings
that are old
and wise
and experienced
like
the Skin
Horse
understand
all about it
.

“What is REAL?”
asked the Rabbit
one day,
when they
were lying
side by side
near the
nursery fender,
before Nana came
to tidy
the room. “Does it mean
having things
that buzz
inside you
and a
stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how
you are made,
”
said
the Skin Horse.
“It’s a thing
that happens
to you.
When a child
loves you
for a long,
long time,
not just
to play with,
but REALLY
loves you,
then you
become Real.”