Techniques to improve reading

In the year 2050 when the travel wear passenger on the moon-shuttle has had his fill of
dinner on the anti-gravity magnetic tray, three D TV, intergalactic weather reports,
conversational banter with the stewardess as she floats by, he will settle back on his
contour coach, and return to that important private activity each of us does alone: reading.
The importance of reading
Reading is like learning from an absent teacher. The people who read are the people who
lead. Reading walks hand in hand with freedom. The more we read, the freer we are; we
see possibilities, alternatives and opinions that we could not see before.

The act of reading is essentially a process of thinking. It is a concentratively individual

act- an involvement. The reader makes the printed communication happen…releases the
magic that causes words on a page to leap into living thoughts, ideas, emotions.

Aeschylus knew this when he called written words “physicians.” And so did Hitler when
he burned them. Because mobs roar, but individuals think. They read. And they ask
questions that change the course of the world.

Good reading habits:

1. Check your purpose for reading.
2. Be selective and discriminating.
3. Read at least 30 minutes a day.
4. Be critical when you read. Think over what you have read.
5. Talk about what you have read. (This forces you to review what you have read
and enriches you with other people’s perspectives).

Techniques:
There are two basic methods for improving your reading. The first method stresses the
training of the eyes; the second method stresses the training of the mind.

Eye-training means 3 things:

1. Increasing your eye-span or the number of words you can grasp in one glance.
2. Reducing the number of times your eyes regress, flick back or re-read.
3. Getting a more rhythmical and regular way of moving the eyes while reading.

Increasing your eye-span means to see more with one glance of your eyes. The public
enemy no.1 of reading is moving your lips while reading. This slows our reading to the
pace of speaking. Develop a rhythm and read on smartly. Use the pyramid technique to
develop greedy eyes.
A dog
A brown dog
The cat mews in the night
The night falls slowly and silently
It poured elephants and bears in Canberra
The West believes life is a problem, the East says life is a mystery
What is even more important is mind reading. If you use the mind better while reading,
the eyes will take care of themselves.

The SQ3R technique: Survey: 5 minutes, Question: 5 mins, Read: 30 mins, Restate: 15
mins, Review: 5 mins.

Survey: It means to get an overview, the overall picture. Reading without surveying is
like plunging into a jungle without a map or jumping into a bus without knowing where it
is going. How do you survey?
a. Book: Read the preface, contents summaries; get the author’s purpose and skim
through the rest.
b. Chapter or article: Read the first and last paragraphs and read the first and last
sentences of every paragraph. A summary paragraph is especially important.
Notice paragraph size, words in italics, graphs, diagrams, articles, key-words and
sign-post words (e.g.: firstly, secondly, finally, etc) and while doing so, skim with
your fingers in the form of S’s or waves.

Question: You should ask questions before you start reading as well as while you are
reading. Questions should start with the title: what does the title tell me about the
contents o the book? What do I think will be included/excluded? We learn only by
asking questions. Also, while we read, questions should be asked: do I agree with this
point? Who says so? What proof is offered? What follows from this? Where will the
author go from here?

Read: You are ready to read. So read! Read as you ride a bicycle; slow uphill, quickly
downhill, and carefully where there is danger. Read difficult matter slowly, light matter
quickly, and complex matter cautiously. Keep a calm pressure on yourself to move as
quickly as possible. Read for thought-units not word units. You receive no garlands for
merely reading words. Words don’t fill the mind but meaning does. Your minds do not
live on words but on meaning. So keep looking for answers as you read. Read actively.
Every hour give yourself a break. Get up, stretch. Look at the scenery. (Time to be
spent on reading: 50% of the total time).

Restate: To restate means to put to put down your book at intervals and to tell yourself
what you have read. It is the key to solid learning. Good readers do it. Poor readers
don’t. What should you restate? A paragraph would be too much trouble and a chapter
would be too long. If a reading has headings, at the end of every heading may be a good
idea. Research has shown that generally a reader who restates can remember three times
more than who does not.

Review: The fifth and last step in your reading strategy is simply repeating the first four
steps. You again survey, question, read and restate now not what you will read, but what
you have read. So to review, skim back over the material, surveying the headings again,
answering your questions, rereading items you are hazy about or can’t remember and
restating the central message with its parts and their relations.