Books That Don’t Go Bad

Prof.M.S.Rao asked:


HOW TO DEVELOP READING SKILLS?

BY PROF.M.S.RAO, ACADEMIC GUIDE, ICFAI UNIVERSITY

“The writer creates half the text, the reader creates the other half”, Author unknown.

Man learns by various sources and means such as by observation, conversation, experience and reading. Right from the stage of Stone Age to space age the man has evolved himself by reading the scripts which he himself has created and passed on the baton to his next generation. No one knows how one reads with in himself because he feels himself and understands with in himself. Everyone has unique way of reading and yet a few styles which are common among all human beings. Let us look at the different dimensions of reading skills.

According to the National Reading Panel (NRP), “The ability to read requires proficiency in a number of domains such as ‘phonemic awareness’, ‘phonics’, ‘fluency’, ‘vocabulary’ and ‘comprehension or reading comprehension’”. It indicates connectivity of many things during reading and also all the concepts mentioned will help for effective reading.

Another author Chall has come out with different stages of reading which is popularly known as ‘Chall’s stages of Reading Development’. And according to her, “Each stage of reading builds on skills mastered in earlier stages; lack of mastery at any level can halt the progress beyond that level”.



She divided the reading process into various stages. The first stage being the Zero stage which symbolizes pre-reading that is usually up to the age of 6 years of the child. It is also known as reading readiness. The subsequent stage is the Stage One, where the child is in the age of 6 to 7 years and it is also known as initial reading stage or decoding stage. In the next stage i.e. Stage Two where the age of the child is approximately 8 years during which child confirms himself and it is also called as confirmation stage. Further in the Stage Three the child who is in the age of 9 years, he reads to learn. In the Stage Four, the child turns into teen age and develops multiple shades of opinions and viewpoints and ultimately in the final Stage Five the man constructs his views and opinions independently and forms his own perceptions and judgments on various things.

TECHNIQUES OF READING:

Although there are number of tools and techniques in reading there are three tools by which you can improve reading skills. In brief, they are scanning, skimming and concept mapping techniques. All these can be deployed depending upon the context and also on the purpose of reading. Initially it is better to have cursory look on the contents by scanning, and then switch over to skim the contents by skimming strategy and at last read by applying the techniques of concept mapping. Concept mapping is nothing but drawing a two dimensional picture of a concept either mentally or physically. It is very important technique for noting information and connecting ideas. Since concept maps are pictures they can be easily retained in the memory. To substantiate these three strategies let us recall what Francis Bacon said, “Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few are to be chewed and digested”.

SQRRR is another popular technique which is the acronym for Survey, Question, Read, Recall and Review. According to this, while reading one has to examine and then question himself for the contents that are read. Whatever has been read is to be recalled with in the mind and ultimately the contents are to be reviewed.

The layered method of reading is yet another approach towards reading which is accepted and adopted by the majority of readers. As per this, you have to overview the entire material very fast and form an opinion on it. Subsequently focus little more on the important portions which deserve to be addressed such as introduction, headings and summary. It is a prelude to read the book and hence it is called as preview. It provides proper judgment and direction whether to go ahead with reading or not. After passing through this phase if the book or the material is worth to be read, you can go ahead with reading. It is in fact the semi final. And the final phase is the review. Whatever has been read has to be reviewed for better comprehension and for effective memory retention. Below are the tools and techniques for developing effective reading skills

TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE READING:

• Find out what you want to know and for that you need to cut through the clutter. At the same time assess what is to be skipped from reading.

• Question yourself whether you are reading for any specific purpose or for pleasure because at times intention is more important than action.

• Always lay emphasis on contents and contexts but not on the style or flow or delivery of the material.

• It is always important to stress on qualitative not quantitative reading.

• Cultivate positive attitude towards reading. The more you read and the more love you develop towards reading. Nancy Collin aptly said, “The only way to improve reading skills is to read”.

• Before you read, find out 2Ws i.e. why you are reading and what you are reading.

• Check your biological clock and read so that the degree of absorbability and assimilation of the material is higher.

• Keep the dictionary beside when you go for reading. If the meaning of a word is not known it will help you to know instantly.

• In every sentence there are key words to be focused. When the meaning of the key words is known then it becomes easier to understand and memorize the material.

• If you get boredom, give a break and restart reading so that you can grasp better.

• Surround yourself with various kinds of books.

• Learn to underline the key parts/words/concepts for further references.

• Develop the habit of paraphrasing the contents.

• Transfer the material from text book to note book so that the best part of the material is with you. By this, you can separate chaff from the grain. And when you write then the degree of retentivity is higher.

• Create your own short hand stuff from the material.

• While reading, new ideas and concepts will flash in the mind and the same may be added on the margin side of book. Failure to do will lead to missing the beautiful ideas.

• Don’t focus on filler words in the sentences. The words like is’s and the’s can be avoided while reading as these take longer time and not of much significance for understanding the contents.

• Try to recall the contents repeatedly which are in your mind and summarize the same and write down either on the margin of the text book or in the note book. If you are able to generate a few examples from the text book in a given context it will help you to enhance retentivity. And also link the contents of the material with real life events, examples and accidents.

• By using different colored pencils the importance level of the contents will be realized for further readings. You can keep your style based the degree of significance and the priority levels. Rather you can create your own mythology, style and coding as per the convenience.

• If you find it boring to read, keep the book upside down and read you will be able to apply more pressure to read with this.

• There is no fixed formula for reading and the methodology changes when you read text books, newspapers, magazines, journals and more so when you surf online content.

• Average readers read about 200 to 250 words per minute. And the speed can be enhanced without affecting the quality with faster eye ball movement and with longer breaks and pauses.

• You can make sense of sentence by omitting articles, conjunctions, prepositions etc., By this you can focus more on the contents and also you can save time.

• Try to convert the written information into pictorial format while reading for effective comprehension of contents.

• If the meaning of a key word is not clear then try to look at it from different dimensions of the origin of the word to get the closer or accurate meanings. Also if possible look at the prefix or the suffix of the key word for earlier and faster understanding.

• Daily fix some amount of time exclusively for reading and over a period of time it will become a practice.

• Train your eyes to take in words in larger gulps.

• Avoid confusing material and don’t get stuck. Such contents can be referred later on. Learn to skip unwanted and unproductive stuff. In this context, William James aptly quoted, “The art of becoming wise is the art of knowing what to overlook”.

CONCLUSION:

There are four skills that are essential for all viz speaking skills, writing skills, listening skills and reading skills. If speaking skills and writing skills become one side of the coin, then listening skills and reading skills become the other side of the coin. And the coin possesses value when it has two sides. To sum it up all four skills are like the four pillars for the development of successful all-round personality.

T H E E N D

Bob Smith asked:


 

So many facts about your life can be revealed to you through a psychic palm reading. When you look your palm, each and every one of those distinct lines in your hand determines something interesting about you. If you’re curious about the future of your well-being, the future well-being of your bank account, or the future well-being of your loneliness, it can all be seen through one look at your palm with a psychic palm reading.

Getting a palm reading can be easier done than you think. There are many sources out there that teach psychics how to give a palm reading. As you are driving on a highway, it is more than likely that you will pass a place that offers palm readings. Even in some malls there are booths set up where psychics offer palm readings for five or ten dollars. A psychic palm reading is a harmless psychic reading that people tend to opt towards. Many people are afraid of receiving intense psychic readings; however they would get a psychic palm reading just for fun.

The thing to keep in mind about a psychic reading is that you have a choice whether to believe in it or not. Just because of the message or advice that a certain psychic gives you, that doesn’t mean you have to live your life in fear that it will come true. For example, if your psychic palm reading revealed that you will never get married and live an unhappy single life; you don’t have believe that will prove to be true. You could live your life with a new-found desire to find true love from such a psychic palm reading. Who knows, you could prove your psychic palm reading to be completely false and end up living the happiest married life ever? Psychic palm readings are generally cheaper than other psychic readings as well.

This is another reason why people do it simply for fun. It does give you a little pizzazz to an otherwise boring life. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so much fun if you were to receive a psychic palm reading alone, but if you go at it with a group of friends it could result in quite an enjoyable time. Perchance the next time you and your group of friends go to the mall for a fun evening out you should give it a chance. Maybe even one of your friends’ psychic palm readings will actually have a big impact on their life.

Some people are embarrassed to pay money for psychic readings and resort to calling them “silly” even though they are secretly interested. If you are one of these people they have hundreds of psychic palm reading books out there in which you could even do a basic palm reading in the privacy of your own home. The palm reading books can be purchased at pretty much any book store. In the comfort of your own bedroom or living room you could do your own palm reading at your own pace for your own fun.

 

Dan asked:


When I first heard about the idea of using a pacer to help improve my speed reading I was a little sceptical, and was unsure if there were any real benefits to using one, so I went and looked to see if there were any benefits and if so what effects does using a pacer have on your speed reading ability.

The first benefit of using a pacer while speed reading is it increases your speed by forcing you to focus on more then one word at a time.

Another benefit is it helps to keep you focused and less easily distracted by things going on around you or going on around you or on the page you are reading.

Another benefit which I personally find very useful is it helps me to move quickly onto the next line more smoothly, I say this because when I used to read with out the use of a pacer, I would often find myself reading the same line by mistake and so loosing my flow and becoming bored and losing the motivation to carry on and also loosing the meaning and flow of what I was reading.

Another benefit which is linked in with the last one is that using a pacer helps to stop you from loosing your place while reading, which can be useful is for example you are reading a passage in a book which is referring to a diagram or image on the opposite page and you want to quickly look at the picture to get a better understating of what you are reading but not loses your place.

And probably the biggest and best benefit for using a pacer while reading is that it stops you from sub-vocalisation, this being to helps to prevent you from sounding out the words you are reading out loud or in your head. This is important for speed reading because if you sound out each word you are limiting the number of words you can read a minute to about 250.  It is much better to run your eyes across the words and get the meaning as a result. Reading this way takes practise but is worth it for the improvements in your reading speed.

To uses a pacer while reading is very simple all you have to do is choose your pacer (e.g. finger) then place the pacer on the first word of the line, then move it smoothly across the page to the end of the line. And repeat as you read down the page.

Another big piece that is important to work on in order to become a fast speed reader, is to boost your speed reading stamina, your speed reading stamina is the amount of time you are able to read at speed for with good comprehension and recall. Boosting your speed reading stamina will help you to train and recondition your brain to reading at faster speeds and so will allow you to get all of the benefits of speed reading faster.

I have collected together all of the important things that you will have to do in order to boost your speed reading stamina, all of this information has been arranged into a 7 part e-course that you can take. To receive this valuable resource for boosting your speed reading stamina which will help you to increase your reading speed faster, simply visit my reading stamina web page and enter you name and a email address so that I can email it to you right away.

Thanks DAN!

Dan asked:


A big element of effective speed-reading is only reading those pieces of text that you actually need to read and not reading that which you don’t need to read.

To help you find the information you actually need to read and to avoid the information you don’t need to read it is important to practice skimming and scanning when reading text.

Skimming and scanning are actually two very different ways of going through text. Scanning while speed reading is the process of looking for a specific piece of information, like looking up a word in the dictionary for example. You don’t read every word; you “scan” through the text to look for what you want and stop once you have found and absorbed the information you are looking for.

Skimming on the other hand involves going through the book page by page just looking at chapter titles and sub titles and categories and pictures and diagrams to get a general feel for the text and its layout to familiarize yourself with its structure. And to also help get an overview of the subject matter the book is on. And to get a general impression of what the text contains.

To help you be more effective and get the most out of both skimming and scanning text it can be useful to know what your purpose is for reading the book. Knowing why you are reading a book and what you are looking for will help to get your brain alert for any information that your are looking for in the text as you read.

This is because there is a part of your brain involved in controlling your attention and awareness levels,  which is know as the “reticular activation system”(RAS) and is activated by goals and purpose.

Your RAS is so powerful that it can actually block out information you have not made clear you want from the text, and it can also alert you to information you are actually looking for. It dose this by controlling your perceptual filters, which helps to filter out any information you don’t need and alert you to what you do in the text.

So that is why it is so important to know why you are reading information and what you need or want from the text before you begin reading because if you are not totally sure of what information you need you are unlikely to find it and could actually miss it without even knowing.

Another big piece that is important to work on in order to become a fast speed reader, is to boost your speed reading stamina, your speed reading stamina is the amount of time you are able to read at speed for with good comprehension and recall. Boosting your speed reading stamina will help you to train and recondition your brain to reading at faster speeds and so will allow you to get all of the benefits of speed reading faster.

I have collected together all of the important things that you will have to do in order to boost your speed reading stamina, all of this information has been arranged into a 7 part e-course that you can take. To receive this valuable resource for boosting your speed reading stamina which will help you to increase your reading speed faster, simply visit my reading stamina web page and enter you name and a email address so that I can email it to you right away.

Thanks DAN!

Melvin Ng asked:


It is an almost instinctive reaction to think that reading faster equates with comprehending less. Empirical evidence, however, seems to indicate otherwise – individuals who read at slower rates are just as likely not to fully comprehend what they have read as those who read too fast.

Consequently, trying to find an optimum between the speed you read at and the overall comprehension you have of the material is the key to good reading skills. What follows is a brief look at how you can try to optimize your speed reading and comprehension at the same time.

Speed and comprehension

It should be the goal of every individual who wishes to read efficiently to understand what they are reading, learn from it, and then move on. Reading should not be an activity which we linger over. In this regard, it is generally accepted that someone who can read between 250 and 300 words per minute is an average reader. Those who read less than 250 words per minute are slow readers. And those who read more than 500 words per minute are speed readers. However, there comes a point when reading too fast would make you lose your comprehension.

If that’s the case, what should be the optimum speed? Only you can tell because you’ll need to test it out yourself and try to stretch it as much as possible. Different people will have varying levels.

If we accept that these reading rates are fairly standard, it should be the aim of every reader to be reading more than 500 words per minute but at the same time, not to lose comprehension.

Why is reading faster important anyhow?

The reason why it is generally considered important to read with at least some modicum of speed is because it is clear that, as is the case with a reader who reads too fast, a person who is reading slowly most probably does not understanding what it is that they have read. Here, it is generally accepted that a slow reader is unable to retain the information that /he has just read in his/her memory. In other words, by the time they have completed the sentence they have read, they’ve forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was about!

Improving your speed: Improve your comprehension

Having read the above, if you believe that you need to increase the rate you read at, with the aim of furthering both your speed reading and comprehension skills, the following are 5 brief tips to help you further your reading skills:

1. Check your eye:

One of the most commonly cited (no pun intended) reasons why people have problems reading at high speed is because they either cannot see clearly what it is they are reading, or that they suffer from headaches if they read too much, for too long. If you feel these symptoms may be affecting your reading abilities, it may well be worth having your eyes checked, as there is a chance you may be suffering from some form of eye defect.

2. Read in comfort:

Reading should be a pleasure, not a chore. If you make reading a chore, you will have problems comprehending what it is you are reading. On the other hand, don’t make your reading environment too laid back – you may find then that you just want to go to sleep! Adapt your environment (for example, chair, lighting, etc.) to maximize your reading pleasure.

3. Reading material:

It is very important that you keep in mind what the material is that you are reading. If you are reading the latest blockbuster novel, there’s every chance you can read faster, and comprehend more, than would be the case if you are reading the text book for your next exam. As such, it is always useful if you keep the old adage “horses for courses” in mind.

4. Try to avoid talking (vocalization):

Many of us enjoy [lip] talking (vocalizing) out the words of our reading material as we read it. This actually causes an obvious problem: we can read faster than we can talk! So, if you find that you have the habit of talking when you read, try to cure this habit and you may well find that you increase the speed at which you read.

5. Block-reading and re-reading:

As we grow older, we should be able to develop the skill of “block-reading”. Essentially “block-reading” means that you have the ability to read more than one word at a time; for example, you can read whole paragraphs in one go. This skill is enhanced by training your eye to broaden its span so as to take in more. Likewise, re-reading, or regressed reading as it is also known, is a habit you should try to eliminate.

Generally, studies indicate that readers who read 250 words per minute (the ‘average’ reader) regress/reread material on a page up to 20 times. Essentially this regress/rereading has two major faults:

(i) it means you are not comprehending what you have read the first time; and

(ii) it is utilizing valuable time you could be using to read more.

As such, eliminating both of these habits is considered good practice.

Conclusion

Developing speed reading skills at the expense of comprehension is counter-productive. Ultimately, the comprehension of what you are reading is achieved not by reading fast, nor by reading slowly, but by reading at your optimum speed.