Getting More Out of Your Reading:

1. Getting More Out of Your Reading: By: Jonathan Roach

2. What is Reading? • Reading is learning to pronounce words • Reading is learning to identify words and know their meaning • Reading is learning to bring meaning to a text in order to discover meaning from it (Weaver, Reading Process and Practice)

3. History of Reading: • People haven’t always read in the same manner • The first historically recorded silent reader was St. Ambrose • St. Augustine wrote, “when he read his eyes scanned the page and his heart sought out meaning, but his voice was silent and his tongue was still.”

4. From: Businessinsider.com

5. Some Statistics: • 82% of people who read e-books live in urban cities • Women are 50% more likely to finish reading a book than men • 30% of people who begin reading a book will stop by page 50 • 48 pages per hour is the average reading rate for a person under the age of 40 • Average reading session length is 12 minutes • (The Lure of a Good Book, mashable.com)

6. Average Undergraduate College Student: • An average college freshman, has around 200 pages of reading assigned per week and the average adult reader reads 250 wpm • If you are average, then you will need 5.3 hours of reading time a week • How fast do you read? • Go to http://mindbluff.com/askread.htm • Follow the directions

7. Symptoms: • Do you: • Hear every word in your head even when reading silently? • Read everything in the same way? At the same rate? • Avoid classes that have lots of textbooks? • Don’t remember the beginning of the book when you reach the end? • Do everything else before reading? (Penn State Reading Skills).

8. Your Self: • View yourself as a reader • Approach reading with a confident and relaxed mind set • Empower yourself to succeed • Approach reading with a positive attitude

9. Reading and Comprehension: • Most students are able to increase their reading rate without lowering their comprehension • You are attempting to develop the fastest possible reading rate with the highest possible understanding of the materials

10. Reading Rates: • Reading for memorization 100 wpm • Reading for deep learning 100-200 wpm • Reading for comprehension 200-400 wpm • Reading/Skimming for overview 400-700 wpm • Reading/Scanning for review or preview 700+ wpm

11. Factors of Poor Reading: • Limited visual span • Slow perceptual reaction time • Vocalization • Regression • Lack of practice reading • Fear of poor comprehension • Dislike of what you are doing

12. Basic Conditions to Increase Your Reading Rate: • Get your eyesight checked • Don’t say words or move your lips • Don’t read one word at a time • Enjoy what you are doing

13. Schedule Your Reading: • Know Yourself • When • What time of day do you do your best work? • Different learners need different conditions. • Where • Where can you control interruptions the best? • Home, office, library, cell phone, and people…. • How • Position, lighting, refreshments, with or without paper, with or without highlighter, and …..

14. Reading Environment: • Lighting • 600 to 800 lx • Interruptions • What can you control? • What can’t you control? • Seating

15. Key Idea: • Know what information you need from the material before you begin • Purpose -- Why are you reading this?

16. Prioritize: • Rank your required, recommended, and suggested reading • Which material is the most important for your goals? • If two books cover the same topic, could you read one carefully and then skim the other?

17. Comprehension: • Comprehension means constructing meaning • Most adult readers understand and remember about 65% of what they have read Reader + Written Word = Meaning

18. Comprehension Improvement: • Once your start, don’t stop!!!!! • Use pre, during, and post-reading techniques • The more you read the better reader you will become

19. Eyes: • Relax your eye muscles; don’t tense • Let your eyes “float” on the page • Don’t fix on single items • 99% of reading is done in the brain

20. Fixation Time: • Fixation refers to the amount of time that the eye gazes in at a point • Reduce your fixation time by keeping your eye moving on the text • Poor readers may have 10 or more fixations per line while good readers will only have 3 to 5 fixations per line

21. Visual Span: • Visual span is the space in which the eye has enough sharp vision to read text • Eyes span app. 120 degrees • But reading span is app 6 degrees of this arch

22. Visual Span: • To improve your reading speed improve your visual span • Visual span is the amount of text that your eyes view at one time • Children are taught to view one letter at a time but some students never move beyond this • Good readers take in several words or a whole line in one view • Cut a view box in a note card and attempt to read more than one word at a time

23. Set Your Reading Rate: • Not all reading materials should be read the same way • How will you be using these materials? • Novel • Newspaper • Textbook • Journal Article

24. Different Types of Reading: • Scanning • Use to find particular words • Useful for quickly reviewing text for an item for which you are searching • Similar to using a telephone book to find a name • Skimming • Use to gain main points • Useful for getting the “big picture” of concept • Active • Use for detailed reading of material on which you will be tested • Highlight or take notes while reading

25. Reduce Back-Pedaling • Attempt to reduce the number of times that your eyes jump back in the text • Train your eyes to move in the correct direction

26. Chunking: • Don’t (pause) read (pause) one (pause) word (pause) at a (pause) time (pause) • Read an entire line at one time

27. Self-Pacing Methods: • Professional Speed- Reading classes teach methods that help the reader focus his/her attention better • Starting position • Train your eyes to move from left to right and down

28. Meta Guiding: • Meta Guiding is the use of a visual object to train your eyes to move along a passage of text (Wikipedia)

29. Self-Pacing Methods: • Hand • Place your dominant hand on the page • Move it slowly downward • Try to have your eyes follow the movement • Start slowly and over days and weeks speed up • Card • Similar to hand but use a card • Good method to break the bad habit of reading and rereading

30. Self-Pacing Methods: • Sweep • Slightly cup your dominant hand • With a light smooth motion sweep your hand from left to right • Hop • Similar to the Sweep but hop about three lines at a time

31. Breathing: • Breathing is important even during reading • Try to have deep breaths • Calm, even, and slow

32. Subvocalazations: • Subvocalizing will only decrease the reading rate if accompanied by visible movements of the mouth, jaw, and/or throat (Wikipedia– Speed Reading) • If there is visible movement during silent reading, then vocalization may be effecting reading rate. • Attempt humming or singing along to music to stop this habit

33. Before You Read: • If you are driving a strange car in a strange city, you are more likely to get lost. • Collect everything that you need for a successful reading experience. • If you can’t focus, take time for deep breathing and silent prayer • If you still can’t focus, do something else and come back to your reading later. • Before you read: • Preview • Who is the author? • What is the subject? • How will you use this material? • What is this chapter about? • What are titles, subsections, and major topics? • Review any graphics in the text.

34. Making Connections: • Good readers make connections between themselves and the texts • This causes higher thinking • Which improves comprehension

35. Connections: • Three types of relationships: • Text to Self • Text to Text • Text to World

36. Text to Self: • Connections between the reader, the text, and the reader’s past experiences and/or background knowledge

37. Text to Text: • Connections between the reader, the text, and any other written communication

38. Text to World: • Connections between the reader, the text, and society, culture, and/or history

39. Strategies to Make Connections: • Set the content in your context • Ask questions • Visualize • Determine important content • Synthesize information

40. Context: • How does my life fit into this picture? • How does my experience fit into this picture? • How do I fit into this picture? • How does this fit into my prior reading, education, or work experience?

41. Questioning: • Questioning keeps your mind engaged • Ask about the text’s purpose • Ask about the author’s motivation • Go beyond the text…. • Why? • Is this true? • Argue with the text • Challenge the text

42. Visualizing: • Long after the exact words, ideas, or even the author’s name have left our minds • We remember the stories that we can picture in our minds

43. Visualization: • Good authors don’t tell you about love • They show you love

44. Importance: • A key to high comprehension is the ability to distill importance • Place the topic in the larger picture • Start drilling the people, places, and events • Seek out the opposing opinions • Understand the idea and the supporting ideas • Place the text within the historical framework

45. Assessing Yourself: • Set goals for yourself • Be realistic • Baby steps • Practice • Keep trying • Keep trying • Keep trying

46. After You Read: • Go back and highlight: • Important names • Events • Places • Key sentences • Too much highlighting is a bad thing. You will not remember what to focus on while reviewing

47. After You Read: • Make a list of words that you don’t know and look them up • Attempt to write out the major ideas in your own words

48. Pictorially or Diagrammatically: • Capture your understanding of the material in a visual form • Timelines to show chronology • Diagrams to show relationships • Word webs to show complex relationships • Charts to compare and contrast • Pictures or photographs

49. PSQ5R: • Purpose • Survey-Skim • Question • Recite • Record • Reflect • Review

50. Before Class: Lecture Classes, Discussion or Small Group Classes • Take 10-15 minutes to skim the reading assignment • Note chapter titles, main headings, and key words • Review charts, pictures, and graphs • Read the conclusions twice • Make a list of questions