1. Comprehension Skills

Speed Reading Guide: Comprehension Skills
Overview :
• Main Ideas And Supporting Ideas
• 'Debate' With The Author
• Literal And Implied Meaning
• Conclusion
1. Main Ideas And Supporting Ideas
Comprehension is a central aspect of reading. Since reading is based on understanding the ideas or concepts in the text, good comprehension skills can improve your reading speed dramatically.
In any form of writing, each paragraph comprises of both the main ideas and supporting ideas. If you learn how to distinguish between the main ideas and the supporting ideas, you’ll understand how the ideas are developed to deliver a coherent message, and also the interrelationships between the ideas.
The main idea of a paragraph is usually stated in the first sentence, and this is commonly known as the topic sentence of the paragraph. The topic sentence is a sentence which concisely describes the main idea and sums up all the supporting details of the paragraph.
For example, take a look at the following paragraph and answer the questions that follow:
Speed reading is now an essential skill in our knowledge-based economy. Since information is being produced at an ever-increasing rate, people in the workplace have a heavier workload because they need to manage more information. Indeed, statistics show that a rising number of people are falling sick from stress at work, and this is largely attributed to information overload. However, if people can manage the ever-increasing information load by reading and understanding text at a higher speed, they can reduce the stress they face at work. This is the critical role that speed reading plays in our lives now.
What is the main idea of the paragraph above? (The topic sentence)
Speed reading is now an essential skill in our knowledge-based economy.
Which are the supporting ideas?
The supporting ideas are presented from the 2 nd sentence to the 2 nd last sentence. The last sentence is the conclusion.
For good comprehension, you must have the skill to accurately identify the main ideas of all the paragraphs, so that you can have a clear ‘picture’ of how each main idea supports one another to deliver the central message. This helps your comprehension tremendously.
2. ‘Debate’ With The Author
To be a skilled reader, you’ve to take reading like a ‘debate session’ with the author. This means that you constantly ask questions about the text, ponder about the ideas presented by the author, evaluate and form responses to the text.
Reading is not a passive activity in which you move your eyes mechanically across line after line of the text, and accept the author’s ideas without question. To have good comprehension, you also need to keep ‘debating’ with the author.
For instance, if you read this sentence:
‘To be an effective speed reader, you need to know how to read ‘smart’.’
You can immediately form a response question like ‘What does it mean to read ‘smart’?’ or ‘How does reading ‘smart’ increase my reading speed?’
Such questions show that you’ve already understood the meaning of the sentence, and have considered its meaning from many angles. Your comprehension will be much better than for people who simply read the sentence and accept the meaning passively.
During reading, you should also evaluate the text carefully. The following are some points to ask yourself for your evaluation:
• Does the evidence provided by the author support his main ideas strongly?
• What is the author’s purpose of writing? Are his ideas relevant to his purpose?
• Do the ideas transition smoothly from one to the next, or are they disorganized?
Evaluating the text helps your comprehension because you need a strong understanding of the text before you can form your own opinions about it.
3. Literal And Implied Meaning
To understand any piece of writing well, you need to be able to understand both the literal meaning and the implied meaning of the text.
The literal meaning of a sentence is the exact meaning that the words convey. For example, ‘My university classes start in august’ has no other implied or suggested meaning.
On the other hand, the implied meaning of a sentence refers to an additional level of meaning that can be deduced from what the sentence suggests. You can usually infer the suggested meaning by paying attention to the clues in the sentence.
For example, ‘His face turned purple and his eyebrows furrowed on hearing the news’.
From the clues in the sentence, you can deduce that he became angry on hearing the news – the implied meaning. You can also infer that the news must have been terrible or shocking.
The key to understand the implied meaning of the text is to immerse yourself completely in the context. You need to continually form associations between what you read and what you already know. Anticipating how the author will develop his ideas next also helps you to draw inferences and grasp the implied meaning of the text.
Understanding the author’s implied meaning is important for good comprehension of any piece of writing. If you understand the text fully, you’ll not have to deliberately reread the text again, as is the case for readers with poorer comprehension. Thus, your reading speed is faster than those who cannot grasp the implied meaning of the text.
4. Conclusion
The main purpose of reading is to extract and understand the ideas from the text. With better comprehension skills, your reading will naturally improve, and so will your reading speed.

All techniques are taken from our 136pg speed reading course titled, 'The Definitive Speed Reading Course.'
For more information on how to obtain this course, visit:
http://www.mindpower.co.nz

SPEED READING SECRETS 1

Welcome to the first installment of A three-part Speed Reading Secret mini-course!

In this first part of your mini-course we'll be showing you how your reading skills can improve in just 60 seconds. If you think that isn't enough time to make any significant difference, you're in for a pleasant surprise.

But before we let you in on the secret, I'd like to take a look at some of the common misconceptions people have about speed reading in general...

* Speed Reading requires a large I.Q.

This is completely false. Anyone with an average intelligence can benefit from the simple but effective techniques The Speed Reading Secret course offers. As long as you can see the words on the page, you can learn to read faster.

* Speed Reading depends on how many books you've read

Again, this is totally false. The more books you've read, the more knowledge you might have. But that's all. The Speed Reading Secret will naturally help you read even MORE books than ever before, but it doesn't matter how many books you've read when you start the course.

* Speed Reading can only be done by young people with good eyesight

This is also false. As we said above, if you can see the words on the page you CAN learn to read faster. It doesn't matter how old you are or if you need to wear glasses for reading. All you need to do is learn the techniques and practice them. That's it!

Anyone who can read and understand an article in the local newspaper can learn to read faster with the The Speed Reading Secret. You don't have to brilliant or even well read, just willing to learn some simple skills that will have you whizzing through page after page in record time.

We mentioned earlier that we'd let you in on one of the secrets, didn't we? And here it is...

To become a Speed Reader you have to read with your EYES and not with your EARS.

Does that statement make any sense to you, or does it just sound bizarre?

Well, believe it or not, most of us read with our ears and not with our eyes. In other words we try to HEAR what we are reading instead of simply SEEING what we are reading.

Let's look at that concept in a bit more detail.

When you read something at your normal speed so that you are able to understand what you are reading, you tend to SAY the words in your head. This process, called vocalization, makes you go slowly so you feel you haven't missed anything. It can even cause you to stop and read sections over again, just to double check the details.

When you read quickly, however, the voice in your head is unable to keep up.

This is a GOOD thing, because it means that you are no longer being slowed down by unnecessarily trying to HEAR the words and make sense of them. You can let your brain make sense of the words while your eyes are free to do what they do best, which is to gather visual information, in this case words on a page.

And once you accept this concept you simply WILL NOT BELIEVE how quickly your reading skills improve!

But don't be fooled. This is not fiction: this is scientific fact based on case after case of consistent results. It works by quickly retraining you to read in a different way. Anyone can learn to do it by following some very simple guidelines, all of which are brought together in The Speed Reading Secret formula.

At the beginning of this installment we mentioned that your reading can improve after only 60 seconds. We know this is true because we've condensed the different skills needed to master the technique into short 60-second sequences. Not only are they quick and easy to work through, but the whole course can be completed in one sitting!

Heck -- you can sit the ENTIRE COURSE and literally TRIPLE your reading speed, in under ONE HOUR!

In your next installment we'll be letting you in on another secret and giving you a taste of these 60-second sequences you'll find throughout the course. If you can't wait until then and want to get started right away, why not download the The Speed Reading Secret today and find out how easy it is to read quickly and effortlessly?

Visit the official site online at: http://tinyurl.com/lo3ur8\