The 7 Steps to Faster Reading

You are about to have opened up to you a whole new world of reading pleasure. If reading has seemed difficult before, this book will show you how to make it almost effortless. I will tell you the skills by which rapid readers gain their speed, show you how to gain speed yourself. If you learn and practice the techniques and drills conscientiously your reading rate is bound to leap ahead. And as you read faster you will also read better.  The purpose of this book is to tell you how.

The book is divided into three parts:

Part Onetells you how to read faster.

Part Twotells you how to read better.

Part Threeis a supplement on the Art of Reading with special chapters on the pleasure and profit which come with advanced reading skill.

The book is dedicated to great reading but it is not great literature in itself. This is a working manual which combines instruction with demonstrations of techniques and skills. The chapters are organized with planned repetition so that the method is drilled into you.  It will have become an instinctive part of all your reading before you are through, and you will find your skill increasing from the very start. I believe that anyone who uses this book with serious application can double his reading speed.

Before going further, let's see what your normal reading speed is now. The selection that follows is from William Hickling Prescott's "Conquest of Mexico," an American classic which chronicles the fall of Montezuma, King of the Aztec people, at the hands of Cortez and his conquistadors in 1519. The part I have chosen describes the fabulous "Halls of Montezuma" in what is today Mexico City.

To be fair, do not try to read faster than you would if you came across this section in the book. To time yourself you will need a clock or watch with a second hand. Pick a time in advance when you will start and note it down on the lines below.

__________ MINUTES ___  SECONDS

When the second hand reaches that point — begin timing.

Montezuma encouraged a taste for architectural magnifi­cence in his nobles and contributed his own share toward the embellishment of the city. Not content with the spacious residence of his father, Montezuma erected another on a yet more magnificent scale.

This pile of buildings spreads over an extent of ground so vast that, as one of the Conquerors assures us, its terraced roof might have afforded ample room for thirty knights to run their courses in a regular tourney. I have already noticed its interior decorations, its fanciful draperies, its roofs inlaid with cedar and other odoriferous woods, its numerous and spacious apart­ments which Cortez does not hesitate to declare superior to anything of the kind in Spain.

Adjoining the principal edifice was an armory, filled with the weapons and military dresses worn by the Aztecs, all kept in the most perfect order, ready for instant use. The emperor was himself very expert in the management of the Indian sword, and took great delight in witnessing athletic exercises and the mimic representation of war by his young nobility. Another building was used as a granary and others as ware­houses for the different articles of food and apparel.

There was also an immense aviary, in which birds of splendid plumage were assembled from all parts of the empire. Here was the scarlet cardinal, the golden pheasant, the endless parrot tribe with their rainbow hues (the royal green pre­dominant), and that miniature miracle of nature, the humming­bird, which delights to revel among the honeysuckle bowers of Mexico. Three hundred attendants had charge of the aviary and in the moulting season were careful to collect the beautiful plumage, which, with its many-colored tints, furnished the materials for the Aztec painter.

A separate building was reserved for the fierce birds of prey: the voracious vulture tribes and eagles of enormous size, whose home was in the snowy solitudes of the Andes. No less than five hundred turkeys, the cheapest meat in Mexico, were allowed for their daily consumption.

Adjoining this aviary was a menagerie of wild animals, gathered from the mountain forests and remote swamps. The collection was still further swelled by a great number of reptiles and serpents remarkable for their size and venomous qualities, among which the Spaniards beheld the rattlesnake, which they called "the fiery little animal with the castanets in his tail."

The serpents were confined in long cages lined with down or feathers, or in troughs of mud and water. The beasts and birds of prey were provided with apartments large enough to allow of their moving about and secured by a strong lattice­work, through which light and air were freely admitted.

Extensive gardens were spread out around the buildings. They were filled with fragrant shrubs and flowers and with various medicinal plants, the virtues of which were perfectly understood by the Aztecs. Fountains of pure water sparkled amidst this labyrinth of sweet-scented groves and shrubs. Light and fanciful pavilions, overlooking pools of limpid water, provided shelter in the heat of the Mexican summer.

But the most luxurious residence of the Aztec monarch was the royal hill of Chapultepec, consecrated by the ashes of his ancestors. It stood west of the capital, surrounded by the waters of the Tezcuco River. On its lofty crest of red-purple rock there now stands the magnificent, though desolate, castle, erected by the young viceroy Galvez, at the close of the seven­teenth century. The view from its windows is one of the finest in Mexico, and Montezuma's gardens stretch for miles around the base of the hill. Even today they are still shaded by gigantic cypresses, more than fifty feet in circumference, which were centuries old at the time of Cortez.

To find out your reading score, use the chart on page 8. The selection contains about 630 words. Or you can find your score this way:

Multiply 630 by 60 and you get 37800.

Figure the number of seconds it took you to read the selection. Suppose it was 145 seconds. Divide 37800 by 145. The answer is the reading score — 260 words per minute.

Using the number of seconds you actually took in reading the selection, figure your score and write it on the line at the right below. This is your first timing test and represents the speed at which you normally read at present.

Whatever your speed, now put away your watch and concentrate on the two sets of points we are going to cover in the rest of this chapter. These consist, first, of the three basic concepts of the method by which you read faster and better and, second, the seven steps by which you will achieve reading speed.

The Three Basic Concepts

1. The Concept of Eye Movement. Everyone reads — but, with most people it is a haphazard process.  You learned to read in the first grade and you read more and more as you grew older. But did you ever stop to think that in all probability no one ever taught you how to read?   I mean that no one ex­plained the mechanics or physiology of reading and told you how to make these natural processes work for you to develop speed and quicker comprehension.

For example, when you pick up a letter, a newspaper, a magazine or a book your eyes seem to move smoothly over the lines of type from left to right. But the truth is, they move in a series of jerks. Your eyes stop — "fixate," the experts call it — and register a word or two. Then they jerk to the right and repeat the process until you have read the entire line. You read only during the stops or fixations.

To test this, use the card which is inserted in this copy of your book. Read the instructions on the card and ask some­one to check your eye movements by looking through the peephole. Try the same experiment on your partner. Focus on one of his eyes through the peephole and watch it jump from left to right as he reads the lines of type. There are ten words in the top line on the card. If his eye jerks ten times he is a word-by-word reader.  More about that later.

2. The Concept of the Eye-Mind Relationship.

We read with the eyes, of course. But the eyes are only a camera which photographs images for the mind to translate into ideas. It is the mind which preserves what you read — not the eyes. But since the mind can receive its images only through the eyes, the eyes must be trained to record these word images swiftly and surely.

3. The Concept of Reading Purpose.

From now on you will approach everything you read with a purpose. You will undertake many kinds of reading for many purposes. Both comprehension and retention are sharpened when your pur­pose is fixed in advance. You will not waste time in letting your eyes wander vaguely down the page. You will put system and efficiency into your reading.

This kind of selectivity is as much one of the skills of Modern Reading as increasing speed. Remember, you don't have to read every word on every piece of paper that comes across your desk. The efficient way is to make a quick estimate of its nature and its value to you. Then decide if and how you will read it. This can save many minutes out of your working day.

You apply this same evaluation to everything you read, whether it is for information only, for entertainment or for the sheer pleasure of self-enrichment through a finely written novel or a biography. You establish in advance the purpose for which you are reading.

People who have not yet learned the total conception of Modern Reading often ask two questions: "If I learn to read rapidly, won't I miss a great deal — particularly the beauty of imaginative writing?" And, "Won't I overlook important points if I go through articles so fast?"

Experience shows that the rapid reader remembers far more — not less — of what he reads, because he has learned to be an efficient reader. Understanding is increased because he knows why he reads and because he concentrates.   As to missing beauty, Modern Reading calls for changes of speed with different kinds of reading material. The trained reader slows down when he wants to savor the beauty of poetry, of drama, of fine passages in a biography or novel. He paces him­self to what he is reading.

So now you have the three basic concepts of Modern Reading:

1. A thorough grasp of the eye-movement mechanics which will govern many of the techniques in faster reading I shall show you later.
   
   
2. An understanding of the eye-mind relationship which conditions the comprehension and retention of what you read.
   
   
3. An awareness of your reading purpose before you begin to read.   This causes you to read different kinds of material at different speeds and reduces the over-all time you spend on reading. Remember the concepts and you will see just how the skills of Modern Reading grow out of them.

Now we are ready to consider the skills and tech­niques by which you increase actual reading speed. Each of these is fully developed in the seven chapters that follow, but I think a quick summary will help you to see this entire method in perspective.

The 7 Steps to Faster Reading

1. You pre-read first. Before you begin to read anything you establish your purpose and then give a quick, searching scrutiny.  If it is a magazine article, for example, you

a.Read the title and explanatory subheads.

b.Note the author's name.

c.Look at illustrations and read captions.

d.Read any bold-face or italic material, lettered or numbered points, any boxes or graphs.

The next chapter explains this process as it applies to various kinds of reading. The point I want to make here is that by pre-reading you decide how much of the article it will be useful for you to read. Sometimes pre-reading will give you all you need to know of an article, with a consequent saving of time. As a Modern Reader you do not read everything you come across. You are selective. You ask your purpose before plung­ing ahead and discovering ten or fifteen minutes later that you are wasting your time. One of the means of getting through the mass of reading material that presents itself to all of us — — Businessmen, please note — is not reading unless you are sure you must. But bear in mind that sheer enjoyment of good writing is one of the best purposes of all.

2. You read in phrases. The speed at which you read a line of type depends directly on the number of stops, or fix­- ations, your eyes make.  In a line of twelve words, if your eyes take in only a single word each time they stop they must make twelve fixations.   (And some poor readers take in only part of a word at each fixation!)   If you widen your recognition span to take in two words, the fixations are cut in half — to six.  If your eyes can take in three words at each stop, the fixations are reduced to four!  It is obvious that this is one of the first concerns of rapid reading.  The more your eyes absorb in each fixation, the more you cut reading time.  I'll explain the drills to accomplish this in Chapter Two.

3. You concentrate when you read.  The greatest impediment to efficient and retentive reading is inattention. Your mind must be fully engaged.   You must not let your thoughts wander while your eyes follow the lines of type. Unless you concentrate the eyes do not transmit clear images to the mind.

Lack of attention is reflected in what we call "regressions." The unsure reader casts his eyes back a word or two, or a line or two, because he is afraid he has missed something. With untrained readers this fault is habitual, and it is a killer to rapid reading because it slows the pace with interruptions. Unless a reader concentrates and keeps his mind engaged, these regressions will continue to plague him, and he will never become an efficient, rapid reader.

4. You practice the drills of rapid reading. To attain speed you must constantly stretch your performance beyond what is a comfortable pace. To accomplish this goal you must widen your span of recognition through techniques explained in Chapter Four. You must also quicken the perception rate at which the mind recognizes and accepts word images from the eyes. You will learn flash techniques to overcome "lazy vision." You will be taught to focus your eyes just above a line of type rather than directly on it, a technique which tends to make phrases stand out. These drills are to rapid reading what finger exercises are to a piano student. They provide the practice which is essential to acquire smooth performance.

5. You master skipping and skimming. These are skills which all Modern Readers use to get through material quickly. But there is a pattern to both. They are not hap­hazard movements of your eyes over a page of type. The tech­nique is in learning how to skip and skim with confidence that you are missing nothing important. The correct methods are described in Chapter Five.

6. You build your vocabulary. Rapid, efficient reading depends above all else on a wide vocabulary. You cannot read rapidly unless your mind recognizes instantly the images of words and phrases which your eyes transmit. If your vocabu­lary is limited you must work to build it.

Most people have a vocabulary which can be divided into three categories: Active (words they use regularly in speech); Reserve (words they know but do not use in conversation, though they may in writing); and Passive (words they recognize as images when they come across them but are never quite aware of what they mean and so never use them). If this is a fair estimate of your own vocabulary — and it probably is — your target is not only to acquire new words but to move words from your reserve and passive categories into your active vocab­ulary. Remember, you are never quite sure of a word until you speak it and use it in conversation.

7. You learn to pick your reading speed. As I stated earlier in this Introduction, you will learn to adjust your speed to the kind of reading you are doing, no matter how rapidly you can read. You don't drive your car at the same speed all the time. You are guided by the condition of the road, of traffic and the nature of your errand. In the same way, you don't try to race through Shakespeare or an article on astro­physics. You change speeds and gear your pace to what you are reading.

Now that you have been shown The 7 Steps to Faster Reading, let me sum up the objectives you are going to reach by using this book. The chances are that you are not now a really efficient reader, acutely conscious of how to read with a purpose. You let your mind wander as you look at a page and so you do not comprehend or retain at your full potential. The target is to adjust all your senses to complete involvement in the reading process. You must be alert, absorbed, in a mood to anticipate the author's next words. Your attention must be fully engaged.

To prove to yourself what this can do for you, I want you to take another timing test now.   But this time you are to stretch yourself, concentrate, read with all your senses alert and your mind fully engaged from start to finish. Without los­ing comprehension, read as fast as you can. This selection is a continuation of the Montezuma story, so the style and read­ing level are the same as for the first test. Take out your watch or look at the clock and get set to go.

 __________ MINUTES  ___ SECONDS

Start Timing

The domestic establishment of Montezuma was on the same scale of barbaric splendor as everything else about him. He could boast as many wives as were found in the harem of an Eastern sultan. These were lodged in apartments, provided with every accommodation for personal comfort and cleanli­ness. They passed their hours in weaving and embroidery and especially in the graceful featherwork, for which materials were furnished by the royal aviaries.

They conducted themselves with strict decorum, under the supervision of aged females, who acted in the capacity of duennas. The palace was supplied with numerous baths, and Montezuma himself set the example of frequent ablutions. He bathed at least once and changed his dress four times every day. He never put on the same dress for a second time but gave it away to his attendants. Not even his contemporary —  Elizabeth I — could afford such costly habits.

His meals the emperor took alone. The well-matted floor of a large saloon was covered with hundreds of dishes, kept hot over the flame. The royal bill of fare included game from the distant forests and fish which, the day before, had been swim­ming in the Gulf of Mexico.

The meats were served by the attendant nobles and maidens selected for their personal grace and beauty. A screen of richly gilt and carved wood was drawn around the emperor so as to conceal him from vulgar eyes while he ate. He was seated on a cushion, and his dinner was served on a low table covered with a delicate cotton cloth. The dishes were of the finest ware of Cholula, and the entire table service was never allowed to appear a second time but was given away to the attendants. The dining room was lighted by torches made of a resinous wood, which sent forth a sweet odor as they burned.

The emperor never took any other beverage than the chocolatl, a drink of chocolate flavored with vanilla and other spices and reduced to a froth of the consistency of honey, which gradually dissolved in the mouth. This beverage was served in golden goblets, with spoons of the same metal or of finely wrought tortoise shell.

The dessert of the Aztec emperor was an assortment of fruits gathered fresh from the luscious trees of the tropics, plucked from green groves and transmitted by means of courier to the capital. After the royal appetite was appeased, water was handed to him by female attendants in a silver basin; pipes were brought, made of a varnished and richly gilt wood, from which Montezuma inhaled the fumes of an intoxicating weed, "called tobacco," mingled with liquid amber. While smoking, he enjoyed the exhibitions of his mountebanks and jugglers, of whom a regular corps was attached to the palace. No people, not even those of China or Hindustan, surpassed the Aztecs in feats of agility.

When he had sufficiently refreshed his spirits with these various diversions, the emperor composed himself to sleep, for in his siesta he was as regular as any Spaniard. On awakening, he gave audience to ambassadors from foreign states, or his own tributary cities, or to such chiefs as had suits to prefer to him.

They were introduced by the young nobles in attendance, and, whatever might be their rank, unless of the blood royal, they were obliged to submit to the humiliation of shrouding their rich dresses with the coarse mantle of sackcloth and enter­ing barefooted, with downcast eyes, into the presence.

The emperor addressed brief remarks to the suitors, and the parties retired with the same reverential obeisance, taking care to keep their faces turned toward the monarch. Well might Cortez exclaim that no court, whether of the Grand Seigneur or any other infidel, ever displayed so pompous and elaborate a ceremonial!

The maintenance of this court of several thousands of individuals involved heavy expenditures and required com­plicated accounts. But everything in Montezuma's household was conducted with perfect order; all the various receipts and disbursements were set down in the picture writing of the country. The arithmetical characters were even more refined than the ones used for letters.

Such was the picture of Montezuma's domestic establish­ment and way of living, as Cortez and his followers saw it
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Stop Timing   Finish time: ________ MINUTES         SECONDS

This selection is approximately 730 words. My guess is that you raced through it at a far faster rate than you scored on the first. This time you read with your senses alert. You were concentrated on the words. Your mind was fully engaged. Now use the chart or the simple mathematical formula I gave you to figure your reading speed and see how much better you did this time.  Write in your score.

SECOND TIMING SCORE____ WPM

This is Modern Reading, and it can revolutionize your life. It works — if you work. When you have mastered the method in this book you will find that your reading speed is vastly increased — perhaps even doubled. And you will have opened up a source of rich enjoyment.

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