Step VII: Pacing

One popular misconception of rapid reading is that when a person learns to read at high speed he will race through everything at this accelerated pace. Don't believe it. No one expects you to read a scientific article filled with unfamiliar technical words, or a book of poems, at the same speed with which you properly gallop through a mystery novel.

This is no more than common sense. Think back to the analogy of the automobile I cited in the Introduction. I suppose a man could drive his car at 60 miles an hour over a curving mountain road. But he would be pretty uncomfortable and he wouldn't take in much of the scenery. So he slows down to a sensible pace which permits him to enjoy driving and gives him a chance to look across the valleys on both sides of his mountain road.

In the same way, once you have learned to read rapidly you could romp through anything. But if the material is new, the words and ideas unfamiliar, you wouldn't do so with the comprehension which makes high speed worth while. And if the selection was a piece of fine writing you wouldn't have time to appreciate its beauty. You are now reading everything at a much faster rate than you did before you began to practice Modern Reading. You will never go back to the snail's pace you followed before you discovered the pleasures of this better method. But you will not read everything at your maximum speed. You will now be a many-gaited reader, adjusting your speed to the kind of reading you are doing at the moment.

In a general way, everything you read falls into four categories and, in keeping with the principles of Modern Reading, these divisions are based on the several purposes which decide you to read. Here they are: 1. For information only. 2. To evaluate and criticize ideas. 3. For self-enrichment. 4. For relaxation and enjoyment.

Quite obviously there will be a certain amount of overlapping of purpose within these categories. But the reader who keeps them in mind and stops to fix the purpose of his reading will find his grasp of new material is greatly accelerated and also his enjoyment, since he has adjusted both his point of view and his speed in advance. Now let's see what different kinds of material fall into each category:

For information only. This is a high-speed category. Reports, business letters, technical articles in your field go in first. Sessions with an encyclopedia or reference book are included and, of course, all the textbooks that students use. You want information but you don't particularly care about the quality of the writing as long as it is clear. You read just as fast as your comprehension will permit, skipping and skimming when these techniques seem safe to use. The strictly news reports in your newspaper fall into this category too, though you will probably slow down for special articles and editorials which require the more critical approach of category two.
To evaluate and criticize ideas. This calls for slower speed. The category contains books and other writing in which the author is presenting a point of view. The alert reader doesnot simply accept what is written but brings his own background knowledge and intelligence to bear in an evaluation of the author's discussion and conclusions. He asks questions as he goes along, trying to anticipate points as the argument develops. This process increases enormously the reader's enjoyment of such material. His mind is completely involved, his concentration fully applied. If your own mind has been only half alive with this kind of material before, applying the principles of Modern Reading will increase your appreciation in great measure. For this is more than just a skill. You will find that it unfolds a whole new dimension of understanding because you are gearing yourself to evaluate the opinions of the great thinkers of today and yesterday. You now read more easily, more rapidly, so your mind is able to absorb ideas quickly and concern itself with estimating their logic.

If you ever learned to play a musical instrument, you reached a point where the fingering — the simple technique — could be forgotten. You could play without thinking of the mechanics. Now you could devote yourself to an interpretation of music. It is the same with Modern Reading. You reach a point where you are no longer concerned with each technique of reading. You can lose yourself in what the author is saying, argue with him, criticize his conclusions.

I am not sure you have reached this point yet, unless you have an exceptional aptitude. You are still concerned with drills and practice. But at least you know the goal that lies ahead. It is the point at which you use Modern Reading principles naturally.
For self-enrichment. When you read with this purpose you expect not only the beauty of fine writing but of inspiring thoughts. Great novels find their place here, great plays and poetry, richly conceived and written biographies, history, philosophy and the other humanities. Sometimes the writing will be difficult. Sometimes it will flow easily into your mind. There is always an overflow from category two into this kind of writing, but here you are not so alive to criticism. Only when the author's thoughts or interpretations clash with your own background knowledge will you find yourself questioning, arguing with him in your mind. For the most part, this kind of reading experience is something which brings only pleasure to your mind and awakens your imagination.

You will not want to read memorable writing at your top pace. But as your general reading skill increases you will handle this kind of material far more rapidly than you do today and without sacrifice of the self-enrichment it promises. This is where your growing vocabulary counts most. There are no holds barred in words an author may use in a biography or fine novel. He will not set out deliberately to stump you with difficult words. But if one occurs to him as exactly the right expression of a thought or emotion he will not hesitate to use it. With material of this sort the advice about vocabulary building in the previous chapter pays big dividends.
For relaxation and enjoyment. Now you are settling down for a pleasant evening with one of those paperbacks I mentioned (and it can be a hardbound book just as well). It will be a light novel, a detective story, an absorbing true adventure, a piece of humor, a funny biography. This is where rapid reading comes into its own, for you should race through such material at top speed. The writing is adequate for the purpose but it is not great. You will not want to pause over it. You are simply absorbing mood and situation.

How to Fix Your Pace

Once you have these four categories in your mind and can establish a purpose each time you read you will want to ask, "But just how do I fix my speed with different kinds of material? Is there some rule of thumb I can learn that will tell me how fast I should go?"

No, there is no rule of thumb, but there are practical realities which guide you. The questions apply most directly to the second and third categories — in reading to evaluate and criticize ideas and in reading for self-enrichment. I have already made clear that when you are reading for information only — "practical prose," this sort of thing is usually called — or when you are reading purely for relaxation and enjoyment you race along at top speed.

Now let's consider speed in the second category. The reason no general rule can be offered is that each person approaches critical reading with a different fund of knowledge. This, in turn, governs the difficulty of a particular piece of writing —for him.

An example will help to illustrate the point: You are a businessman with average intellectual background. You are interested in foreign affairs but no expert. A new crisis erupts somewhere in the world. You have read about it in your newspaper and now you come across a solid article in one of the monthly magazines. You decide to read it, and your purpose will be not only to get information but to evaluate and criticize the author's views. You pre-read of course but you find you must slow down when you start to read the article thoroughly. There will be unfamiliar names of officials, place names you recall only vaguely. You will probably run across statistics on the country's economic situation, talk of clashing political parties. For you, because most of the material is new, this is not easy going.

Now take another man whose intellectual equipment is no better than your own but who has spent some time in the troubled country. He has a head start in background and should be able to read the same article at faster speed because his comprehension is already primed. He knows what he is reading about.

The guide to pacing yourself on material in this category is your comprehension rate. You read as rapidly as you can without missing anything of importance. To test your progress it is well to time yourself on serious articles and keep a running score. The best way to check comprehension rate is to skim an article immediately after you read it, making sure that you have retained all the main points.

One warning: Do not feel discouraged if your speed falls off now and then, even with articles on subjects that are familiar to you. An author's style has a great deal to do with your ease of comprehension. Some experts are unable to write clearly and simply. Their sentence structure becomes involved and their meaning tangled up in a confused web of jargon and dependent clauses. A better writer could have stated the same facts and opinions so that you would slide through his article rapidly. But he might lack the expert's authority.

Your pace will always be slowest in this second category since you will be asking questions while you read. As your general speed and skill increase, you will quicken your gait here too. So stretch yourself as much as you can — but not at the sacrifice of comprehension. The speed will come.

And now how about reading for self-enrichment? How do you pace yourself when you want to appreciate sheer beauty of writing and nobility of phrase? "I want to read this kind of writing slowly," you insist. But you don't — not really. The reason goes back to a point I made in Chapter Two. When you read slowly it is hard to keep your mind engaged, for the full richness of phrase and sentence is not coming in fast enough. It is like looking at the individual pieces in a beautiful stained-glass window rather than at the entire luminous image.

To be sure, you will read fine prose more slowly than you would a mystery story.   But you should still strive for speed instead of deliberately holding back. When you are able to absorb a good biography at a far faster pace than you can right now your appreciation of the style will be increased rather than diminished. You will feel that you are getting the picture whole rather than in bits and pieces.

Do not hesitate to use the Pacing Card with this kind of material, drawing it smoothly down the lines in consistent rhythm and a little faster than is quite comfortable. This helps to establish your gait. And don't worry about missing beauty. You'll find it just where it should be — transferred from the pages to your mind and your memory.

Timing Test for Self-enrichment

At this point in your progress, I think you would be interested to try your speed on a passage to be read for self-enrichment. I have chosen one of the minor classics — the beginning of Robert Louis Stevenson's essay, "On Falling in Love," from the series called "Virginibus Puerisque." These essays are often used as school assignments, so quite possibly you have read this before. Now try it again with your new skills and see how fast you can go without missing any of Stevenson's nice turn of phrase and gentle humor. Don't look back if you feel you have lost some of the meaning. Read the excerpt straight through. But if you know you are missing a great deal, this is the signal to slow down to an even pace with which comprehension can keep up.

To test your comprehension, after you have finished the passage write a hundred-word summary of what Stevenson says. This is the best means I know of finding out just how much of an author's thought a person has absorbed.

Starting Time: _ MINUTES____ SECONDS

Begin Timing:

There is only one event in life which really astonishes a man and startles him out of his prepared opinions. Everything else befalls him very much as he expected. Event succeeds to event, with an agreeable variety indeed, but with little that is either startling or intense; they form together no more than a sort of background, or running accompaniment to the man's own reflections; and he falls naturally into a cool, curious and smiling habit of mind, and builds himself up in a conception of life which expects tomorrow to be after the pattern of today and yesterday. . .

There is probably nothing rightly thought or rightly written on the matter of love that is not a piece of the person's experience. I remember an anecdote of a well-known French theorist, who was debating a point eagerly in a circle of friends. It was objected against him that he had never experienced love. Whereupon he arose, left the society, and made it a point not to return to it until he considered that he had supplied the defect.

"Now," he remarked, on entering, "now I am in a position to continue the discussion." Perhaps he had not penetrated very deeply into the subject after all; but the story indicates right thinking, and may serve as an apologue to readers of this essay.

When at last the scales fall from his eyes, it is not without something of the nature of dismay that the man finds himself in such changed conditions. He has to deal with commanding emotions instead of the easy dislikes and preferences in which he has hitherto passed his days; and he recognizes capabilities for pain and pleasure of which he had not yet suspected the existence.

Falling in love is the one illogical adventure, the one thing of which we are tempted to think as supernatural, in our trite and reasonable world. The effect is out of all proportion with the cause. Two persons, neither of them, it may be, very ami- able or very beautiful, meet, speak a little, and look a little into each other's eyes. That has been done a dozen or so of times in the experience of either with no great result. But on this occasion all is different. They fall at once into that state in which another person becomes to us the very gist and center-point of God's creation, and demolishes our laborious theories with a smile; in which our ideas are so bound up with the one master-thought that even the trivial cares of our own person become so many acts of devotion, and the love of life itself is translated into a wish to remain in the same world with so precious and desirable a fellow creature.

And all the while their acquaintances look on in stupor, and ask each other, with almost passionate emphasis, what so-and-so can see in that woman, or such-an-one in that man? I am sure, gentlemen, I cannot tell you. For my part, I cannot think what the women mean. It might be very well, if the Apollo Belvedere should suddenly glow all over into life, and step forward from the pedestal with that godlike air of his. But of the misbegotten changelings who call themselves men, and prate intolerably over dinner tables, I never saw one who seemed worthy to inspire love — no, nor read of any, except Leonardo da Vinci, and perhaps Goethe in his youth. About women I entertain a somewhat different opinion; but there, I have the misfortune to be a man.

Stop Timing

Finish time ____________ MINUTES             SECONDS

About 680 words    READING TIME_

Find your reading score by the chart, page 8, or by the equation I have given you.   Set it down below:
――wpm