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Course: Reading quickly
Feb. 9th, 2010 11:16 amLast night I traveled to Amersfoort to follow a course on reading quickly (Snellezen). Thanks to uncooperative trains refusing to depart I only had ten mintues to shovel my food into my mouth. Luckily the string beans were good -- I love string beans -- and they had potato parts to top up my starch and salt reserves. The chicken does not deserve a mention in any blog.
The course started with a measurement of the level of reading in ten minutes. I had nearly 350 words per minute, where others were a hundred words below that level. I knew I read quickly, but the course would tell if it could be done more quickly. We had to fill out 15 multiple-choice questions afterward, to measure comprehension. I scored 6 right answers on that, and I finished first.
We were told some tricks about reading quickly. You have to analyse the text and ask yourself "Are there any graphs or images with the text?" because you need to look at those before speed-reading your way through the text. Using a pen or finger to mark your place helps with the tempo as well as regression; whenever glancing at any text, your eyes mark the words above and below the line you're reading as well.
And our goals? To double the speed at which we read while still maintaining the same level of text comprehension. That's where reading quickly in the first test bit me in the ass, because now I needed to up my performance to 700 words a minute!
We drank coffee and continued. We read a chapter further along in the book for five minutes and then had one minute for a summary. Noting that I came to page 123, I scribbled down a short summary, glancing back at the text to jolt my memory. Next up we could read the same text for three minutes. I realised I'd already read and remembered parts of the text well enough to skip by them at lightning-speed and continue with the parts I didn't store well enough. After those three minutes, I had come to page 120, nearly as far as in the first five minutes. Another minute for a summary followed, and then one last minute to read, with a final 30 seconds for the summary.
I was really starting to hate the book now. It was on a subject I really can't wrap my head around ("Hoe word ik een rat" door Joep Schrijvers; tr: 'how to become a rat') because I've actually got a shred of empathy. At some point I was quite ready to fling the book away from me, because the writing style (condescending towards the reader) and subject apalled me so.
The final exercise saw us flipping forward another chapter, and reading for five minutes and summarising again for one minute, followed by another five minutes in which we had to try to read one quarter more than before. I tried a different trick when summarising now: writing down key words, and really keeping it brief. The chapter focused mainly on "past rats" -- i.e., how history has produced many rats, and how philosophers like Plato people like Machiavelli also justified rattiness, and so - the book seemed to conclude - ratness was to be embraced because it's okay to stab your boss in the back. I think I was snarling at the book. If you can backstab someone by rethoric, by all means, do!
In any case, I think I did really well at the reading tricks, and I got better at summarising as well. I didn't use to be so bad at it, but time constraints managed to force me to dust off my skills and perfect my technique. All in all, I was happy with the progress. Even if I need to read through the text twice, I still absorb the gist of the text despite its subject. If I can read such an apalling book nearly cover-to-cover (we skipped two or three chapters for further progress tests) in one night, I'm sure to do better at reading newspapers and difficult functional designs.
The trouble is, and I realised this as well, that the writer of this book had really taken care to have a clear structure in his book. A chapter would introduce the subject in a metaphor, telling the reader what he wanted to talk about in this chapter. Then, clearly cut into bite-sized paragraphs, the writer would highlight the subject from several angles, giving clear examples on the subject. Each paragraph had a clear title, and just by browsing back to the title and letting a glance of the following text lead my summary, I realised I had absorbed enough to get the message the writer was trying to bring across. I'll be interested to see how it goes with different subjects, or less structured texts.
So while I was pondering whether I really needed to touch upon the subject of the book, I realised that I'm far too grumpy and far too cold to really stress the fact that it's a terrible subject to write a book about. The last thing we need is people stressing the point of how you can have personal gain by stabbing your boss, your co-workers or even your friends in the back.
Should anyone want to get rid of my friendship, all they have to do is give me this book as a gift.
And please, in the meantime, be nice to eachother, smile at people every day, and give without expecting anything in return. Wouldn't that just make a nicer world?
The course started with a measurement of the level of reading in ten minutes. I had nearly 350 words per minute, where others were a hundred words below that level. I knew I read quickly, but the course would tell if it could be done more quickly. We had to fill out 15 multiple-choice questions afterward, to measure comprehension. I scored 6 right answers on that, and I finished first.
We were told some tricks about reading quickly. You have to analyse the text and ask yourself "Are there any graphs or images with the text?" because you need to look at those before speed-reading your way through the text. Using a pen or finger to mark your place helps with the tempo as well as regression; whenever glancing at any text, your eyes mark the words above and below the line you're reading as well.
And our goals? To double the speed at which we read while still maintaining the same level of text comprehension. That's where reading quickly in the first test bit me in the ass, because now I needed to up my performance to 700 words a minute!
We drank coffee and continued. We read a chapter further along in the book for five minutes and then had one minute for a summary. Noting that I came to page 123, I scribbled down a short summary, glancing back at the text to jolt my memory. Next up we could read the same text for three minutes. I realised I'd already read and remembered parts of the text well enough to skip by them at lightning-speed and continue with the parts I didn't store well enough. After those three minutes, I had come to page 120, nearly as far as in the first five minutes. Another minute for a summary followed, and then one last minute to read, with a final 30 seconds for the summary.
I was really starting to hate the book now. It was on a subject I really can't wrap my head around ("Hoe word ik een rat" door Joep Schrijvers; tr: 'how to become a rat') because I've actually got a shred of empathy. At some point I was quite ready to fling the book away from me, because the writing style (condescending towards the reader) and subject apalled me so.
The final exercise saw us flipping forward another chapter, and reading for five minutes and summarising again for one minute, followed by another five minutes in which we had to try to read one quarter more than before. I tried a different trick when summarising now: writing down key words, and really keeping it brief. The chapter focused mainly on "past rats" -- i.e., how history has produced many rats, and how philosophers like Plato people like Machiavelli also justified rattiness, and so - the book seemed to conclude - ratness was to be embraced because it's okay to stab your boss in the back. I think I was snarling at the book. If you can backstab someone by rethoric, by all means, do!
In any case, I think I did really well at the reading tricks, and I got better at summarising as well. I didn't use to be so bad at it, but time constraints managed to force me to dust off my skills and perfect my technique. All in all, I was happy with the progress. Even if I need to read through the text twice, I still absorb the gist of the text despite its subject. If I can read such an apalling book nearly cover-to-cover (we skipped two or three chapters for further progress tests) in one night, I'm sure to do better at reading newspapers and difficult functional designs.
The trouble is, and I realised this as well, that the writer of this book had really taken care to have a clear structure in his book. A chapter would introduce the subject in a metaphor, telling the reader what he wanted to talk about in this chapter. Then, clearly cut into bite-sized paragraphs, the writer would highlight the subject from several angles, giving clear examples on the subject. Each paragraph had a clear title, and just by browsing back to the title and letting a glance of the following text lead my summary, I realised I had absorbed enough to get the message the writer was trying to bring across. I'll be interested to see how it goes with different subjects, or less structured texts.
So while I was pondering whether I really needed to touch upon the subject of the book, I realised that I'm far too grumpy and far too cold to really stress the fact that it's a terrible subject to write a book about. The last thing we need is people stressing the point of how you can have personal gain by stabbing your boss, your co-workers or even your friends in the back.
Should anyone want to get rid of my friendship, all they have to do is give me this book as a gift.
And please, in the meantime, be nice to eachother, smile at people every day, and give without expecting anything in return. Wouldn't that just make a nicer world?
