Pre k learn to read
Pre-K: Getting Ready to Read and Write
Parents, caregivers, and preschool staff play a critical role in preparing young children for school and life success. In addition to a warm and nurturing environment, the adults in children’s lives should also focus on the building blocks of reading and writing.
This overview is designed to walk you through key pre-reading building blocks, including sounds, oral language, print awareness, and letters. Within each section, you’ll find easy to read and use resources for learning more, and for trying some activities within your setting. Short videos bring concepts to life, booklists provide ideas for extension, and we provide guidance about when to have concerns about a child’s development.
Creating literacy-rich environments
There’s no doubt that building skills in a few areas during the preschool years can make a huge difference when a child enters school. Browse through to learn more about helping preschool children learn about sounds, print, letters, and words. Finally, learn how to choose and read children’s books that will help you enjoy reading together for years to come.
Learn about each of these key areas
Sounds in speech
Babies, toddlers, and preschoolers can learn to have fun with sounds! Figuring out words that rhyme, coming up with words that share a beginning sound, and saying silly words all help build a child’s phonological awareness; that is, the ability to notice, think about, and play with sounds in words. These skills will be used every time your child reads and writes!
Fun with Phonemes
One family in Raleigh, North Carolina, shows how playing word and rhyming games puts their child on the road to reading success.
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Children's Books to Read Aloud
If You Have Concerns
Print awareness
Print awareness is understanding that print is organized in a particular way — for example, knowing that print is read from left to right and top to bottom.
It is knowing that words consist of letters and that spaces appear between words. Print awareness is a child's earliest introduction to literacy.
Becoming Aware of Print
Mira is two-and-a-half years old. Watch how Mira's parents help her become aware of print.
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Educational Apps
Children's Books to Read Aloud
If You Have Concerns
Letters and the alphabetic principle
One strong predictor of success in reading is a child’s familiarity with the letters of the alphabet. This includes knowing a letter’s name, shape and sound. Most good alphabet activities help kids get practice in each area.
The Alphabetic Principle
In Houston, the teacher of an advanced kindergarten class connects letters and sounds in a systematic and explicit way.
The Importance of the Alphabetic Principle
Renowned reading researcher Dr. Louisa Moats explains the need for understanding the alphabetic principle.
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Educational Apps
Children's Books to Read Aloud
If You Have Concerns
Reading together
Sharing books with your child can be among the most special moments of the day. These moments with books teach your child many reading readiness skills. Our resources in this section describe the why's and how's of reading with even the youngest child.
House Calls for Literacy
Watch as an early literacy educator visits a family at home to demonstrate and support interactive readalouds.
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Children's Books to Read Aloud
If You Have Concerns
Writing
Children, even our youngest learners, enjoy putting crayon to paper. What often starts as scribbling ends up being important clues to a child’s understanding that print carries meaning. Four-year olds often enjoy “writing” their name and other special words like Mom, Dad, love, and you. Helping your child develop writing readiness skills includes making the most out of everyday writing and providing lots of opportunity to practice!
First Marks
Writing expert Dr.
Jane Hansen describes how powerful it is for very young children to realize that they can communicate through oral language — and by making "marks" on a piece of paper.
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Children's Books to Read Aloud
Educational Apps
If You Have Concerns
Developmental milestones
Find out what language accomplishments are typical for most children from birth to age three. If you have questions or concerns about your child's progress, talk with your child's doctor, teacher, or a speech and language therapist. For children with any kind of disability or learning problem, the sooner they can get the special help they need, the easier it will be for them to learn.
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If You Have Concerns
Having fun with words
This brief Parenting Minute video from WNET talks about how parents and caregivers can help build their children’s language skills through storytelling, talking, singing, playing rhyming games, as well as by pointing out and discussing things throughout the day.
(Video also available in Spanish, Bengali, and Chinese)
See also
Teaching preschoolers to read - The Measured Mom
PSPKK123March 18, 2021 • 3 Comments
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We’re in the golden years of parenting.
Right now, in 2021, our family is between diapers and dating. And I love it.
Things are still wild and crazy (and LOUD), but that’s to be expected with six kids ages 5-13.
I admit that I don’t miss the Exhausted Years … the years I had a preschooler, baby, and toddler all at once.
I can’t count how many times I pushed a shopping cart with a baby seat in the cart, a toddler in the front, and preschoolers pulling on my coat.
Many shoppers couldn’t resist remarking, “You’ve got your hands full.”
These days, even though my eye bags are worsening, my wrinkles are deepening, and my hair is graying, I am getting sleep.
(And I am SO thankful for it!)
But you know what I do miss about those early years?
Teaching my kids to read.
Thankfully, I have one preschooler left. He’s five years old, and he’ll start kindergarten in the fall. I’ve been teaching him to read for a few months, and it’s been So. Much. Fun.
But is this necessary? SHOULD you teach your preschooler to read?
It depends.
You shouldn’t teach your child to sound out words until s/he has important foundational skills.
Then, and only then, should you move on to decoding words and reading decodable text.
How to teach preschoolers to read
READ TO YOUR CHILD AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN
While reading to kids is not teaching reading, and does not guarantee that your child will be able to read successfully, it does build language comprehension … and this is a key piece of the reading puzzle.
Browse all our book lists here.
TALK ABOUT BOOKS AS YOU READ ALOUD
As you read aloud to your child, ask thoughtful questions and have a discussion. This post about interactive read alouds will show you what kinds of questions to ask.
TEACH YOUR CHILD THE ALPHABET
Some people think you should start with letter sounds before teaching letter names, but I disagree … although there’s nothing wrong with teaching both at once if your child is up for it. Should you do letter of the week? Maybe. Be sure to use a fun, flexible curriculum, and teach multiple letters each week if your child can remember them.
TEACH LETTER SOUNDS
Since I taught my kids their alphabet when they were two or three years old, most of them weren’t ready to learn sounds that early.
So I taught letter sounds after they knew their letters. Here is my favorite printable for teaching letter sounds.
TEACH RHYMING, CONCEPT OF WORD, AND SYLLABLES
These are all elements of phonological awareness, which basically means that kids can play with sounds in words. Search my website for free resources, or buy these packs that have everything you need at your fingertips.
- Use my Nursery Rhyme concepts of print packs to teach the concept of word.
- Use my Rhyming Activities pack to build this important skill.
- Use my Syllable Activities pack to help kids count and identify syllables in words.
SPEND A LONG-ISH TIME TEACHING PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Phonemic awareness is the ability to play with sounds in words. In recent months I’ve done a lot of study on this, and I’ve learned that this really is key in helping kids become proficient readers. The good news is that it’s easy to teach, and it only takes a few minutes a day.
But you need to do this for some time, and it should continue even after you start teaching reading.
It helps to have a curriculum that you can follow. If you have a budget for it, consider purchasing Heggerty’s daily curriculum for preschool. Or download and print the free lessons from Reading Done Right. Looking for a more play-based approach? Get Marilyn Adams’ Phonemic Awareness curriculum.
ASSESS YOUR CHILD’S PHONOLOGICAL/PHONEMIC AWARENESS
Give your child a phonological awareness assessment to see if you should move on to teaching reading. I have a free assessment here. If you give the assessment and aren’t sure what your next steps should be, contact me via the Contact tab on the website. I’m happy to help!
TEACH BLENDING USING SUCCESSIVE BLENDING
Ready to read? Awesome! It’s time to get started with preschool phonics activities.
I find it helpful to start with successive blending (sometimes called cumulative blending). The above activity worked wonders for my youngest two kids. You can get the free printable (and how to use it) in this post.
PLAY CVC READING GAMES
As your learner is catching on to sounding out words, play lots of CVC word games. CVC stands for consonant-vowel-consonant. I have found that diving right in with decodable texts in preschool can be overwhelming. Consider start with games to build confidence.
- Our free matching games are great for beginners.
- Kids also enjoy our four-in-a-row reading games.
- Our word slider cards are another great tool.
- If phonemic awareness is solid, but sounding out words is still tough, consider using word families to start. I like our word building cards.
TEACH A HANDFUL OF BASIC SIGHT WORDS
How are things going? Is your learner getting better at those CVC words? It’s not necessary (or even helpful) to teach loads of sight words to preschoolers.
However, I recommend introducing just a few sight words in preschool so that your child can be successful with quality decodable texts. I recommend teaching these words in a multisensory way using my free sight word lessons and books.
Here are some good words to start with: a, I, see, the, is
START HAVING YOUR CHILD READ DECODABLE BOOKS
“Decodable” means something different to every reader, because it means that the child has been taught the phonics patterns for most of the words.
In the past I’ve always resisted decodable books and recommended leveled readers instead. However, after a lot of study I realize that leveled books for our earliest readers are not a good choice. This is because they contain many words students could not read in isolation, so they must use context or pictures to figure out the words. In order for them to cement the words into their brains for future retrieval, it’s important that our students connect the sounds to the letters – in other words, sound them out.
This feels like slooooow going at first, when kids have to sound out every letter, but if they have a strong phonemic awareness foundation they will get it.
There are many decodable books to choose from. When starting with brand-new readers, I recommend books that move at a slow pace and have a variety of books for each level. Here are some of my favorites for very beginning readers:
- Reading for All Learners: I See Sam books
- The Alphabet Series books
- Half-Pint Readers: These are very affordable. The stories are cute and simple, but they still have a plot. Highly recommended!
- Power Readers: These are very inexpensive because they are meant to be written in. Not as engaging as some of the other books, but good to have.
TEACH OTHER PHONICS PATTERNS AND MOVE ON TO MORE CHALLENGING BOOKS
It may be best to keep going with CVC words until kindergarten. Developing automaticity with these words (so that your child can read each word without sounding them out letter by letter) is a wonderful goal, but it can take some time.
However, if your child is breezing through your CVC decodable books and is ready for the next step, teach beginning blends and digraphs. Then move on to CVCE words.
REMEMBER TO KEEP READING ALOUD TO YOUR CHILD
Sometimes, when we’re teaching our kids to read, we forget to set ample time to read to them and discuss the books. Since early books aren’t very “deep,” we need to use other literature to build vocabulary and comprehension.
I hope this post was helpful! Feel free to leave a comment below or send my team a message via the Contact tab if you need more support.
Free Reading Printables for Pre-K-3rd Grade
Join our email list and get this sample pack of time-saving resources from our membership site! You'll get phonemic awareness, phonics, and reading comprehension resources ... all free!
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Filed Under: Reading, Structured literacy Tagged With: preschool, kindergarten, Pre-K
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Read online "Learning to read quickly", IV Golovleva - LitRes
All rights reserved.
No part of the electronic version of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including posting on the Internet and corporate networks, for private and public use, without the written permission of the copyright owner.
Introduction
From the point of view of psychology, reading is a rather complex mental process. In order to read, one must not only perceive written language, but also understand it. When reading, a person uses a variety of properties of his psyche: the ability to feel, empathize, the ability to observe life in all its manifestations, as well as the ability to analyze. Reading significantly expands our horizons, enriches our lives. Reading comprehension is often closely related to the ability to evaluate and analyze what is read. In order to better understand what we have read, we often have to carefully discuss with someone what initially seemed incomprehensible. Of course, it is not always possible to share your thoughts with the interlocutor.
Therefore, the need to develop analytical skills is an integral part of speed reading.
Why read fast? Which of us, being a student or high school student, did not dream of a miracle: to read in one day (and more often in one night) before the exam information in the entire course? Probably every person dreams of this at one time or another. How insulting it becomes when, surrounded by books and notebooks, you suddenly realize: you can’t read all this in one day. At such a moment, you involuntarily dream of a miracle and regret that you are not a computer and will not be able to "shove" the necessary amount of information into yourself.
However, life constantly proves that over time, every fairy tale or seemingly unrealizable dream becomes a reality. Suffice it to recall the famous Volka Kostylkov from the famous children's book. The magic of Gassan Abdurakhman ibn Khottab could not put the necessary knowledge into the head of his young master, and thus could not help Volka in the exam, save him from the hated assessment in the form of a swan.
But if Volka knew the technique of fast reading, he would not have had to resort to the help of Abdurakhman ibn Khottab.
Yes, yes, this dream is not a fairy tale at all, it is quite feasible. With the passage of time and the growth of scientific progress, our cherished desires turn into reality.
Until very recently, people did not know about this possibility. Today, the speed reading technique is possible and accessible to anyone who wants to improve their reading and memorization process. In this age of reactive information, everyone understands that time is money.
Every item, every thing is designed to save the owner's time as much as possible. Saving time is visible in every process of human activity. This did not bypass the process of reading. A huge flow of information, literally falling on a modern person, makes him modernize the reading process as well.
Whether you are a student or a professor, a schoolboy or a businessman, you have to spend a lot of time reading, whether you use the library or the Internet.
The speed reading technique will help you save your time and select the most important and necessary from the huge flow of information. By mastering the methodology outlined in this manual, you get a real opportunity not only to read the text much faster, but also to memorize and reproduce it reliably. The process of learning the technique of speed reading does not take much time, it is simple and accessible even for schoolchildren. Thanks to it, you will learn to select the very essence and put in memory only the necessary minimum of the useful information you need, discarding the so-called design of thought. After all, as you know, every thought or idea fixed on paper has a design, examples, illustrations, analogies, and overgrows them like a butterfly with a cocoon.
Even the great thinkers – Dostoevsky and Tolstoy – took a very large volume of text, from several pages to a chapter as a whole, to “formulate” an idea.
Thus, the selection of the necessary information is an important and necessary component of the speed reading technique.
If you know the "formula", its explanation is no longer difficult. Qualitative selection of information (especially for humanities students who have to read a large amount of literature in a short time) speeds up the process of perception of the work as a whole, helps to speed up the reading process ...
Quick reading is not only a great way to absorb more information. By reading quickly, you can get much more pleasure from an interesting book. The fact is that words, phrases, and text in general lead to the appearance of corresponding visual images in our mind's eye. When we read too slowly, the pictures that appear before our inner eye will be static, like photographs. In addition, the pictures are somewhere in the remote places of our consciousness, because we focus on reading the text. We try to read words and sentences. For us, the main thing is not to lose the right place. Accordingly, we are not up to building a visual image. This visual image turns out to be fuzzy and incomprehensible, we practically do not see it and do not consider it necessary to see it.
But as soon as we get the opportunity not to follow the text due to fast reading, then visual images become more vivid and stable. High reading speed ensures the dynamism of the visible picture. And interesting “movies” appear before our eyes.
Chapter 1. Can we read
Teaching the process of reading in childhood is often associated with a lot of difficulties. But all children sooner or later successfully overcome them. It is unlikely that anyone would think to ask an adult the question: “Can you read?” It goes without saying that every normal person has fully mastered this skill in elementary school. However, the rhythm of modern life has led to the emergence of another, no less important question - do we read fast. This question appears on our lips very often. Here we give an interesting book to a friend and immediately ask: “How quickly can you read it?” If a friend is not going to read a book before the end of next fall, we are unlikely to like it. But if the bill goes on for 2-3 days, this state of affairs will suit us much more.
So, being able to read quickly is now a must. And this skill is especially important and relevant for those who are seriously concerned about their own career, position in society. Here we are preparing for exams; we improve qualifications; We strive to impress others as an intelligent and erudite person. In order to successfully do all this, you need to be able to read quickly. Otherwise, we will lag far behind those who have fully mastered this skill.
But nevertheless, many of us for some reason refuse to even try to learn to read quickly. For some reason, it seems to many that the process of classes itself resembles not very entertaining school lessons. Others believe that such training takes a lot of time. Some also believe that when reading quickly, a person reads, as it were, “diagonally”, without remembering or comprehending what they read.
And therefore only slow reading can be considered truly useful. Fortunately, all opinions are wrong. Conservative people, adherents of "slow reading" do not interfere with recalling the words of the famous Russian psychologist L.
S. Vygotsky.
He said: “It is generally thought that understanding is better when reading slowly; however, in reality, when reading quickly, understanding turns out to be better, because different processes are performed at different speeds and the speed of understanding corresponds to a faster pace of reading. The opinion of a psychologist is easy to confirm with a simple example. Take a book and read 5 pages every day.
You will master the entire book in about six months. Now try to retell what you read. You will immediately understand that only the main storyline has remained in memory (and even then not always). But if you read the same book much faster, much more would remain in your memory.
Numerous studies have long proven the benefits of speed reading, so it doesn't hurt to take advantage of other people's positive experiences. It takes a lot of practice to learn how to read fast. They help you develop the right skills. What is a skill? Psychologists give the following definition of this term: " skill is an automated action that is performed without much effort.
" It can be said unequivocally that the development of speed reading skills is a long process. But anyone can learn to read fast. Before starting work, it does not hurt to check the initial reading speed. There are certain standards that allow you to determine the speed of reading. That is what we propose to use.
Table 1
Counting sounds is not very interesting. In addition, it is a very laborious process. Therefore, it is much better to check your own reading speed based on the number of words read per minute.
Table 2
Perhaps after testing you found that you have an average (or even slow) reading speed. (Moreover, most likely you read the first text much faster than the second.)
Can your reading speed be a cause for disappointment? In no case. Even if you have been reading very slowly until now, regular practice will help correct the situation. Studies have shown that without much effort, you can increase your reading speed by an average of three times.
However, even if you have a fast reading speed, practice can be very helpful. They will teach you to better remember what you read, which becomes possible thanks to the best methods of systematizing the information received.
By the way, in our country there is a state standard for reading speed for primary school students: for the first grade - 30-60 words per minute, for the second grade - 90-110 words per minute, and for the third - 110-140 words. Unfortunately, there are no norms for other categories of readers. However, studies show that adult readers' reading speed ranges from 100 to 200 words per minute, the absorption rate is 50-60%, and the reading productivity is 95-115 words per minute.
Let's turn to history and find out what role was assigned to reading in past centuries.
Russian writer and historian NM Karamzin represented two of the most important inventions of the era: the invention of letters and the invention of typography, the rest was their consequence.
It really is. Let's imagine for a moment this fact: suddenly books disappeared all over the earth. It sounds incredible, because the disappearance of a book is the disappearance of memory. Everything that has been accumulated by our ancestors over the centuries will disappear in one second. Everything that has been achieved by mankind is recorded mainly in books. To deprive people of books means to deprive them of their present past and future. When Tamerlane's army entered Armenia, the first thing that the conquerors took away from the people were ancient manuscripts and scrolls. The Armenians understood that it was better to be left without an army than without a past and without a memory. Therefore, they agreed to Tamerlane's proposal - to exchange two captured soldiers for one book. At such a price, the Armenian people back in the 14th century. kept his soul and memory.
The history of writing is the history of the development of man and his culture. Writing appeared in order to transmit messages at a distance.
Its predecessors were various objects that could carry one or another meaning. Usually, the one who transmitted these items did not attach importance to whether the addressee would understand the meaning of the message. Let us recall the legend about the "letter" that the Scythians sent to the Persian king Darius in response to his demand to submit. They gave him a mouse, a frog, a bird and 5 arrows. This meant: even if the Persians hide underground, dive under the water or fly into the sky, the Scythians will still find them and hit them with their arrows.
Peruvians used multi-colored ropes to send messages, on which they tied various knots and attached them to a stick in different ways. The possibilities of such a "letter" were limited. Later they began to draw figures on the boards.
The book, like humanity, has come a long way in its development. According to scholars, the first texts appeared at the end of the 4th century BC. BC e. They appeared among the Egyptians.
These texts can be considered as prototypes of books. At the very beginning, the book was drawn, handwritten, and even handmade. The first books were carved on rocks, carved on tablets, painted on earthenware, squeezed out on leather clothes.
The letter went through 3 stages of development. At the first stage, the so-called pictographic letter was used, which conveyed the whole image. Then came ideographic letter . Ideograms are specific symbols for individual words or concepts. This writing system is still preserved in China (hieroglyphs). And only then did phonetic letter appear, which we still use.
One of the first was published handwritten book . Its creation was very long and laborious. Such a book was very expensive, and only a few people could afford to purchase such a book. The ability to read and write was highly valued. However, there were very few books, their reading was the privilege of the elite.
With the growth of cities, the development of crafts, the need for mastery of writing increases, the number of people who can read and write increases, and the demand for books increases.
The scribes can no longer meet the demand for books. Thus appears typography . The possibility of replicating books contributed to their wide distribution. Books are becoming cheaper and more accessible.
The book and reading have been the subject of glorification at all times and among all peoples. As the great English writer John Galsworthy said, "A book helps a person to go beyond his own self."
Many politicians, thinkers, scientists and ordinary people have learned to read quickly. Of course, this quality was useful to them for work and career. We hope that after reading this book, you too will find it easier to learn the art of speed reading. In the meantime, we will tell you about some of the great people who could read quickly.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He was President of the United States from 1933 to 1945. It was then that the White House library was significantly replenished with books. Roosevelt was one of the fastest and most insatiable readers of all the presidents of the United States.
He learned to read quite early. His thirst for reading did not disappear even when he became the head of state, and there was practically no time left for rest. Roosevelt, according to some contemporaries, could read a paragraph in a second, that is, perceive it at a glance. Outsiders might get the impression that the president was just leafing through a book, but in fact he was reading it, and very carefully. Roosevelt, of course, was not able to read so quickly from birth. But when he realized that it was possible to perceive what was written much faster than the average person, he began to improve in this area in his free time from political activity. His assistants were constantly buying him new books. He read every day every newspaper and magazine in English that he could get his hands on. Accordingly, no one is surprised that he also became famous as one of the smartest politicians of his time.
Roosevelt began to read, like everyone else, memorizing 4 words, then 6, then 8, etc.
Subsequently, he practiced reading two lines at the same time and after that he began to read in a zigzag manner, reading one paragraph with eye movement. His approach was identical to that used by speed-reading leaders today.
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. He is probably the most famous speed reading genius ever. John F. Kennedy was the smartest man. His outstanding abilities, talent and diligence undoubtedly helped during the election campaigns. In many ways, these qualities provided him with an unconditional victory. Kennedy himself often repeated in interviews and speeches that, being the most ordinary reader, at a speed of about 284 words per minute, he was seriously interested in speed reading. And he succeeded in this task. Kennedy, like Roosevelt, read mountains of newspapers and magazines every day.
His assistant recalled that the maid who cleaned the office complained that she constantly took out to the pantry and then threw away a lot of newspapers. She lamented that the president was so busy that he didn't even have time to read it all.
She did not know that Kennedy finds only half an hour in the morning in order to carefully read about two hundred newspapers and magazines daily.
Kennedy improved his ability to read quickly until he reached a speed of over 1000 words per minute. In addition, Kennedy learned to change the speed of reading at will. He decided for himself how quickly he needed to read the next text, depending on the specific situation. After all, he had to work through a lot of information. Depending on the specific subject, he changed the pace of his reading.
John Stuart Mill is a very famous British scientist and philosopher. He is rightfully considered one of the greatest geniuses of the planet of all times and peoples. This person could read books, taking in information from several pages in one gulp. He could take in an entire page at a glance.
He began to learn to read from early childhood. His father, a university professor, chose the following tactic in teaching his son the technique of speed reading. The father handed the book to his son and for some time sent his son to another room, where he had to read it in a short time. After that, the father talked with his son so that he had the opportunity to discuss everything he had read. Over time, the volume of the book, of course, increased, and time decreased. The boy, because of such pressure from his father, learned to concentrate his attention. In the future, John Stuart Mill achieved great success. Isn't it true, this makes us think that a lot of those who can read quickly have achieved recognition and respect in their lives.
Professor C. Lowell Lees is not well known to the general public. Meanwhile, he was quite famous in his circle. Professor Lees in the 1950s served as Dean of the Department of Rhetoric at the University of Utah. This person was included in the list of people with amazing speed reading skills. A reliable case is known: once a student handed her work (on 80 sheets) to the professor. The girl was about to leave, but Professor Lees stopped her and asked her to wait a few minutes and began to read.
She was stunned when, 10 minutes later, the teacher returned her graded coursework, made a few comments about what she had written, and delved into other work. Professor Lees read and fully understood the text. Interestingly, he read at a speed of about 2500 words per minute.
Subsequently, this student (and her name was Evelyn Wood) became very interested in the problems of speed reading. Later, she even began to teach the art of reading at the university and became the founder of her own Institute for Dynamic Reading. Professor Lees played a decisive role in her life.
Antonio di Marco Magliabecchi. The name Antonio di Marco Magliabecca says little to most of our contemporaries. Meanwhile, this extraordinary man was a contemporary of Spinoza, Isaac Newton and Leibniz. Magliabecchi was born on 29October 1663 in the city where Leonardo da Vinci was born - in Florence. The poverty of the family did not allow the boy to receive an education. Magliabecchi was just a child when he had to work in a shop.
Selling fruit, someone could be content with this occupation. But if a child is gifted beyond measure from birth, such a craft is unlikely to be his main occupation in life.
It was in the fruit merchant's shop that Magliabecchi first saw the texts. Of course, it's a stretch to call it a book. He tried to read the newspapers that the goods were wrapped in. He began to learn to read on his own and spent all his free time in his closet, trying to understand the meaning of scraps of newspapers and leaflets.
A local bookseller, a regular fruit buyer, noticed the boy's diligence and offered him a job in his shop. With great joy, Antonio agreed. The bookseller undertook to teach him to read and write. A month later, Magliabecchi read fluently, and a couple of weeks later he did not make a single mistake. Over the next month, Antonio read and memorized all the books in the shop. It should be added that it was the largest bookstore in Florence. Magliabecchi not only learned to read.
He also demonstrated his amazing memory, which, of course, could not help but amaze those around him. (He could memorize the text down to the punctuation marks, and then accurately reproduce what he read.)
One of the eminent writers, having learned about the boy's talent and growing fame, decided to test his abilities. He specially came to Florence and brought with him an old manuscript, after making sure that Antonio had not seen or read it. Antonio read the large manuscript in a couple of minutes and gave it to the surprised, but still doubtful gentleman. The writer left, but returned 2 months later. He explained to the young man that the manuscript had been lost and asked him to remember what was written there. Magliabecchi retold the manuscript verbatim, plunging the writer into shock. The writer carefully studied the manuscript for 2 months in order to check Antonio, and he remembered everything in a couple of minutes.
The fame of the young man's abilities spread throughout Italy, and the Grand Duke of Tuscany invited him to the post of personal librarian.
In order to somehow work out the information of a huge number of books that were in the library of the castle, Antonio brought his abilities to almost inhuman capabilities. According to the memoirs of contemporaries, it was enough for him to look at the page once, so that he immediately remembered it. Almost all those books that he read in his youth, Magliabecchi could literally reproduce in old age. In order to test his abilities, great scientists came to the duke and arranged for Magliabecchi to check. At the same time, Magliabecchi showed the highest level of knowledge and even advised scientists on issues of interest to them. Thanks to his phenomenal abilities, Antonio di Marco Magliabecchi became one of the most educated people of his time, without having any education.
As Magliabecchi aged, he developed his abilities.
Even in his old age, when he could no longer walk, when his eyesight was failing and he spent all his time in bed, reading remained his favorite pastime.
Magliabecchi died at the age of 81. He was found surrounded by books, and in his hand he clutched a large volume.
He died in his sleep after reading another book that was brought to him from all over the world.
The ability to read quickly made Antonio di Marco Magliabecchi one of the greatest men of his time. For almost 70 years, Antonio improved his abilities and skills.
If you want to reach such heights - go for it, everything is in your hands.
Now you probably understand that nothing is impossible for a person.
How to learn to read 3 times faster in 20 minutes
October 6, 2020Education
Grab a book and check the effect for yourself right now.
Iya Zorina
Lifehacker author, athlete, CCM
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0Background: "Project PX"
Back in 1998, Princeton University hosted a seminar "Project PX" (Project PX), dedicated to high speed reading.
This article is an excerpt from that seminar and personal experience of speeding up reading.
So, "Project PX" is a three-hour cognitive experiment that allows you to increase your reading speed by 386%. It was conducted on people who spoke five languages, and even dyslexics were trained to read up to 3,000 words of technical text per minute, 10 pages of text. Page in 6 seconds.
For comparison, the average reading speed in the US is between 200 and 300 words per minute. We have in connection with the peculiarities of the language - from 120 to 180. And you can easily increase your performance to 700-900 words per minute.
All that is needed is to understand how human vision works, what time is wasted in the process of reading and how to stop wasting it. When we analyze the mistakes and practice not making them, you will read several times faster and not mindlessly running your eyes, but perceiving and remembering all the information you read.
Preparation
For our experiment you will need:
- a book of at least 200 pages;
- pen or pencil;
- timer.
The book should lie in front of you without being closed (press the pages if it tends to close without support).
Find a book that does not need to be held so that it does not closeYou will need at least 20 minutes for one session of exercises. Make sure that no one distracts you during this time.
Helpful Hints
Before jumping straight into the exercises, here are a few quick tips to help you speed up your reading.
1. Make as few stops as possible when reading a line of text
When we read, the eyes move through the text not smoothly, but in jumps. Each such jump ends with fixing your attention on a part of the text or stopping your gaze at areas of about a quarter of a page, as if you are taking a picture of this part of the sheet.
Each eye stop on the text lasts ¼ to ½ second.
To feel this, close one eye and lightly press the eyelid with the tip of your finger, and with the other eye try to slowly slide over the line of text.
Jumps become even more obvious if you slide not in letters, but simply in a straight horizontal line:
How do you feel?
2. Try to go back as little as possible through the text
A person who reads at an average pace quite often goes back to reread a missed moment. This can happen consciously or unconsciously. In the latter case, the subconscious itself returns its eyes to the place in the text where concentration was lost.
On average, conscious and unconscious returns take up to 30% of the time.
3. Improve concentration to increase coverage of words read in one stop
People with an average reading speed use a central focus rather than horizontal peripheral vision. Due to this, they perceive half as many words in one jump of vision.
4. Practice Skills Separately
The exercises are different and you don't have to try to combine them into one. For example, if you are practicing reading speed, don't worry about text comprehension.
You will progress through three stages in sequence: learning technique, applying technique to increase speed, and reading comprehension.
Rule of thumb: Practice your technique at three times your desired reading speed. For example, if your current reading speed is somewhere around 150 words per minute, and you want to read 300, you need to practice reading 900 words per minute.
Exercises
1. Determination of the initial reading speed
Now you have to count the number of words and lines in the book that you have chosen for training. We will calculate the approximate number of words, since calculating the exact value will be too dreary and time consuming.
First, we count how many words fit in five lines of text, divide this number by five and round it up. I counted 40 words in five lines: 40 : 5 = 8 - an average of eight words per line.
Next, we count the number of lines on five pages of the book and divide the resulting number by five.
I got 194 lines, I rounded up to 39 lines per page: 195 : 5 = 39.
And the last thing: we count how many words fit on the page. To do this, we multiply the average number of lines by the average number of words per line: 39× 8 = 312.
Now is the time to find out your reading speed. We set a timer for 1 minute and read the text, calmly and slowly, as you usually do.
How much did it turn out? I have a little more than a page - 328 words.
2. Orientation and speed
As I wrote above, returning through the text and stopping the gaze take a lot of time. But you can easily cut them down with a focus tracking tool. A pen, pencil or even your finger will serve as such a tool.
Technique (2 minutes)
Practice using a pen or pencil to maintain focus. Move the pencil smoothly under the line you are currently reading and concentrate on where the tip of the pencil is now.
Leading the lines with the tip of the pencil Set the pace with the tip of the pencil and follow it with your eyes, keeping up with stops and returns through the text.
And don't worry about understanding, it's a speed exercise.
Try to go through each line in 1 second and increase the speed with each page.
Do not stay on one line for more than 1 second under any circumstances, even if you do not understand what the text is about.
With this technique, I was able to read 936 words in 2 minutes, so 460 words per minute. Interestingly, when you follow with a pen or pencil, it seems that your vision is ahead of the pencil and you read faster. And when you try to remove it, immediately your vision seems to spread out over the page, as if the focus was released and it began to float all over the sheet.
Speed (3 minutes)
Repeat the tracker technique, but allow no more than half a second to read each line (read two lines of text in the time it takes to say "twenty-two").
You probably won't understand anything you read, but that doesn't matter. Now you are training your perceptual reflexes, and these exercises help you adapt to the system.
Do not slow down for 3 minutes. Concentrate on the tip of your pen and the technique for increasing speed.
In the 3 minutes of this frenetic race, I read five pages and 14 lines, averaging 586 words per minute. The hardest part of this exercise is not to slow down the speed of the pencil. It's a real block: you've been reading all your life to understand what you're reading, and it's not easy to let go of that.
Thoughts cling to the lines in an effort to return to understand what it is about, and the pencil also begins to slow down. It is also difficult to maintain concentration on such useless reading, the brain gives up, and thoughts fly away to hell, which is also reflected in the speed of the pencil.
3. Expanding the area of perception
When you concentrate your eyes on the center of the monitor, you still see its outer areas. So it is with the text: you concentrate on one word, and you see several words surrounding it.
Now, the more words you learn to see in this way with your peripheral vision, the faster you can read.
The expanded area of perception allows you to increase the speed of reading by 300%.
Beginners with a normal reading speed spend their peripheral vision on the fields, that is, they run their eyes through the letters of absolutely all the words of the text, from the first to the last. At the same time, peripheral vision is spent on empty fields, and a person loses from 25 to 50% of the time.
A boosted reader will not "read the fields". He will run his eyes over only a few words from the sentence, and see the rest with peripheral vision. In the illustration below, you see an approximate picture of the concentration of vision of an experienced reader: words in the center are read, and foggy ones are marked by peripheral vision.
Focus on central wordsHere is an example. Read this sentence:
The students once enjoyed reading for four hours straight.
If you start reading with the word "students" and end with "reading," you save time on reading as many as five words out of eight! And this reduces the time for reading this sentence by more than half.
Technique (1 minute)
Use a pencil to read as fast as possible: start with the first word of the line and end with the last. That is, no expansion of the area of perception yet - just repeat exercise No. 1, but spend no more than 1 second on each line. Under no circumstances should one line take more than 1 second.
Technique (1 minute)
Continue to pace the reading with a pen or pencil, but start reading from the second word of the line and end the line two words before the end.
Speed (3 minutes)
Start reading at the third word of the line and finish three words before the end, while moving your pencil at the speed of one line per half second (two lines in the time it takes to say "twenty-two" ).
If you don't understand anything you read, that's okay. Now you are training your reflexes of perception, and you should not worry about understanding. Concentrate on the exercise with all your might and don't let your mind drift away from an uninteresting activity.
