The Speed Reading Book

date May 20, 2007
authors Tony Buzan
reading time 2 mins
  • Book Title: The Speed Reading Book
  • Author: Tony Buzan
  • Year written/published: 1971
  • My Comment: was really frustrated… i wanted to read loads of books and it was taking me soooo much time!! My reading speed at the start of this book was 248 wpm. And Sean Adam has a world record of 3850 wpm!!!!!!! And president Kennedy famously had a reading speed of 1000 wpm :P Speed reading doesn’t only train people to read fast but also to comprehend and understand the passage better. A lot of emphasis was also placed in the vocabulary by learning the main prefix, suffix and roots of many words. This is truly a great book…. hope it’ll be the book which will make me read many other great books!

Contents page:

  1. Exploring your Speeds
  2. Your Amazing Eyes
  3. Super-Concentration and Comprehension
  4. Becoming a master reader: Advanced use of your Eye/Brain Systems

History of Speed reading: >

Pilots were unable to distinguish planes seen at a distant. … To their surprise they found that with training, the average person was able to distinguish almost specklike representations of different planes when the images had been flashed on the screen for only one five hundredth of a second.

Reading - the new definition

  1. Recognition
  2. Assimilation
  3. Intra-Integration
  4. Extra-Integration
  5. Retention
  6. Recall
  7. Communication

Some famous speed readers:

  1. John Stuart Mill
  2. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
  3. President Kennedy
  4. Sean Adam

using peripheral vision for speed reading:

… … while your clear focus is reading the one, thw and three lines on which you are concentrating, your ‘brain reader’ is using its peripheral vision to review that you have already read and preview the text to come. … … .An added advantage of this ‘soft-focus’ approach is that your eyes have to do far less tight muscular fixating. They therefore become far less tired and you feel able to go on reading for longer periods of time.

On using a thin long object as a guide to reading…

… … common knowledge that speed readers read ‘down the middle of the page’ … …. This is because the eyes can see up to 5/6 words at a time so they can easily fixate after the beginning and before the end of line, thus taking the information to the side. The guide therefore minimizes the amount of work the eyes have to do, keeps the brain focused, and gives you constant and gives you constant accelerations in reading speed while maintaining high comprehension.

Reading Problems that slows us down…

  1. sub-vocalisation
  2. finger-pointing
  3. regression and back-skipping