Introduction to the Student



These Timed Readings are designed to help you become a faster and

better reader. As you progress through the book, you will find yourself

growing in reading speed and comprehension. You will be challenged to in-

crease your reading rate while maintaining a high level of comprehension.



Reading, like most things, improves with practice. If you practice im-

proving your reading speed, you will improve. As you will see, the rewards

of improved reading speed will be well worth your time and effort.



Why Read Faster?



The quick and simple answer is that faster readers are better readers. Does

this statement surprise you? You might think that fast readers would miss

something and their comprehension might suffer. This is not true, for two

reasons:



1. Faster readers comprehend faster. When you read faster, the writer's

message is coming to you faster and makes sense sooner. Ideas are inter-

connected. The writer's thoughts are all tied together, each one leading to

the next. The more quickly you can see how ideas are related to each

other, the more quickly you can comprehend the meaning of what you are

reading.



2. Faster readers concentrate better. Concentration is essential for com-

prehension. If your mind is wandering you can't understand what you are

reading. A lack of concentration causes you to re-read, sometimes over and

over, in order to comprehend. Faster readers concentrate better because

there's less time for distractions to interfere. Comprehension, in tum,

contributes to concentration. If you are concentrating and comprehending,

you will not become distracted.



Want to Read More?



Do you wish that you could read more? (or, at least, would you like to do

yout required reading in less time?) Faster reading will help.



The illustration on the next page shows the number of books someone

might read over a period of ten years. Let's see what faster .reading could

do for you. Look at the stack of books read by a slow reader and the stack

read by a good reader. (We show a speed of 350 words a minute for our

"good" reader, but many fast readers can more than double that speed.)

Let's say, however, that you are now reading at a rate of 150 words a

minute. The illustration shows you reading 36 books a year. By increasing

your reading speed to 250 words a minute, you could increase the number

of hooks to 60 a year.



We have arrived at these numbers by assuming that the readers in our

illustration read for one hour a day, six days a week, and that an average

book is about 72,000 words long. Many people do not read that much, but

they might if they could learn to read better and faster.



Faster reading doesn't take time, it saves time!