Speed Reading Made Easy

By Nila Banton Smith

SPEED READING IS A GIFT THAT YOU CAN GIVE TO YOURSELF

You may know people who are able to read a newspaper in a few minutes, flip through yet thoroughly absorb a book in an hour, or effortlessly finish skimming a report before you even suspected they were done. Quite possibly you have thought that these people were born with a natural talent for speed reading that you do not possess.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Speed reading actually consists of a series of simple skills that can be mastered and applied by anyone willing to take the short time and minimal effort needed to master these so-called “secrets” and “tricks.” Now they are no longer either secret or tricky—but completely comprehensible and available in the finest speed reading guide on the market today—

SPEED READING MADE EASY

“Readable and persuasive.”—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“An excellent, self-improvement manual...by a specialist.”—Los Angeles Times

“Examples and self-applicable tests are provided every step of the way...Even the reader who thinks his speed and grasp adequate will benefit.”—Saturday Review Syndicate

“It is possible for anybody to read faster with increased pleasure and profit.”—San Francisco Call-Bulletin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Release date: Sep 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781789122527

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Text originally published in 1957 under the title Read Faster—And Get More From Your Reading.

© Muriwai Books 2018, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

SPEED READING MADE EASY

By

Nila Banton Smith, Ph.D.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 4

INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER 1 — TAKING INVENTORY 8

CHAPTER 2 — DISCOVERY 21

CHAPTER 3 — FASTER! FASTER! 36

CHAPTER 4 — HEEDING THE SIGNPOSTS 50

CHAPTER 5 — SHOP BEFORE YOU READ 64

CHAPTER 6 — SIGHT-SEEING AS YOU READ 82

CHAPTER 7 — MINING FOR DETAILS 100

CHAPTER 8 — RIDING ALONG WITH AN AUTHOR 134

CHAPTER 9 — THE KNACK OF SKIMMING 164

Answer Keys 206

Chapter One 206

Chapter Two 206

Chapter Three 206

Chapter Four 207

Chapter Five 208

Chapter Six 208

Chapter Seven 208

Chapter Eight 216

Chapter Nine 217

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 219

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following able instructors at The Reading Institute of New York University, who tested and successfully used the procedures described in this book in teaching adults to read better:

Harry L. Donahoe, Justin H. Miller, Harold H. Ferster, Donald S. Leeds, Irwin L. Joffe, Robert Chamberlain, Edward T. Clark, and James Devine.

Special acknowledgment is given to Justin H. Miller and James Devine for valuable assistance in helping to prepare testing questions which accompany several of the practice selections in the book.

INTRODUCTION

This book has one basic purpose—to help you read as well as you want to read. Regardless of your age or occupation or the kind of reading that you have to do, you can learn to read more rapidly and with better understanding.

But how?

There is a new art of reading. This new art has arisen in response to a deeply-felt need of people everywhere to read faster and better. In this book you will find explanations of the basic techniques in this new art of rapid, effective reading, together with selections to which you may apply these new techniques for practice. If you follow the instructions faithfully and practice their application conscientiously, you can achieve whatever goals in reading efficiency you may desire.

First Step in Reading Improvement

First, take an inventory of your present skills in reading.

When you begin any self-improvement course you should know where you are at the start and the progress you make as you go along. If you take a weight-reducing course, you weigh and measure at the beginning and at frequent intervals thereafter to find how much you are losing in pounds and girth. In a reading course you should measure frequently to find how much you are gaining in speed and comprehension.

Chapter 1 contains the instructions and materials you need to find out where you stand in regard to these reading skills at the beginning of your work in this book.

"Discovery"—What Is It?

The discovery discussed in Chapter 2 is that good readers read for ideas and take in several words at each glance, while poor readers read in short units, taking in only one, two, or three words at each pause of the eyes. So long as a person reads in this latter manner, he cannot pick up much speed. The larger thoughts are cut up into so many small units that it is hard to get the full meaning of a passage.

All of this is explained to you in Chapter 2, where you are given practice in stretching your own reading units. This chapter equips you with the foundation for all the speed work in the remainder of the book.

Do You Long to Read More Rapidly?

If speed is your chief objective you’ll get a lot of satisfaction in working with Chapter 3. It is in this chapter that you really take off!

The title of the chapter is Faster! Faster! This title tells you straight from the shoulder that you should abandon your present rate of reading and take on a new tempo.

But you aren’t simply given this instruction. You’re told how to put yourself in the right physical setting for fast reading, how to set up a purpose for faster reading, what to do mentally in starting your speed reading program.

Then you are given an opportunity to apply these instructions in the selections provided for rapid reading practice.

A special feature which appears for the first time in this chapter is Vocabulary Development. Increasing your vocabulary contributes to your speed and comprehension. So you will find vocabulary helps in this chapter, and in all the following chapters except the last two.

What Are Signposts in Reading?

There are words that tell you to keep on going straight ahead in your reading—that there will be more of the same thing. There are other words that warn you of a change in thought, that tell you to slow down, there’s a sharp turn ahead. It’s important for you to know how to use these word signals.

In Chapter 4 you will find out what these signposts are, and how to make the most of them in your reading.

What Is Meant by "Shopping Before You Read"?

You shop before you buy clothes, food, or a house. In other words, you take a preview. This same general technique applies to an article or book before you buy it, meaning before you read it.

In Chapter 5 you will learn how to Shop Before You Read. This is one of the most useful reading procedures you can acquire.

Sight-Seeing!

Everyone loves to sight-see. This is the basic reason why millions of dollars are spent every year in traveling.

Think of the last trip you took. What sights do you recall? No doubt a few outstanding ones. The lesser ones have faded.

In the chapter on Sight-Seeing As You Read you will learn how to find the outstanding thoughts quickly in printed material. You will learn how to "spot" the main idea in paragraphs.

When you have acquired this skill, you will be well on the road to becoming an expert reader.

Do You Grasp Details Readily?

Some of us have no trouble reading easy narrative material. Nowadays, however, most of us have to do much informative reading which is packed with numerous details. These can be confusing. We can’t give equal attention to all of them, and often we end up not grasping any of them. Do you have this experience when reading detailed factual or technical material?

There are special techniques for grasping details readily and reading difficult factual material faster than you have been accustomed to do. You will learn how to Mine for Details in Chapter 7.

Patterns of Writing

There are patterns in tool-making, patterns in dressmaking, and patterns in writing.

Every author has some purpose in mind when he starts to write. Different purposes require different patterns of writing. Certain techniques are helpful in reading certain patterns. If you learn how to recognize the most common of these different patterns, and how to deal with each pattern, you will increase your reading competency.

You will learn the most common patterns of writing, and how to read them, under the chapter title Riding Along with the Author.

What About Skimming?

Most people skim in a hit-or-miss fashion. This skill, however, has a potential for tremendous development. It is an art in itself and can be perfected to a high degree.

Skimming is based upon and makes use of all the other skills; consequently, it is the most complex of all. You’ll be ready, though, to rise to new horizons in your skimming techniques when you reach Chapter 9.

The Author’s Wish For You

You have had a glimpse of what this book holds for you. Now let me speed you on your reading way with good wishes. I trust that you may achieve whatever goals you have set for yourself in becoming an expert reader.

Happy journey in reading improvement!

NILA BANTON SMITH

CHAPTER 1 — TAKING INVENTORY

How Do You Rate Yourself?

What do you have to start with? That’s the first thing to find out. You’ve been adding to or, more likely, depleting your stock of reading skills for the past one, two, three, or more decades. Without specific checking you probably have a general idea that you’re a good reader, an average reader, or a poor reader.

Mr. H., a famous newspaper columnist, said to me when he came in: I think I am a very good reader. I’ve never had any trouble at all in reading. But if I could learn to cover double the amount of material in the time at my disposal, this would just be a matter of plain efficiency. Mind you, though, this isn’t because I’m a poor reader to start with. I’m an excellent reader already.

Miss G., a story reader at a moving-picture studio, said: I read about fifty pages an hour. Isn’t that pretty good?

John M., a high school student, reasoned this way: I understand that most colleges nowadays give a reading test as a part of their entrance exams. I’ll never pass that test unless I do something about my reading right now. I’m a miserable reader.

Sarah M., a college student, declared, I’m a grind. I have to study hours while others are having a good time. I’m a terribly slow reader.

Mr. M., a businessman, said, I never can wade through all the white stuff on my desk. I’m a fair reader but the amount of reading that I have to do overpowers me.

Professor R., a college teacher of English, told me with pride: I can read a novel in one sitting. That’s really pretty fast reading, isn’t it?

I never finish a novel, complained Mrs. B. I read too slowly to cover books, so I’ve given them up entirely. About all I can do is to follow the headlines in a newspaper. I must be the world’s worst reader.

And so it is that we grade ourselves. These impressions, however, are too general to be a basis for making any precise judgment in regard to reading competency. Maybe you, like the columnist, have never had any trouble in reading. Does that mean that you are an excellent reader as compared with highly-skilled adult readers who have learned the modern techniques of reading?

Even if you do read fifty pages an hour, how well do you get the thought out of what you read? As for the professor, was the book a thin volume with small pages printed in large type like Steinbeck’s Sweet Thursday? Or was it a huge, compact volume printed in relatively small type such as Not as a Stranger? And how long was the sitting? Two hours? Six hours? Twelve hours?

Obviously there are many fallacies in attempting to grade oneself in reading. If you wish to find out exactly how well you read and how much improvement you achieve as you go along, then you must make more careful measurements than general impressions.

Measuring Your Reading Growth

Measuring your own growth in reading is comparable to measuring your child’s physical growth. If you want to know how fast your child is growing, you periodically weigh him and measure his height. Then you make your comparisons in terms of exact units—pounds and inches. You must do the same sort of thing in evaluating your growth in reading.

Reading is not a lump sum, as so many people seem to think. It is a very complex mental process involving many different skills. A horse uses one set of muscles when pulling a heavy load uphill and an entirely different set when trying to hold back that load on his way downhill. So it is with reading. We use different sets of skills when we read different kinds of material for different purposes. You will have opportunities to practice several of these different sets of skills as you work through this book.

Regardless of how varied the skills may be, there are always two fundamental skills which are in operation. Growth in reading is judged in terms of progress in these two basic skills as commonly as physical growth is judged in terms of height and weight. And like height and weight these two skills should grow together simultaneously and in relation to each other.

One of these basic skills is speed. It is the rate with which you can cover printed material through reading. The basic unit used in measuring speed is the number of words per minute. The abbreviation W.P.M. is written after the number indicating a score, as 275 W.P.M. The other basic skill which easily lends itself to measurement is understanding of what is read. This is comprehension. The terms speed and comprehension have special meanings in a reading-instruction vocabulary. You may as well right now become accustomed to these terms as used in this book.

The writer was one day amused when a gentleman came in with this complaint: I want to talk with you about my wife. I’m very much worried. She’s having a dreadful time with her apprehension.

He might have been told not to seek improvement of his wife’s apprehension lest he have occasion to worry still more. But instead he was told to bring her in for a check-up of her speed and comprehension.

The average reader covers about 250 words per minute. Very good readers read 500 or 600 words per minute. Occasionally there is a person who reads at the phenomenal rate of 1,000 words per minute, or in rare instances even faster. However, ability to cover printed words rapidly is quite valueless unless the reader gathers meaning as his eyes travel over the lines of print.

Fortunately, these two basic skills, speed and comprehension, can be developed with guidance and practice. But they must increase together. Like height and weight in the growing child, comprehension must keep pace with speed in the reading growth of an adult. If you should increase your speed to 600 words per minute and drop your comprehension from 80 to 40 per cent, your speed would do you more harm than good. Therefore, in all the chapters in this book you will be asked to work on both speed and comprehension.

First you need to find out what your normal rate of speed is and also get some idea of how well you are comprehending. You can then use these first scores as a basis for comparison to see later on how much you have improved.

For checking purposes you are asked to read two selections. One is very easy, and you will read it simply for entertainment. The other is more difficult, and you will read it for the information it contains.

You’ll have to time yourself in taking both of these tests, so get out a watch with a second hand. Note the hour and the minute that you begin to read each of the selections and jot this data down in the space provided. This test is given to check your present speed and comprehension in reading easy, narrative material.

Reading for Entertainment

Don’t try to read fast for test purposes. Just read at your comfortable normal rate and for the purpose of enjoying the story.

Ready! Start!

Selection 1

BEGINNING TIME:————

HR.————MIN.————

THE GREAT MOLASSES FLOOD{1}

From early Colonial days on, ships loaded with wooden hogsheads of thick, dark molasses came regularly from the West Indies to unload at Boston’s wharves. Molasses took the place of sugar, which few colonists could afford, and it made Yankee rum. It was a keystone of Boston’s prosperity and trade for almost three centuries—until January 15, 1919.

I was a reporter on the Boston American on that fateful day. The stories coming in over the wire were predicting, rightly, that on the morrow Nebraska would become the 36th state to vote dry, thus bringing nationwide Prohibition upon this country (and rendering great quantities of molasses virtually useless). But even before the news could be printed, the biggest molasses storage tank in all Boston burst and sent an angry deluge of the stuff rampaging through the old North End, tearing down the elevated railway, demolishing buildings, drowning and crushing 21 persons and dozens of horses, wreaking property damage of more than a million dollars.

For years the tank, a bulging giant 50 feet tall and 282 feet in girth, had loomed above the freight-loading depots, stables, and firehouse on Commercial Street, near Boston’s inner harbor. Three days before, the pumps of tankers from Puerto Rico had filled it right up to the brim with 2,320,000 gallons—14,000 tons—of molasses.

At five minutes to noon on that mild winter morning, a telephone rang in the molasses plant’s office in the shadow of the tank. Superintendent William White picked up the receiver and heard his wife insist he join her uptown for lunch. White took a cursory look at the frowning tank, ignored the molasses sweating ominously through the riveted seams, and left—thus undoubtedly saving his life. But the busy market district was thronged with people destined to be less fortunate.

Along Commercial Street, new-fangled motor trucks and horse-team drays clattered on the cobblestones beneath the elevated railway. In the doorways of shops and brick dwellings across the street from the tank, residents were taking advantage of the warm weather to sun themselves. In stables of nearby draying companies, dozens of workhorses were placidly munching hay. Teamsters chatted over their lunch boxes on the freight-loading platforms. Mrs. Bridget Clougherty, 68, stood watching them from the doorway of her frame house at the corner of Copp’s Hill and Commercial. Her big son Martin, a well-known boxer and referee, lay in his third-floor bedroom, sleeping soundly. The time was 12:41.

At this moment Patrolman Frank McManus was making a routine duty call at a police-signal box down the street. Suddenly he heard a grinding, rumbling noise. Looking up, he saw a dark sea of liquid gush from the bottom of the tank. He saw the big tank open out and fall apart, and a towering wall of molasses roll over the ground with a seething, hissing sound. Going 35 miles an hour with a push of 25 tons, it enveloped the fire station; then buildings began to collapse. McManus yelled for all the ambulances and policemen available.

At the same moment, the brakeman of a northbound train coming around the curve on the elevated yanked his emergency cord. All I could see was molasses rushing toward me, the brakeman later said. The train stopped just as the elevated structure ahead sagged into the raging molasses below; the forward wheel trucks of the first car were lifted off the rails.

Mrs. Mary Musco, watching from the window of her house when the explosion came, saw the three-story Clougherty house rise from its foundations and fly into the air, then disappear beneath the El in a caldron of floundering horses, people, jagged timbers, splintered wagons, huge crates of goods and—molasses. I ran for help, Mrs. Musco said. It was awful. People were running every which way all covered with molasses.

To many people the breaking of the tank came with a tearing sound, like the ripping of a huge sheet of paper. To a Navy gunner on a ship in the harbor it was like a succession of reports from an impossibly-enormous machine gun. The tearing sound was caused by the initial giving-away of the tank at its base; the machine-gun reports were rivets bursting upward from the bottom, like buttons popping off a vest.

Then the very steel of the plates themselves sundered and burst outward. One 400-square-foot section of steel weighing two and one half tons was catapulted 182 feet into North End Park. Another murderous ribbon of half-inch steel plate swept across Commercial Street, sheared through a tree-trunk-size steel El column like a knife through butter. A few hours later, boxer Martin Clougherty, bandaged like a mummy, was able to tell reporters: I was asleep on the third floor, and I awoke in several feet of molasses. A little way from me I saw my sister. I struggled out from under the wreckage and pulled my sister onto a board. Then I began to look for my mother. But the roof had fallen on Mrs. Clougherty and crushed her.

Russel McLean, a commuter from Waverly, Mass., was on his way to North Station when the tank burst. The next thing he remembered he was lying in a doorway across the street with a young woman unconscious in his lap. All around me horses and men were struggling in the thick molasses. One man, running from the on-rushing molasses when it overtook him, landed sitting and was swept right out into the harbor. Crewmen of the Naval tug U.S.S. Pawnee picked him out of the water sticky and frightened, but unharmed.

We at the Boston American knew nothing of any of this at the time. I was on my way to lunch when a single alarm came in. Henry Daily, assistant city editor, called to me: Ralph, take a look at this fire. Probably nothing to it, but there are a lot of old firetraps down there.

I cut north to Commercial Street. At first there was no sign of trouble until, away up past Constitution Wharf, I saw it. What looked like a moving wall of volcanic lava filled the street and was moving relentlessly toward me. Everything it overtook—horses, automobiles, people—disappeared. I telephoned Henry. Where’s the fire? he said.

Wait! I yelled. This is no fire. I don’t know what it is. Shoot some cameramen and legmen down here fast. Listen—there seems to be an awful stink of molasses around here. Maybe molasses has something to do with it.

Molasses? Henry was outraged. When I got nearer I realized that this was the story of all stories....Sailors, firemen, and" policemen, wallowing thigh-deep in the wreckage, were coated from head to foot with molasses; it gave them a weird copper color.

The big old firehouse had been shoved off its "foundation and stood with its tower canted at a crazy angle. Inside several firemen were still trapped. It took nearly four hours before their comrades freed the last of them—and discovered George Layhe dead at the foot of the sliding pole, with the firehouse piano and pool table piled on top of him.

Even in the shallow places the molasses was dangerous. It was worse than quicksand. It held your feet. Well-meaning bystanders waded in to help floundering victims and couldn’t get out. Scores of persons trapped in the upper floors of buildings kept up a plea to be rescued. Fire lines were strung around the area, but the crowd pressed so hard against the ropes that some persons slipped into the goo. Ambulances manned by molasses-stained interns were continually carrying away victims.

One ambulance outfit of Red Cross girls arrived in Oxford-gray uniforms with shiny black puttees and pretty white shirtwaists. They were very beautiful and very earnest, and they plunged into the flood. When firemen dragged them out, swollen and tottering with the weight of molasses, they looked like loathsome creatures of the primordial slime.

By mid-afternoon the flood had settled. Hundreds of residents and curious spectators went slipping and slopping through the mess and tracked it all over the metropolitan district. The next day if you sat down in any public place or conveyance in the city of Boston, you stuck to the seat. Riders in streetcars and buses in Worcester, 44 miles away, found them smeared. There wasn’t a telephone booth in Boston where the instrument didn’t stick to your fingers.

Streams of water were played on the molasses to wash it into