Ten Days to Faster Reading: Day 1

This morning I sat down for my first session with "10 Days to Faster Reading." I'm going to summarize just a little bit of what I read here:

It seems that the first day's reading, about seventeen pages, was mainly consumed by establishing your current reading level, giving you some sense of hope of being able to increase that reading level, and assigning some homework. (Sounds a lot like Mr. Newman's counseling models . . .)

Anyways, it appears that each day will include a new "pacer." Ms. Marks-Beale apparently likes to use race car analogies, as this chapter was titled "Puting [sic] the Key in the Ignition." I hope the whole book uses racing analogies. Maybe it'll speed up my reading.

Today's chapter also dealt with "working with a pro." We're going to learn a number of pacers, as I mentioned above, that will help us to read faster. Today's pacer is the use of a blank white card, what Ms. Marks-Beale calls "adding a stick shift to your reading."

I've used a white card before, and didn't find it very helpful. However, this book suggests using the white card but placing it above the line you are reading instead of below it. "Think about this: Why are you blocking where your eyes are going and leaving open where your eyes have been? This encourages an inefficient, or passive, habit called regression, or going back over the material you have already read." I'll try it later with some more reading.

Each day also includes a time trial and comprehension test. I got a 70% on the test, mostly because I looked at the questions and assumed it was all true/false. I didn't see that there was an N, or not discussed option, so I missed two. As far as reading speed, I'm average. (Yay!)

Hope to increase it soon, and I'll try to keep these coming each day.