Instant NLP help for slow reading
The student said:
“I’m a freshman in college and I often struggle with slow reading. I started reading when I was 4 years old and have always loved it. I started getting more influenced by the speed I was reading when I was in 4th grade. I read very slowly, but I understood everything I read. In middle school, I started to understand how my brain processed things. I am very good at remembering things because I picture them in my mind. Colors and shapes come to mind for every word, date or number I encounter. Then when I remember the thing, it’s a color sequence, not an actual word. This, I realized, was the reason for my slow reading. I had to read each word and turn it into a color/shape. I’m in college now and my professors don’t have much sympathy for slow readers. I struggle a lot because the only way I remember things is by visualizing them, converting and processing the information, but by the time I do this, I’m way behind. I want to know if there is something wrong with me or if this is just how I study best. Is there anything I can do to convert things faster or somehow make the synapses more efficient?”
And I advised her:
What you can do to convert things faster? You must use your visualization to see the words as pictures = words instead colors or shapes [which will, no wonder, slow you down!].
Start by seeing shapes as usual. This is what you know and are good at.
Now start learning to see the shapes of words = how they look when written.
To do this, you need to observe a lot and carefully. Observe how the letters and then the words look. Start with simple 3-letter words like cat, dog, fox, bed, pen, etc. Write each word on a separate blank sheet of A4, place it in front of your face at or slightly above your eye level and look at a written word for 15 seconds. Then close your eyes. Do you see the word? Or has it faded quickly? Or do you see something else? If you see the word, how do you see it? Are the letters large enough that you can see them comfortably, but not so large that you can’t see the whole word? Are they on a contrasting color background? Are they uppercase or lowercase? And if you try to see the letters in the other register, will it be less or more convenient? Experiment with this.
Can you spell the word forwards and backwards while you see it? If you can, you definitely see the word, which is important!
Is there actually something wrong with you? yes You have developed the wrong habit of visualizing to see the words. To see the words, you must see words. Seeing shapes or colors is the wrong tool for the job. That’s the only thing wrong with you. Absolutely nothing else. And you i can change the way your brain works! Being present in the moment and really conscientiously working with yourself is the only way forward. Once you start seeing words like words instead of like colors or shapes, your reading speed will quickly improve! Fast readers recognize whole words as blocks in the back of their brains, not letter by letter. Slow readers read slowly because if they see letters at all, they look at them letter by letter. You need to see whole words, and once you get good at it with practice, your brain will automatically send them to the back of your mind.
Yours it’s a fantastic memory another superb asset you can use here. A photographic memory is the best kind of memory a person can have – especially for sight words! So when you write a word on a blank sheet of A4, bring it up to your eye level, look at it, make a picture of that word in your imagination. Learn to see the word as if it were a picture in your head. When you see the word as a picture, you see it as the block I mentioned above.
Practice. All these exercises here should only be done initially until seeing the words as blocks becomes automatic for you. Once it does, you’ll be reading so fast anyway that you won’t have time for all of that. This will put you on the right track – you will teach the brain a new way of thinking.
And remember these tips:
Always hold any page you read in front of your face at or slightly above eye level. There is your field of vision. Never hold your reading material on your lap so that you have to look down to read it! Never! Because you’ll be in your feelings, which is the wrong tool for visual work like reading!
Whenever you read, sit with both feet planted firmly on the ground. This will give you a foundation and an added sense of calm, safety and security.
When reading, be careful not to subvocalize, ie. not to say the words in your mind. It would also slow you down. If you don’t, great. If you do, gradually learn not to.
#Instant #NLP #slow #reading
