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Module 3.1 - Rapid Reading:  Self-Pacing Techniques

Learning Objectives: When you finish Mod 3.1 you should be able to answer the following questions:

Can I train my eyes to move more rapidly? 
How can using a self-pacing device help?
How do I begin to practice and utilize different self-pacing methods? 

Can I train my eyes to move more rapidly? 

When rapid reading is the most appropriate mode for the reading task at hand,  you must allow (or force) your eyes to move more rapidly over the printed material. Making a decision to move your eyes more rapidly is, however, rarely enough to break bad eye movement habits. If you are a word-by-word reader or a slow, passive reader, you have probably been practicing slow, inefficient eye movements for years, and you will need some help in breaking that routine.

You have already begun some practice with more rapid eye movements in the reading lab using computer applications such as Speed Reader and Reading Power Modules. You may have already noticed that you can achieve much higher rates (while maintaining adequate comprehension of 75% or higher, of course) on computer assisted reading than seems possible when reading from traditional text-based printed material. How does this happen? One contributing factor is that your eyes are capable of much more rapid, efficient movement than you generally practice; when the computer programs are setting the pace for you, your eyes are forced to move with maximum efficiency.

How can using a self-pacing device help ?

How can you transfer this efficiency to printed text reading? You need an aid, a moving object, that your eyes can follow, increasing in speed as the object is moved more rapidly. This moving object is called a pacer. In this module we will consider some pacing techniques that can help you focus your attention.  The eye is drawn to motion; self-pacing techniques put that motion on the page.

Many successful rapid readers consider their hand to be the ideal pacer. You can vary the speed of your hand at will, change the pattern of movement, and it is a free pacer that is always with you!

How do I begin to practice and utilize different self-pacing/hand-pacing methods? 

Gather your materials:

• Practice drill book - Choose one that has large print, familiar vocabulary, and a fairly simple plot line. Many students find easy, interesting fiction ideal. Your local public library is a great source; ask the librarian for help if necessary. You will probably not want to use you indie reading book for this practice. You will be focusing your attention and efforts on eye movements and speeding up your reading; comprehension, not to mention pleasure, may be considerably decreased at first.  
• Timer
• Paper, pencil

Remember your objectives:

• To learn to move your eyes more rapidly
• To teach your eyes to follow your hand-pacer

As always, before you start rapid reading, you should do a survey (preview) of the information first to activate schema, set your purpose, get a general idea of the material you will be covering, and become familiar with the author's style of writing and pattern of organization.

Your starting position is important. You should sit up straight, hold the book down with your left hand, and use your right hand to do the pacing. If you are left-handed, I probably don't have to remind you to reverse that and use your left hand as the pacer.

Now, open to the first page of the story in your drill book. Using your whole hand in a relaxed position, move your hand from left to right under each line as you try to read the line. Move your hand steadily without slowing down. Remember, your objective is to move your eyes along the print, trying to keep up with your hand. You may not be able  to actually read very much on your first few attempts at speeding up your eye movement, but the only way to become accustomed to moving faster is to keep trying until you can do it.

Check out this link for an illustration of Pacing Yourself.

Activity 3.1 - Pacing Drills

Pacing Drill #1:

Moving your hand from left to right under each line as described above, try to read the line faster than you have before. Maintain a steady pace and push your eyes and mind to keep up the pace. 

Set your timer and continue this drill for one minute.

When the minute is up, write down on your paper (your recall sheet) anything you can remember from the reading. Write in key words and phrases, not complete sentences. Write names, places, action, descriptions, etc. This will help you to improve comprehension, concentration, and retention.

Don't be discouraged if it felt awkward using your hand. Some students report being distracted at first and focusing more on the hand-pacer than the words. Keep trying. In time, hand pacing will begin to feel natural and comfortable and will become an automatic reaction whenever you need to focus your attention and speed up your reading.

Did you retain anything that you read? If so, you will want to try to move your eyes even faster next time. If you could remember nothing to record on your recall sheet, guess. Even though you think you are guessing, you did see the material so it will be an informed guess and may perhaps stimulate recall. Also, when you look back over the material you will be checking to see if you were right thereby strengthening concentration and retention.

Pacing Drill #2:

Use the same method and material for your second attempt. Start back at the beginning of the selection you read in drill #1, but this time try to go even faster and cover one-half page more material in the same time (1 minute). 

Begin.

When the minute is up - without looking back at your book - add whatever you can to your recall sheet. Again, guess if you must.

In your attempts to read faster than normal, don't fall back into any of your old, inefficient habits. No head wagging. Keep your head still and move only your eyes and your hand.

Pacing Drill #3:

This time add one modification to the left-right pacing you've been practicing. Start your hand and eyes one-half to one inch in from the beginning of the line and stop one-half to one inch before the end of the line. Look at this example: The Sweep. (The illustration is video, not just a photo. You may need to give the video a few seconds to load.)

This method works because when you look at a word, your eyes actually see all the area around it. Your peripheral vision will assure that you don't miss anything. In fact, the white space in margins often takes up as much as a third of the page. By keeping your eyes on the print and off the blank space you can increase your rate by one-third.

Since written English is often highly redundant, much of the material can be omitted without any loss of meaning; a large proportion of information in a text can be absorbed through peripheral vision. Words that are highly likely to occur in a given context do not have to be checked by looking directly at them - peripheral vision can check that they are what is expected even while the eye is fixating elsewhere. This pacing technique helps prepare you to read in this expanded way, reading not along each line, but from side to side of the center of the page, taking in most of a line in one glance, and also peripherally absorbing several further lines beneath it.

Making fuller use of peripheral vision, the skilled reader is able to get a better idea of the general sense of what is to follow, and this helps to speed up reading as well as to understand and integrate the material. This is why many students find that as soon as they become adept at speed reading, their comprehension actually increases. They have a broader perspective of what they are reading, and since they are reading faster, the short-term memory for what has just been read goes back several sentences further and the words currently being read are understood within a larger context.

Rate training and practice has two further advantages: It encourages you to see the key words in the text; and it brings the right hemisphere (which controls peripheral vision) into the reading process, increasing integration and thereby facilitating the right-brain's ability to synthesize relationships within the material.

In the case of a skilled reader, the fixation points tend to be concentrated towards the middle of a line of print. When the eye goes to a new line, it does not usually start at the beginning, instead it starts a word or two from the edge. The brain has a good idea of what is to come from the sense of the previous lines and only needs to check with peripheral vision that the first few words are as anticipated. Similarly, the eye usually makes its last fixation a word or two short of the end of a line, again making use of peripheral vision to check that the last few words are as expected.

Now go back and read the same material incorporating a pacing and fixating strategy similar to the one illustrated above. Remember all your goals, and try to add an additional one-half page. You will need to read faster than in drills 1 and 2, but the modification we have added and your increasing familiarity with the material will help.

Begin.

When the minute is up - without looking back at your book - add whatever you can to your recall sheet.

Feedback:

Write a paragraph at the bottom of your recall sheet reflecting on your attempts and success so far with self-pacing. 

How was your comprehension? Did you pick up the author's main idea, supporting details, and pattern of organization? (If you are using a novel for your drill book, the pattern was probably chronological or straight narrative.) If your recall was not so good, don't give up; success will come with time and practice. 

Were you distracted by having your hand on the page? Did you fall back into any bad reading habits? Were you able to relax and avoid head movements and regression?

Keep your recall sheet in your lab folder to receive credit for Activity 3.1. Continue practice drills using all the methods listed below. In later modules, you will add other pacing methods that are useful for scanning and skimming.

Use hand pacing for all of your reading, not just for practice drills. Be flexible, of course, the "fastest you can read" rates used for practice drills will not be appropriate for all reading, and you certainly don't want to take the joy out of pleasure reading by turning it into work.

Achieving the comprehension you want while reading at a highly accelerated rate takes a lot of practice. Don't expect this to happen overnight, and don't be frustrated and give up if your results of this first practice drill were less than stellar. Keep practicing and you will see the improvement you want.

 But if you consistently practice:

• You will become accustomed to having your hand on the page.
• You will find that you start to see more and more through peripheral vision, and as a result you will find that you are concentrating more and speeding-up your thinking.
• You will be transferring good reading habits to all your reading.
• Your reading rate will go up without loss of comprehension.

Here are illustrations of several different self-pacing techniques for you to try. You will eventually develop proficiency at each if you continue to practice. You will find that each has its own purpose so that you will want to again be flexible in choosing a specific pacing technique for a specific reading selection.

• The Hand - This is the technique described above that you used in the pacing drills.
• The Card - This one is particularly useful if you have a tendency to regress. The card will help focus your concentration and keep your eyes moving in the right direction.  Be patient and allow this page and the ones following to load completely; the student in the photo will move to demonstrate the method.
• The Sweep  
• The Hop
• The Zigzag

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Proceed to Module 3.2

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