Reading with your hand

One way to help improve the speed at which you read is to use your hand. Use your three middle fingers to underline the words on the page. If you get into a quick pattern of moving your hand, your eyes are forced to follow the speed, and it helps keep your attention to the page, since you cannot stop and fall behind your hand.



The red shows how your hand moves across the page. In the normal underlining, your hand simply moves under all of the words (left to right) in a quick motion. The other two are for reading a page more quickly (between 4 and 15 seconds per page). They allow you to use your peripheral vision to see more words and take in the main ideas instead of reading everything.

The Evelyn Wood book suggests studying by doing the following steps.
1. Overview (1 sec per page, subtitles, headings).
2. Preview (4 sec per page, draft an outline in mind)
3. Read (usually faster than normal speed)
4. Postview (around 3-4 sec per page, do it after finishing a chapter)
5. Review (go over recall patterns and notes approximately once per week)

The idea is that rather than reading the material slowly once. You read it quickly (at different speeds) four times. It should take less time than reading it once, and you should comprehend more.