Basics of speed reading

When kids learn to read, the basics of speed reading

The way you learned to read as a child has a definite impact on your speed reading skills as you grow older. Consider the following factors:Most children learn to word-by-word, and many are tested by reading a single word, or a few words, aloud to a teacher.This learning technique (not speed read) reinforces the idea that one must hear the word in her head, and consciously speak it, in order to understand. 
As we grow older, we adjust to reading books and magazines and some of us make the leap relatively well. 
We learn to read in sentences or phrases, rather than word-by-word.  But, not everyone adjusts! 
Some of us remain stuck in the word-by-word mire and for those unhappy souls, reading is not fun. Speed and increased Reading is something that changes this.Compounding the method by which children learn to read, is the competition reading now faces from other, more active, stimulating activities like video games. Kids are not speed or fast reading, but learning how to slow read, the need for speed and increased reading comes later in life.Compared to this constant stimulation, reading may seem tame, especially if a child’s imagination is not sparked by the words on the page. It isn’t that books are not interesting, it is that a child is not taught to read in a way that allows his brain the freedom that Evelyn Woods described. 

The stress of learning and reading a word in front of an entire class was something none of us wanted to repeat, because we were afraid to make a mistake.  We were afraid our classmates might laugh at us or that we would be wrong and the teacher would be displeased.  So, it is understandable that many of us have a psychological barrier to reading.We learn to read before our language and verbal skills are completely developed, and you can see why most of us struggled to embrace reading as a pleasurable activity. Because our brains were still developing as we learned this new skill, the habits were engrained in our minds at a very impressionable time and they are therefore harder to shake.  In studies, where children learned to read in a more experiential and dynamic way, the results were impressive.  While it may take a bit longer for the child to absorb the methods, the visual connection to language certainly seems to put these children a step ahead of their peers.  Think about our goal to read and absorb information more efficiently and quickly, and then consider the U.S. Department of Education studies on American third grade students. 

Consider these findings: When the average third grade student is assigned to read 100 words on a printed page, he or she stops over one hundred and seventy times before they complete the assignment. When college students are assigned 100 words, the average student will stop over seventy times before completing the assignment.