Last Wednesday, May 9th, I met with Dean Ulsenheimer for the second time, but this time it was a one on one lesson. Although, I didn't have any competition, Mr. Ulsenheimer was able to motivate me to read much faster than the previous lesson. We began with another eye focus chart exercise so he could see my eye movements across a page. In the first lesson, I had some trouble moving my eyes from each black box to the next, but this time I had no problems. Right after warming up my eyes, we started our first article, "Suicide Mission." It was 2,860 words and I got through them in 4:20 which is a words per minute of 660. That was more than double my beginning speed. Then, I took the comprehension quiz of ten questions and I got all but one. 9/10. Three points higher and 352 wpm faster than my first class.
Next, we moved on to single column reading. The first example was no problem, only one or two words on each line. The goal was to keep my hand moving smoothly down each column without stopping. The first article was a tough one. It started out with only a couple words on each line but as the story progressed, the number of words increased to three or four words with multiple syllables in each word. It was only 750 words but it was tough to get used to the single columns. At the end of this reading there were twenty questions. Mr. Ulsenheimer said that under these conditions a ten out of twenty was pretty good, about 70%. I managed to just get over that goal with a twelve out of twenty. Although I felt like I was reading slower, I actually read 750 wpm.
We then moved on to a hi-lighting exercise to take a break form the single column reading. The title of the article was "Magnetism in Electricity for Technicians." I had to hi-light every word that used "magnet." For example: magnets, magnetism, magnetic, unmagnetized. He told me I had to find 107 of these words as fast as I could. In 709 wpm I hi-lighted 106 of the words. I missed one in the first paragraph.
Before going to back to more single column reading, I tried to free read one of the fiction novels he gave me. On each page we figured out there was about 310 words. I had to read through this as fast as I could while still trying to pick up on main ideas. I started off at a fast speed, but still going through every line. Then as I got an idea of the characters I sped up, focusing mainly on the first sentences of the paragraphs to get the idea of what was going on in the story. Mr. Ulsenheimer just wanted me to get through each page as quickly as I could practicing the techniques. At this point, it was more skimming than reading for me, and at the end of five minutes we counted the pages. There were 17.5 pages so I read at 1,085 words per minute.
Finally we went back to the other single column readings. The first one I read at 857 wpm and answered 6 out of 10 questions correctly. Maybe 7 out of 10 because I think my last fill in the black was still correct even though it wasn't what he was looking for. The second reading was much more difficult with four or five words per line, but I still got through it with 667 wpm and six out of ten questions correct.
To prepare for week three, I have reread the single column articles many time to practice maintaining a single focus on each line as I move down the page, and I have practiced with other single column articles that I found in the News Herald and The New York Times. I also practiced with varied material to see how my reading rates compared. In text books my reading rate was noticeably slower than in newspapers and magazines. I tend to read much faster through non-fiction books than fictions books as well. I read Moonwalking With Einstein by Joshua Foer that Mr. Daly let me borrow in just two days. It took about three hours and forty five minutes total to read 271 pages. I started off at my regular speed of 307 wpm then from there my rates ranged from 361wpm to 556 wpm. And just for about three minutes I read near 900 wpm, 897 wpm. Tomorrow is my next lesson and my last lesson.
No comments:
Post a Comment