Speed Reading Class One

      Tuesday May 1st I met with Dean Ulsenheimer, a power reading instructor, to learn about his program and when we could meet to learn the techniques of power reading. The program is only three classes, two hours each class. He expected some lessons to be shorter because there is just Mrs. Davis, Nick Crisalli, and me instead of the twenty to thirty students he has had in the past. Mr. Ulsenheimer has been teaching for the last twenty-nine years and has condensed those years into just six hours. He narrowed what he taught to a very specific set of techniques that he says works every time. This from a college student, for years plagued with dyslexia: "It's been great to finally read something and understand it the first time." Visit his website to find more information about his endorsements, average results, benefits, and how to contact him. 
      
      The next day, Wednesday May 2nd, we had our first lesson. We started off with a timed reading and comprehension test to get our base level words per minute and comprehension score. He had his stopwatch out and gave us our time when we finished. I started off with a time of 3:50 in a reading of 1180 words. My words per minute was 308 and my comprehension score was 6 out of 10. Once we each got our basic reading speed and comprehension level we started going over how to improve. He noticed that some of us were mouthing the words as we read. It's called sub-vocalization, and most of us do it without thinking. When you read each word one by one, you might as well be reading out loud. 
      Then, we started going over eye movements across a page. We have peripheral vision so we should use and expand it while reading instead of focusing on every word in a sentence. Mr. Ulsenheimer wanted us to practice going through sentences by only looking at three points on a line then just two points on a line as quickly as we can. In addition to just looking at a couple points, we have to read in word clusters, four, five words at a time. We already know what each word means so we don't need to really spend time looking at each word. We practiced reading a couple short paragraphs with this technique to get a feel for it.
      Next, we briefly went over surveying. Mr. Ulsenheimer wants us to survey anything over three pages in length, especially textbooks and other books with pictures and graphs. Surveying is used to get the general idea of a book to decide whether it will be worth your time reading it. The goal is to scan the entire book in only about four to five minutes. The basic sections to pay attention to are the author, details about the author, copyright date, table of contents, tables, charts, graphs, pictures, and appendices. If you make it through all of that then try looking at the first few sentences of the opening paragraphs of several chapters. 
      Finally, Mr. Ulsenheimer taught us the importance of using your hand as a guide through the article or passage. There is no specific way to use your hand, as long as it guides you through the paper. Everyone has his or her own style. Using our hand, we were tested again on another passage later in the booklet that we each received. He took out his stopwatch and on his command we started. This passage was 1410 words and I got through it in 2:20. My wpm was 604. My comprehension, however, was considerably worse with only a 3 out of 10. I felt I was concentrating too much on using correct technique, and I wasn't picking up as much of the article as I should have. Mr. Ulsenheimer expected that and said we would get used to using our hand with more practice.
      To end the day, we did a hi-lighting exercise. At the end of the booklet was one more article with 1611 words. All Mr. Ulsenheimer wanted us to do was hi-light every statistic. This was not a coloring exercise. We just had to quickly knick every statistic. For example: "8 years" or "eight years." I managed to mark 45 of the 51 statistics in 805 wpm.