Reading Faster

[magicant]

From my various searches on threads concerning verbal, often I have read that it is helpful to read a lot of various materials (i.e. economist, washington post, etc.) as it can, among other things, increase the speed at which you read. My question is, does reading regularly and often increase your speed on its own, or is there some sort of technique that you must be consciously aware of and practice at when doing so? I googled this a few times, and often come across a method where you do not vocalize the words in your mind. I tried this (admittedly not for a long time) and I have found that to be exceedingly difficult. Does anyone have their own opinion on this matter? Also, as a small side note, does it matter what you read in order to prepare for verbal? i.e. I have some other novels I would like to get started on (1984, etc.), but am wondering if that is adequate in preparing me for the MCAT verbal section.

[garret9]

This is only my personal opinion:

It takes a long time to increase your reading speed to substantial gains and this would only end up giving you maybe an extra second per a question that you have to answer.

Reading stuff that doesn't intrest you is helpful because most of the stuff in VR might be boring and help you get used to reading garbage you're not interested in but still need to find the meaning.

The biggest gain you'll ever get in VR is from practicing old VR exams and then looking at each answer you got right/wrong, figure out why you got each question right/wrong and then look at the other answers and figure out why each individual answer is right or wrong.

EK is a good resource for more practice/strategies.

[nosuperman]

There are speed-reading techniques and courses but they wont work for the VR section. The skill to be gained from practice is not reading faster but reading better.

 

The average person (who reads more slowly than the average University student) can read fast enough to properly finish the VR section given he (/she) doesn't spend too much time mulling over answers and going back to re-read the passage multiple times.

 

I spoke to one of my profs about this (psych prof specializing in reading) and he said that most University students will be able to make only minimal gains in their reading speed without sacrificing comprehension.

 

In light of this, when you're preparing, don't worry too much about your speed, worry more about your accuracy and retention. When you're reading those articles don't have your attention on "I have to finish this sentence a little bit faster", have it on "Do understand the gist of the author's point? Am I aware of how they're supporting this point and whether their supporting arguments (or evidence, statements, etc.) are strong or weak?".

 

Though you may be able to shave a number of seconds off of your reading of a passage, if you do so at the expense of comprehension, you're going to lose more than that when you get to the questions. The alternate scenario is you read the passage in the same amount of time (or even more slowly) but by the end you totally understand it and you fly through a good chunk of the questions pausing on only a few to verify more subtle answers.

 

I don't think reading Orwell novels is going to help you at all. Perhaps some of his essays... but reading 1984 as prep for VR would be a waste of time. The reason being is that its not all that difficult of a read and it spells out the message (when there is one) pretty clearly. Plus its a story - much of it is dialog and descriptions of scenery and whatnot.

 

Another idea, if you're interested in Orwell, would be to read essays or short publications about his various works. These would take a stance on say, a character in Animal House, or technique used in 1984, and make claims about these aspects of the stories. I think this sort of thing would be substantially more helpful (though perhaps less entertaining) than reading the novels themselves.

[charmer08]

Don't say each word out in your mind (if you are doing that)! That's the trick that worked for me.