How To Improve Your Reading Skills


We can only imagine the vast panorama that opens before us, when we open the Pandora’s Box inside any book. Books exercise our mind and imagination and take us to places far and wide across the entire universe instantly. However, for us to be able to enjoy that, we have to start reading and to read more, once we begin reading.

It is a fact that the reading skills of children, teens and young adults are fast diminishing despite the teachers and parents trying their best to help them improve their reading skills, by using innovative methods.

To improve reading skills, novice readers can fruitfully try the following methods.

 

1)Begin with a read that appeals you the most- The best way to hone up reading skills is, to start reading articles or books which catches your interest the most. Explore and know your preferences and then search for good works on those topics. Few might love reading autobiographies and biographies, drama and literature; few others might go for fiction, maybe murder stories, suspense or spy thrillers and so on. Once you know your taste, it goes a long way to improve the reading skills.

2) Try to remain with the book till you finish it- When you start reading, start off with a resolve in your mind that you are reading to enjoy the book. If you are not an avid reader, chances are more that you might keep the book down and abandon reading without completing it. So try once to be with it till the end, trying to gauge the experience and satisfaction you derive out of it.  If you are not able to read a book till end, it means that it does not come under your reading areas. Don’t hesitate and experiment freely with books on different topics. If one book succeeds to keep you interested then it would certainly rev up your reading skills to a great extent.

3)Try to visualize the characters and imagine the ploy- The best way to keep up with the author’s writing is to let the story unfold before your eyes as you read page after page. This would improve visualization, imagination and comprehensive skills and would take you closer to the scene of action as viewed from the author’s perspective. It would also help you realize and understand the manner in which the author’s thought process has progressed while writing the story or the article. Once you experience the joy and satisfaction of a good read, you no more will have to struggle to improve your reading skills.

4)Try to appreciate the unique style employed by each author-Every author has a distinct style and way of his own while expressing his thoughts and ideas. Each has his own way of using words and phrases to describe situations. The individual approach each has towards the same event is myriad. The art of writing has immense scope and different authors tell their stories in different interesting ways. Once you start distinguishing and appreciating the style of presentation by each one of them, you’ll have a set of your favourite authors and writers.  After this your reading skills would be improved to quite a good extent and there will be no dearth of reading material for you.

5)Take a speed reading course- It might happen sometime that you pick up the latest novel by your favourite author and after going through a few initial pages you realise that it is not what will hold you. You get bogged down by the bulk of pages which you have to read to get to the end of it. In such situations, try speed reading. Speed reading is a skill which might help you in all walks of life as it teaches you to separate the grain from the chaff and pick up what is relevant, material and important. Speed-read makes an interesting exercise and experience for one who is interested in improving reading skills.

6) Improve your Reading Skills and improve your Information Retention Power-Improving reading skills might involve several more methods and steps. The foremost requirement, however, is to develop a keen urge to read books, articles, blogs, write-ups, etc. on varied topics.

One should not restrict his reading interest to only one kind of reading material.

Reading different material on different topics not only broadens your thoughts and improves your reading, it also dives you deep into the ocean of written material around you waiting to be explored.  Once you develop the knack for reading, you will find it hard to resist the temptation to read every printed matter which comes to your hands.

You will even start reading the topics, articles, magazines, books and novels which did not interest you earlier. Moreover, you as a reader will get hooked to reading when you’ll notice that your information retaining skills and comprehensive skills have improved drastically over the period of time since you started reading.

 

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One Response to “How To Improve Your Reading Skills”

  1. Allison says:

    Great article!!! I totally agree with your points. I used to be a slow reader and had trouble remembering what I read. I only recently discovered that it was not a memory problem but a comprehension problem that kept me from remembering what I was reading. I stumbled over a speed reading software trainer(Speed Reader-X) and thought it would help me. Then I found out the same company makes a program called UltraMind which helps you improve comprehension and memory. That is what I needed the most and I used it first. It really helped me improve my comprehension and understand what I was reading plus it explains many of the points in your article in much more detail with exercises. Your 5th point on speed reading is also good. I think I actually read better speed reading now that I learned how than I do slow reading. My friends tell me it is because I am slightly dyslexic is why this reading method works better. All I know is I can read without the frustration now. I definately encourage everyone to do something to improve their reading skills whether it is a comprehension course or a speed reading software course, it will help you for the rest of your life.

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