He went through the entire paper in under ten minutes, graded it and
handed it back to her as she sat watching in total amazement.
Furthermore, he had really
read
the material. She found in their
ensuing conversation that he was completely familiar with the content,
the arguments and the flaws in her work.
How fast had Dr. Lees read the paper? By Evelyn’s calculations, he had
moved through it at about 2,500 words per minute.
Evelyn now had living proof that the printed word could be read at
high speeds, well beyond the generally assumed 1,000 words per
minute. But how did Dr. Lees do it? She couldn’t figure out his
technique, if he had one, even after
observing him closely and
questioning him.
As she delved further into this subject, however, she became even
more convinced that this extraordinary reading rate could be learned
and taught. She discovered accounts of Teddy Roosevelt, for example,
who was said to read up to three books a day during his presidency. The
nineteenth-century British utilitarian philosopher
John Stuart Mill was
reported to have been able to read as fast as he could turn the pages of a
book.
According to one report, Mill had begun reading extensively as a
preschooler. Through his formative years, his father, a college professor,
would give him a book and tell him to go into another room for a short
time and read it. Mr. Mill would then call John back to discuss what he
had read.
Obviously, there was tremendous pressure on young John to
concentrate and move quickly through the assigned material. By this
“on-the-job training,” he soon developed into a highly skilled, extremely
fast reader.
But even after investigating these and other reputed speed readers,
Evelyn still couldn’t come up with a technique that could be taught to
slow readers. Was high-speed reading and learning an unteachable skill
that only a few naturally adept individuals could master?
Next, Evelyn Wood launched a search for the fastest readers alive. She
eventually found fifty-three people who could read from 1,500 to 6,000
words per minute. But even after interviewing them and observing them
closely, she couldn’t identify a common technique.
To be sure,
all their eyes moved quickly, and they traveled in one
dominant direction, vertically down the page. But
how
did they do it?
she asked, increasingly frustrated.
One fall day in 1958 she sat by the side of a brook reading
Green
Mansions,
by W. H. Hudson. She was reading fairly quickly, but at
nothing near the speeds of the best readers she had observed and read
about.
Finally, in utter frustration, she threw the book across the water and
just sat there, thoroughly annoyed and stymied.
A short time later,
realizing that this mood wasn’t getting her anywhere, she waded
through the water, retrieved the book and headed back toward the cabin
where she was spending her holiday.
That evening, she picked up
Green Mansions
again and was able to
enter the mood of the story more easily.
Some dirt remained on the
pages from the rough treatment she had given the volume earlier, and as
she read she started brushing the dirt away with the side of her hand.
Suddenly, she was moving through the pages at high speed, as her
eyes followed her hand’s natural, relaxed brushing movements. Before
she knew it, she had read more than 50,000 words in less than ten
minutes—or a rate of nearly 5,000 words per minute!
From this experience was born the basic Evelyn Wood method of
reading at high speeds by using the hand as a pacer. Over the next two
years, Evelyn fine-tuned her technique in a
speech and reading course
she taught at the University of Utah. In 1959 she established the first
Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics Institute in Washington, D.C., and the
rest is history.
Obviously, what I call Mental Soaring has been around for a long time.
Also, small numbers of people in recent generations have discovered the
high-speed approach on their own. But it was only in 1959 that the
techniques became available to the public through the Wood courses,
and now, we’re taking the next step: bringing all the specifics of that
program to you through this book.
STOP READING NOW and look at your watch. Record the precise time.
Then, using the method described on
this page
, calculate your reading
speed. Assume that you’ve read 2,450 words.
My guess would be that you’ve
improved your reading speed
significantly. In any case, keep reading and learning, and your pace will
continue to quicken.
In this chapter, you’ve begun to get off the ground in your reading.
You’re in the air and probably moving at faster speeds than you ever
dreamed possible. But another barrier, the 900-word-per-minute limit,
remains to be broken. Let’s get started on that goal next.
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