Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-Day Speed Reading \& Learning Program pdfdrive com

Why Superior Reading and Study Skills Are So
Important
Most American students, even those with the greatest native intelligence,
perform well below their potential in school. Moreover, their below-par
showing continues after they graduate and enter the working world. Too
many do poorly in writing, reading and other occupational tasks that
require significant intellectual abilities.
In fact, more than 95 percent of college-bound high school seniors
lack the necessary reading skills to enable them to succeed in their
college, business, and professional lives, according to a recent U.S.
Department of Education study. Also, 50 percent of students who enter
college never graduate.
Why do so many students have so many academic problems?
Obviously, there are numerous complex socioeconomic factors that
play a role in our students’ poor performance. But not every such factor
demands profound societal or political action to produce beneficial
change.
One major cause of our problems is that our students have been
conditioned to expect that they must read and study at a slow, boring
speed. Yet moving along at a snail’s pace isn’t at all necessary, and it’s
almost always counter-productive.
In fact, to maintain a high level of interest and efficiency in study, it’s
absolutely essential to assimilate information faster. Otherwise, boredom
and lower levels of academic performance are almost inevitable.
Let’s see why this is so.
The average person (and that includes the average student) reads at a
rate of about 250 words per minute. Yet that same “average” person has
been estimated to think at an astounding rate of more than 50,000
words per minute!
If this is true—and certainly we all know that we think much, much
faster than we read—is it any wonder that many students get frustrated
and bored when they read? Their lightning-fast minds are ready to take
in incredible amounts of information. But their painfully slow reading
thwarts them and leads to mind-wandering.
On a number of occasions, I’ve heard highly accomplished friends and

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colleagues complain along these lines:
“If only I could read and absorb information as quickly as I can think.
But that’s impossible. If I could do that, I’d be superhuman!”
Perhaps this idea of learning at extremely high speeds isn’t quite so
farfetched or fanciful as you might think. Granted, it may not be possible
to read or learn at 50,000-plus words per minute. But how about 3,000?