Improving Reading Comprehension...

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could quickly and efficiently understand and retain the information that is contained in the books that you need to read? I have good news. Brain-based learning provides a solution that can enable you to accomplish this and much, much more. Even better, I will share this strategy with you in this article.

Ever look at a puzzle? What do you see? When it is completely put together it consists of lots of little pieces. Pieces that fit together and create a meaningful image. Well, in many respects a book is like a puzzle. Texts also have lots of little pieces. Pieces that fit together to make information meaningful.

Where are the pieces contained within a book? You have the chapters, sections, and sub-sections. Each of these objects acts a lot like a filing system. They chunk down information into pieces that contain related information. Fortunately, this system of organizing information into chunks can also provide you with a proven solution for improving your reading comprehension.

In a very real sense your goal is to take the puzzle piece provided by the author of your book, and place it into a spot in your brain. How can you do this? The secret to learning faster involves a way of viewing information that is in common use in the business community. It is called the 50,000 foot view.

The 50,000 foot view simply means to get the big picture first. There is another way to look at this. Imagine you are looking at the forest without thinking about any of the individual trees. This same approach will help improve your reading comprehension dramatically.

How do you get the 50,000 foot view while reading? You accomplish this by skimming the material before you read. Skimming gives you the overview of the entire text. It enables you to see how all of the pieces fit together, and makes it easier for you to find the pieces that fit into your own map of the subject. In my next article I will describe a simple way to learn how to skim text.

Wayne Mansfield
PowerRead - Speed Reading for Business