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By Gregory Mitchell - Copyright © 2003
9. 3 Remedial Reading Techniques
If a person cannot read at his or her thinking speed, i.e. their speed of inner speech, this could be considered a form of dyslexia. As a rule of thumb, typically a person with an IQ of 100 thinks at 300 w.p.m. (words per minute) and a person with an IQ of 150 thinks at 600 w.p.m.. Most students are likely to be within this range, the median being 400 w.p.m., plus/minus 15%, but some will have difficulty reading as fast as their IQ would indicate. The following remedial exercises are designed to help students who have this problem, which should be suspected if inner speech is below 300 w.p.m..
Exercise 1
Some forms of dyslexia arise because for the individual, the contrast between the whiteness of the page and the blackness of the print is too great. Often this problem can be detected because the person can read 20-50% faster if he or she reads a page through a sheet of transparent colored celluloid. The color is a matter of taste - one person may find red is better, another green, and so on. Once a suitable color has been tested and selected, a good solution is to buy a pair of sunglasses in that color. Alternatively, most opticians will be willing to make lenses in a prescribed color. Note: proper reading glasses should be obtained for this purpose; bifocals do not provide a large enough visual field.
Once kitted up with glasses of the appropriate color, the individual should spend 15 minutes per day reading with the colored glasses and 15 minutes with ordinary glasses or no glasses. Gradually the ability obtained with colored glasses should transfer to the normal reading experience.
Exercise 2
Some people are dyslexic because they have maladjusted eye scanning patterns, as well as the problem described above. According to Marshall Macluhan in his book, "The Medium is the Message," preliterate people have a circular form of scanning, whereas in contrast, literate cultures have a linear form of scanning. Evidence is found in the different types of architecture. A dyslexic person may fall somewhere between the extremes of these forms of scansion and not be well adapted for reading. This remedial exercise has several steps:
The person (with or without colored glasses) should choose a book, then read for one minute and note the number of words read. This will establish their reading speed.
The book should then be rotated 90 in a clockwise direction. The person reads the book for 3 minutes "Chinese style," that is, from top to bottom starting on the left of the page, which is now at the top.
The book should be rotated a further 90 in a clockwise direction: in short, upside down. The person should read for 3 minutes, then note the reading speed.
The book should be rotated another 90 in a clockwise direction. Then the person should read for 3 minutes, then note the reading speed.
Finally, the book should be rotated 90 to make it upright again. The person should read for 3 minutes, then note the reading speed.
The above exercise should be done once per day for a period of 3-6 weeks.
Exercise 3
The person should hold a book in front of a mirror, in such a way that he or she perceives a mirror image of the page, then they should read this reflected image for 5 minutes. At the end of the exercise, the reading speed attained should be noted. This exercise should be done twice a day for 3-6 weeks.
The combined effect of the exercises is to cause a person to unlearn the maladaptive scanning patterns, so good patterns of scanning (as taught in this course and reminded below) can be adopted.
A good reader tends to look ahead as they read, to what is coming next, to the right of the page and below. A bad reader doesn't look ahead, he looks behind at what has already been read, toward the left of the page and above. To practice better reading, it helps to read out loud (to ensure the momentum keeps going forward) and at the same time to scan ahead with the eye's peripheral vision.
Note: exercises 1, 2 and 3 may be creatively combined: 1 & 2; 2 & 3; 1, 2 & 3; and so on. After a few weeks the person's reading speed should reach or slightly go beyond their thinking speed. Once this has occurred, the reader can continue with the range of exercises offered in this course and with sufficient application, surpass their present thinking speed by a significant degree.
P.S. If you don't use it you will lose it, so do some reading every day until you pass away!
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Copyright © 2004 Gregory Mitchell - Published by Trans4mind
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