Wanna Be a Speed Reader? Yes, You Can! 速读是怎样炼成的

2017-11-10ByThomasFrank

疯狂英语·新悦读 2017年11期

关键词：征稿启事刊号要点

⊙By Thomas Frank

⊙By Thomas Frank

听力指南针

● 在这个英语学习节目中，主持人针对英语速读提出了五个高效方法，同时谈到了不少学习者在阅读方面的思想误区，大家不妨认真听听，看看自己是否也有类似的问题？有则改之，无则加勉哦。

● 这个节目用语简单，没有太多生词难词，句式也不算复杂，最大的难点在于主持人语速偏快。同学们可

以按以下步骤进行训练：

1. 不看文字，先听一遍全文，让耳朵和大脑有所准备；

2. 听第二遍，边听边记要点，尤其注意“the first”“the final”这样的提示词；3. 对照笔记再听一遍，将你觉得需要重视的细节补充完整；

4. 对照笔记看文字，看看自己抓住了哪几点，漏掉了哪几点；

5. 对照文字听一遍，现在，你跟得上主持人的语速了吗？

Are there ways you can legitimately[正当地]increase your reading speeds? Well, I believe that there are, and in this video I wanna give you five different methods that you can use to actually read faster.

Reading Takes Time and Practice to Get Good At多花时间，多加练习，阅读方可熟能生巧

The first method is deceptively[骗人地]simple and, well,maybe a little bit inconvenient. It’s to simply read often, read widely, and read challenging material.

I emailed a post-doctorate[博士后]researcher at the University of San Diego named Elizabeth Schotter, who’s done a lot of research on speed reading. And I asked her,“What are the skills that help people learn to read faster?”

And she told me, “For skilled readers who are still reading between that 200 and 400 words per minute range, they’re people who have a lot of experience reading, who have a lot of command over their language and vocabulary, and who have a lot of prior[在先的]background knowledge they can use to apply to whatever it is they’re reading quickly.”

This indicates what you probably already know. Reading is a skill, and like any other skill that’s worth the time to take to build, reading does take time and practice to get good at.

要点归纳：阅读是一个积累的过程，快速阅读亦然。我们读书应该常态化，涉猎面尽可能地广，而且要多接触那些有挑战性的内容。广而泛的长期阅读对你的语言能力、词汇量，以及背景知识储备有很大帮助——而这几点正是提高阅读速度的基础。

How to Reduce Boredom and Daydreaming赶走无聊与走神

Now this next method will help you if you have the same problem with reading that I have. When I’m trying to read non-fiction, I really wanna know what’s in the book, but I’ll often find myself getting bored or, more commonly, I’ll read one sentence that will send me down a mental rabbit hole of sorts, and then I’ll find myself daydreaming.

So, to reduce the instances of boredom and daydreaming when you’re reading, I have two different ideas for you.And the first one is to form what I call an “interest link.” The general idea is to try to connect the thing you’re reading with something that you already have a lot of interest in.

Another idea is to do a little bit of experimenting to find your optimal[最理想的]spot for reading. For example, this arm chair is not a good spot for me to read. Whenever I read here,I find myself daydreaming all the time, and that’s why I tend to do a lot of my reading outside instead.

要点归纳：要提高阅读速度，怎能避开“专注”二字？但是在阅读没那么引人入胜的文章时，我们往往容易分心走神。这里分享两个秘籍：一是将看到的内容和你的兴趣结合起来，调动自己的积极性；二是营造适合阅读的氛围与环境，找到最自然舒服的地方，静下心来，好好看书。

Pre-Reading Can Help预读的妙处

OK, so, third method. And this applies mainly to textbook reading or readings where you already know the specific type of information you wanna pull out of it—or at least have a general idea. And it is to “pre-read” before you start actually reading. And, by pre-reading, I mean going through the chapter headings, the table of contents, looking at bold[粗体]and formatted[带格式的]text throughout the chapter, and going to the end of chapter and looking at the vocabulary terms and the review questions.

By doing these things beforehand, you’re essentially priming[做准备]your brain to notice the most important information when you’re reading, and that will let you do the next method: skimming.

要点归纳：在看课文或者类似的参考书时，我们可以采用预读的方式——先将章节标题、目录浏览一遍，然后注意看加粗或者有特殊格式的文字，最后跳到文章末尾，留意单词注释与课后问题。这种方式能让你的大脑迅速接收文章最重要的信息，提前做好准备。

Psuedo-Skimming Is My Favorite我最喜欢的“伪略读”

Even though we’ve established[确定]that skimming is a form of reading where your comprehension is lower, it’s still an essential skill because—let’s face it—the text that you’re presented with in the book is way more than the text that you actually need to put into your brain. Skimming is a great way to get yourself through the monstrous[巨大的]amount of reading you have to do to get the gist[要旨], or overall idea, when the actual small little details aren’t quite as important to get.

Now, my favorite method of skimming is one that Cal Newport came up with called “psuedo-skimming.” This is basically a method when you go through your textbook reading and you skim through the paragraphs looking for the specific paragraphs that are more important than the other ones—the ones that hold main ideas, concepts, and the things you need to remember. Once you identify one of these main paragraphs, then you can slow down and read for comprehension, so you can remember what’s in it. But for the rest of them, skimming will suffice[足够].

When you’re pseudo-skimming, a good way to pick out those important paragraphs is to pay attention to the first and last sentences of each paragraph, because those ones will give you an idea of what the rest of the paragraph contains.

要点归纳：略读是快速阅读中必不可少的一环，美国教授卡尔文·纽波特提出的“伪略读法”很值得我们参考。在读书时，我们可以通过浏览每段的开头结尾来寻找那些体现主旨要点的重点段落。一旦找到了，我们就可以放慢脚步，细品慢读其中的文字，从而掌握文章大意。

Read, Then Take Action读而后实践

The fifth and final tip for improving your reading speed…hang on. Should we really be talking about reading speed as the metric[衡量标准]here, or should we look a little bit broader and be thinking about “learning speed” as the really important thing?

I think that people who wanna learn to speed read are often motivated[激励]by this desire to become the kind of person who can say, “I read three books this week.” I think that’s the wrong motivation. Reading shouldn’t just be an achievement, like, good reads is not an achievement list and your bookshelf is not a trophy case[奖杯陈列柜]. By the same token[出于同样的原因], though,the acquisition[获得]of knowledge is also something that can lead you down the wrong path[路]because in terms of speed reading, I think it encourages us to think of our brains like those ticket machines that take your tickets at an arcade[游乐场]and tell you how many bouncy balls[弹力球]you can get at the price counter. Our brains don’t work that way, but trying to speed read can convince us that they do, and then we’re just trying to feed the tickets in faster and faster. That’s not how learning works.

What about really taking the time to ponder[考虑]and chew on what you’ve learned, compare it with your world view? I think speed readers are constantly concerned with this idea of comprehension. Even if their systems work,comprehension isn’t really the only goal here. The writer Scott Berkun put it better than I ever could.

“Reading comprehension does not equal wisdom[智慧].Comprehension is for a test; wisdom is for your life.”

So, here is the final method. When you read, also take the time to do something with what you just learned. Take notes, write a summary, compare what you learned with your current view of the world, and use that information to do different things and make better decisions. All of this is gonna help you more effectively encode[编码]the information, have to reread less, and essentially will increase your overall learning speed, which should be the goal.

要点归纳：与其将“阅读速度”时常挂在嘴边，我们更应该关心的是“学习速度”。阅读量和阅读速度并不是什么用来炫耀的东西，更重要的是你从每次阅读的文章中学到什么知识，领悟到什么道理，对你的人生观、世界观产生了什么影响，你为此采取了怎样的行动……这些东西都不可能用考试分数来衡量，但从长远来看，它们才是让你提升整体学力的关键所在。

“决胜考场”栏目征稿启事

《疯狂英语》（高中版）——全国核心期刊（第四版）、中国外语教学期刊质量检测入网期刊、中国期刊方阵入选期刊——是一本由江西教育出版社有限责任公司主办、疯狂英语杂志社编辑出版、面向高中生的优秀英语课外刊物。国内刊号为：CN36-1292/H，国际刊号为：ISSN1006-2831。

本刊现面向广大一线教师征稿，内容可为高考题型讲解、各类型题目的解题思路与技巧、历年高考真题分析等有关高考方面的内容，以及各种英语学习方法。中英文稿件皆可，1500～2000字左右，必须为本人原创作品。