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You took on the challenge of speed reading. You’re now capable of reading at a fast rate while retaining a sufficient amount of information. You’ve taken endless speed reading exercises to improve your retention but you feel there is still room for expansion. Here are some suggestions to further increase your retention.
Make margin notes or highlight critical portions in a page. There may be some sentences or paragraphs that are vital to the content. You may have retained the information subconsciously but marking a page somehow increases the recall factor. The highlighter is a good tool but writing it down in your own words might make it easier to remember. If the book does not belong to you, make the notes on a separate piece of paper. Indicate the pages that the notes are referring to. Sometimes the author may repeat the message in different sections of the book. Maintain a single note but identify the pages where the message was mentioned. This may turn out to be the whole theme of the book.
Dog-ear pages. Dog-earing refers to turning down a corner of the page in a book or magazine. You could write down the page numbers or put book markers on these pages but dog-ear is easier and more convenient. The problem with dog-ear is that somebody might remove the dog-ears accidentally and you lose all trace of that information. You may have to go through each page and check the corners for creases. A creased corner is an indication of a probable dog-ear. Determine the important pages that need dog-ears. Be selective. Dog-ears are not effective if you end up putting a dog-ear on every other page. When you finish, re-visit the dog-eared pages. There shouldn’t be many if you selected properly. It will bolster the essence of the book in your mind. Dog-ears are not advisable if the book is not yours since it damages the page and ruins the overall appearance of the book. In such cases, you will need to resort to bookmarkers or sticky index markers which can be removed later on without damaging the pages.
Write key notes on a separate paper. This may be similar to summarization except that you are focused on the key items. Referring to the key notes will help make you remember the main message of the book. Reference to the notes helps the retention process. In some cases, writing an ‘abstract’ in your own words may be a better retention method. Since it is in your own words, the chances of remembering it is greater. Some people have photographic memories and retention poses no problems to them. For the majority, they will have to undergo some method to improve their retention levels.
Speed reading requires constant practice. But that is just one side of the coin. Understanding and retaining what you read is the other side. Keep up with the speed reading lessons and take the retention tests regularly. You will build up your retention skills in a short time.
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