Sunday, 10 March 2013

Book ~ "Speed Reading in a Week: Teach Yourself" (2012) Tina Konstant

From Kobo ~ The ability to read, understand and remember material is crucial to anyone who wants to advance their career. Written by Tina Konstant, a leading expert on speed reading as both a coach and a practitioner, this book quickly teaches you the insider secrets you need to know to in order to quickly deal with large amounts of reading. 

The highly motivational 'in a week' structure of the book provides seven straightforward chapters explaining the key points, and at the end there are optional questions to ensure you have taken it all in. There are also cartoons and diagrams throughout, to help make this book a more enjoyable and effective learning experience. So what are you waiting for? Let this book put you on the fast track to success!

I love to read and always have a book on the go.  I wondered how speed reading worked so I thought this would be an interesting book.

The book is broken up into seven chapters/days:
  • Sunday - The five-step system
  • Monday - Speed reading (this is the chapter where you actually learn how)
  • Tuesday - Remember what you read
  • Wednesday - Your eyes and effective reading
  • Thursday - Distractions and solutions
  • Friday - Reading different types of material for different reasons
  • Saturday - What next?

Rather than read the book in one sitting (it's short so can be done), I read a chapter a day.  The book discusses the five step process, pacing, how to deal with distractions, skimming versus scanning, reading with your eyes rather than your eyes, etc. and has questions (a test) at the end of each chapter to re-enforce what you've read. You can use the techniques for novels but it works best with non-fiction.

There are blank pages in the back where you can take notes ... in fact, you are encouraged to makes notes in the margins of books or highlight things.

It takes practice ... there is a template for a 21 day program in the back on the book.  I'll give it a try.

I received a copy of this book at no charge in exchange for my honest review.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I love to get lost in a good book. When whatever book I'm in gets boring, I skim. When it gets too wordy, I scan. All in all, I think I have learned some of the speed reading techniques already and that is fine with me.
How are things in To these days???
Rosemary

Teena in Toronto said...

I do the same. Ha!

Knit and Purl Mama said...

I picked up a course online through groupon to learn to speed read. I keep forgetting to check it out. Do you speed read?

Teena in Toronto said...

I'm going to try and put the principles to practice.

Masshole Mommy said...

Interesting. My hubby knows how to speed read. He took a class on it once.