Explore the World of Software 2: Kids, Adults, Educational

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Text File | 1989-06-10 | 19.4 KB | 543 lines

READFAST! Computer-Aided Reading Improvement Program Version 1.4 Shareware Copy (c) Copyright 1989 by Larry O'Rear TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Disclaimer............................................1 Distribution of Copies................................1 Files Included on Disk................................1 Introduction..........................................2 Reading Roadblocks....................................2 Strategy for Studying.................................3 Changing Gears........................................5 Continued Success.....................................5 Other Resources.......................................5 The READFAST! Program.................................6 Registration..........................................6 Registration Form.....................................8 DISCLAIMER Users employ this software at their own risk. The author will not be responsible in any way for any consequences of the use or misuse of the program or of the documentation. Your use of the program constitutes your acceptance of these conditions. DISTRIBUTION OF COPIES This software may be copied and distributed freely with these restrictions: 1. No price may be charged, except that a fee not to exceed $7 may be applied to cover the costs of copying and distribution. 2. This documentation must be included in its entirety with any copies. I will appreciate your comments concerning this Reading Improvement Program, and suggestions concerning features you would like to see in future versions. Please write to me at the address given at the end of this documentation. FILES INCLUDED ON THIS DISK READFAST.EXE The main reading program. READ0.TXT Message files presented at various places in thru the READFAST.EXE program. READ5.TXT READFAST.DOC Instructions for READFAST.EXE, and reading tips. READMARK.SHO Instructions for marking a book for use in paced reading. READTACH.EXE Flashes lines from text files on the screen, one at a time, to force faster reading. Used with eye-span exercises and other text files. READTACH.DOC Instructions for READTACH.EXE. READSYLL.BUS Suggested plan for reading improvement. READCISE.TXT and Eye-span exercises to use with READTACH. READSOLR.TXT DESCRIPT.ION Description of program files; can be viewed by typing READFAST GO. Page 1 INTRODUCTION Reading is fun. Reading is work. Reading is easy. Reading is hard. I love to read. I hate to read. I would read more if I could read faster, but it takes me forever to finish a book. These are some of the attitudes that people have about reading. Does one of them fit you? The way we feel about reading depends a great deal on the way we were taught to read and the skills we have developed on our own. Most of us would like to be able to read faster and to retain more information from our reading. Of course, we might want to read in a leisurely manner sometimes. But it would be a definite advantage to be able to read rapidly when we need to get information in a hurry. Maybe you have a lengthy business report to read, or a book you must finish before the end of the week. In this course we will consider some of the causes of slow reading, and find out how to overcome those obstacles. You will be paced as you read to force you to increase your speed. Your reading speed will be measured in order to show you the progress that you are making. READFAST.EXE, the computer-aided reading program, will present the information needed to do the exercises without using this manual. There will be some repetition in the manual of material that will appear when you run the program. But the manual will go further in presenting suggestions on getting the most from your reading time. READSYLL.BUS, on this disk, provides some guidelines for a systematic reading improvement program. READING ROADBLOCKS One of the major reasons for slow reading habits is the way we were taught to read--word by word. Of course that is necessary when learning to read for the first time, but reading word by word will be at about the same rate as your speaking speed. Look at a word near the middle of a line of print. Without moving the focus point of your eyes, you should be able to see one or two words, maybe more, on each side of the word you are looking at. So it isn't necessary to look at each word individually. By looking at two or three points on a line of print, you can read the entire line. You might even be able to read a whole line with just one "look" (also called "eye fixation"). This is very important, because it takes time to move your eyes from one point to another and focus them on the new position. When you look at the first and last words of a line, you are wasting about half of your eye span reading blank space in the margin. You won't usually find anything of great interest there! So begin a line by looking at the second, third, or fourth word, and when you get about that far from the end, go to the next line. (The instructions in the computer-aided reading exercises tell you how to draw lines on the page to provide focus points for your eye fixations.) Page 2 Another obstacle to efficient reading is regressing--looking back at something you have already read, because you didn't get it the first time. This often happens because your attention was wandering. Your mind can take in thoughts at the rate of several hundred or thousand words per minute. (The picture "experiment" in one of the exercises should convince you of this.) So it is easy to see why your attention would wander if you are reading just a couple of hundred words per minute. Your mind is just loafing most of the time, so it strays off to other things! Some people move their lips as they read--again, because that's how we learned to read. If we didn't read aloud, the teacher couldn't know if we were getting it right! And even without moving the lips, sometimes we move other parts of the speaking apparatus: the tongue or the vocal chords. If you are moving your lips or any other part of your speaking machinery, you are obviously reading word by word. Forcing yourself to read faster by using the pacing provided by this program will help to overcome some of these habits that slow you down. STRATEGY FOR STUDYING It may be that a great deal of your reading time is devoted to study-type reading. This may be in connection with courses in a school or college, or it may be study related to your job or a hobby. Maybe you are doing a kind of work that didn't even exist when you were in school, or perhaps your interests have extended to subjects that you didn't study in school. The ability to read efficiently makes it easy to continue learning throughout a lifetime. Of course education doesn't end upon graduation from high school or college. To make study time more productive, here are some suggestions for studying a chapter or a portion of a chapter in a book. Some of these remarks will apply to a textbook or similar book that is designed specifically for teaching, with chapter summaries, review questions, etc., but the principles apply to any book which you read to learn something. 1. First, become familiar with the book as a whole. Look at the Table of Contents and the Index. See if there are appendices; if so, what kind of information do they contain? Is there a glossary, a list of terms with special meanings, etc.? Sometimes there will be separate Tables of Contents listing maps, charts, or illustrations. Knowing about these sources can be helpful when you need to find some particular information in a hurry. 2. The rest of these suggestions are for studying a chapter or section. Begin by looking quickly through the chapter to get a general idea of what it contains. Notice subheadings, charts or other illustrations, and end-of-chapter material (questions, etc.). This survey should take just a few seconds, maybe a minute. Page 3 3. Now we will do things backwards. Look at the end-of-chapter material. Is there a chapter summary? (It may be at the beginning instead of the end.) If there is a summary in either place, read it. This will give you an idea of the main points that you should know when you have finished the reading. 4. If there are questions at the end of the chapter, read them. As you read the chapter, you should find the answers to the questions, or at least information from which you can figure out the answers. 5. Now comes the speed reading. Read through the chapter as fast as you can, being alert for the answers to the questions you read earlier. Don't stop to ponder over things that you don't understand; you might mark them with your pencil so that you will be sure to study them more thoroughly later. 6. After the speed reading of step 5, you should have a fairly good idea of what the chapter is about. Now read the chapter again. Use a dictionary or the glossary, if there is one, to find the meanings of unfamiliar words. Use the index to find further explanations, elsewhere in the book, of points that are not clear. If there are still parts of the chapter that you don't understand, make notes in the margin so that you will remember to look elsewhere for more information. Later you can ask your teacher, if this is a book for a class in which you are enrolled. Ask a colleague, if it pertains to your work. Look for information in other books. 7. Now speed-read the chapter again to tie it all together. Answer the questions at the end of the chapter. Look over the chapter summary again to be sure that everything mentioned in the summary is now familiar to you. This might seem like a lot of work--maybe more time than you are accustomed to spending--but the goal is to get the most from your study. If you can read it the "old" way in less time, but don't understand the material after you read it, the "less time" required is not really saved time. And with some practice you might learn to do this really thorough study even more quickly than the "old" way of just plowing through the chapter one time, hoping to pick up something. One thing accomplished by the technique described above is to make your reading active rather than passive. After your initial survey of the material, you will be looking for certain things as you read--answers to the questions, points mentioned in the summary, etc. This will help you to concentrate with less mind-wandering, and will help you to remember what you read. Page 4 CHANGING GEARS It is probably obvious that you won't try to read all material at the same speed. At times you might just need to find a word or phrase. To do this, you will "skim" through the text without paying attention to the meaning--you are just looking for a certain pattern of letters. If you are trying to master difficult ideas, you might need to read word by word and think of each individual word. See step 6 above. Even in this case, a rapid reading of the context (the part before and after your point of concentration) can help understanding. If you are reading poetry or some other kinds of literature, you will want to give attention to the sounds of words. You might even read aloud. We are interested in speed reading not as an end in itself, but as a technique to help get the most pleasure and learning from the time that we spend reading. CONTINUED SUCCESS After you have paced your reading with the computer for a while, you should be able to maintain your increased reading speed without this mechanical assistance. From time to time you will want to check your speed, with or without the pacing clicks, just to see how you are doing. At first it will be necessary to give conscious attention to avoiding the bad habits that slowed your reading previously. It will be easy to slip back into the old ruts if you are not careful. That's one reason for timing yourself with the computer program occasionally, even after you feel that you have "graduated." OTHER RESOURCES There are several books available on the subject of speed reading. One that I have used in classroom teaching is "Faster Reading Self-Taught" by Shefter, published by Pocket Books. I recommend it for its presentation of reading techniques and for the many reading exercises it contains. It would be a good book to use for pacing practice while you are improving your skills with READFAST!. There are also some commercial computer programs available to teach speed reading, but I have not tried any of them. And there are courses taught by colleges and by commercial reading schools. Some of them are good, and some are expensive! Better reading can contribute much to enjoyment, study efficiency, and job performance. It is worth the relatively small effort needed to build this important skill. Page 5 THE READFAST! PROGRAM When you enter READFAST at the DOS prompt, you will see some introductory screens and then a menu with five choices. The first choice presents some introductory information, including how to print this manual on your printer. The second choice is a timed reading exercise to find your present reading speed. Be sure to do this before choices 3 or 4, so that you will have a starting point from which to measure your progress. The third choice is a paced reading exercise with instructions for marking a book to begin developing proper eye movements. It is paced at about 300 words per minute, which is probably faster than you have been reading, but not too fast for you to keep up. Choice four is the main reading program. It lets you choose the reading speed for pacing, the number of clicks per line or just one click per page, or no clicks. Your reading speed will be calculated whether or not you choose the clicks. Timing for choices 2, 3, or 4 is started by hitting the space bar when you begin reading, and stopped by hitting it again when you finish. And choice 5 exits the program when you have finished. If (for some strange reason!) you want to start the program without the classy opening screens, you will be able to do that with the registered version of READFAST.EXE. REGISTRATION This program is being distributed under the SHAREWARE concept. If you find the program useful and have not already registered, send $12 to Larry O'Rear 703 Cielo Drive Georgetown, TX 78628 to register for personal use. To use this program in any situation where tuition or any kind of fee is charged, the registration is $25 and must be sent before the program is used in such manner. The instructor may review the program to evaluate it before registering, but may not use it with the fee-paying group without submitting the $25 registration. Such use is a violation of the Copyright Laws of the United States of America. (Add 8% Sales Tax in Texas) The next page tells what you will receive when you register. Page 6 When you register, you will receive: ∙ The latest REGISTERED version of this program, with any updates or corrections. The registered version will not have the opening shareware announcement with the necessity of entering the access number. It will provide the option of skipping all opening screens on both READFAST and READTACH. ∙ VIEW.EXE, a program for reading text files on-screen. Files will be displayed the way that instructions are shown in the READFAST program, and the way you are viewing this documentation file if you entered READFAST DOC to read it. ∙ A program to remove control characters from text files and expand tabs for cleaner screen display. ∙ PRC.EXE for sending printer codes to your printer from the DOS command line. ∙ Four programs for printing text files with several options of type size, page headers, etc. ∙ A label-printing program. ∙ Perhaps other reading aids to be developed in the future. Give me your suggestions! You will find a registration form on the next page. Thank you for trying this program. I wish you great success in improving your reading speed and comprehension skills! As I have said in other places, I will appreciate very much your news about your success with the reading improvement program. And please send me your suggestions: how you would like to see the reading program improved, other features you would find helpful, other programs you would like to see. I can't promise to be successful in doing everything you suggest, but I do promise to consider it. And if you find any un-squashed bugs, please let me know so that I can try to smash the little critters. Thanks again. Larry O'Rear Page 7 REGISTRATION FORM Mail to: Larry O'Rear 703 Cielo Dr. Georgetown, TX 78628 REGISTRATION FOR COMPUTER-AIDED READING IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM Registration for Personal Use................................$12.00 Registration for Fee-charging User...........................$25.00 8% Sales Tax if in Texas..................( .96 or 2.00) ____________ TOTAL Your name: _______________________________________________________ Address: _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ THANK YOU! Page 8