Sunday, August 31, 2008

10 WAYS TO CURB BAD READING HABITS


10 WAYS TO CURB BAD READING HABITS
By: Glenn L. Malimban, NBDB

People read in different ways: some can manage to read with a little light on, others can do it while doing other things like eating, listening to music. People can pick any place and any time to read. The point is to read, enjoy, and understand what you are reading. There are reasons why people never like reading and one of them is having bad reading habits.

Replace a bad habit with a good one. You have to want to get rid bad habits and you must practice and work at it in order to change. The following are a few ways to curb bad reading habits that that tend to cause people to read slowly, lose interest, or not to reads at all.

1. Don’t move your lips when you read. Moving your lips slows you to a fast talking rate, about 150 words per minute. Put your fingers on your lips to stop the motion.

2. Don’t vocalize. Vocalizing means that you are pronouncing words in the voice box without making sounds. This also slows your reading rate to that of speaking. To check, rest your fingertips lightly against the vocal cord area of your throat. If you feel a vibration, or if you find that your tongue is moving, you are vocalizing.

3. Read everything at the same speed. When reading, set your rate according to your purpose for reading and the difficulty level of the material. Practice adjusting your rate to suit your material. The more difficult the material the slower the rate.

4. Do not regress out of habit. Regressing means rereading a word, phrase, or sentence out of habit and not because of need. Sometimes, it is necessary to reread something. Especially a difficult passage. But over time it becomes a habit. Unnecessary regressing really slows you down. Use a card or paper to cover the text after you read it to prevent regressing.

5. Read one word at a time. Do you think one word at a time, or in phrases? Slow readers tend to see only one word at a time. Good readers will see several words at a time and their eyes will stop only three or four times as they move across a page. Reading in idea-phrases speeds your reading and improves your understanding of what you have read. Mark the phrase in the sentenes of a passage, then practice seeing more than one word at a time

6. Read with sufficient light. Poor lighting will affect your eyes and having poor eyesight discourages people to read and loose the interest totally. Always make sure to read with good lighting even if you don’t have any problems with your eyesight.

7. Don’t read to get to sleep. A book is not a sleeping pill. A lot of people from this bad habit thinking that by tiring their eyes with them will fall asleep. It does but you loose the essence of reading a good book instead of enjoying it or you loose a good sleep because of a good book. Either way it is not beneficial. As much as possible never read when in bed.

8. Set aside time to read. People set time for everything – to sleep, to eat, to play, to bathe, and to shop. Set time in a day to do nothing but read and set it as your reading time. Do it every day for thirty days and it will automatically become a habit.

9. Don’t read in a vehicle. At times people tend to read while in a ride to pass time. This is not advisable. Small texts are difficult to read when you are in moving vehicle and consequently, may damage your eyesight. Look outside instead or engage in a conversation with somebody.

10. Avoid doing other things while reading. Your brain works best when doing one thing at a time. Reading while listening to music or eating divides your attention. Reading comprehension will be slower and you may eventually lose your interest in reading in favor of the other task.

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