HOW ONE MOTHER TAUGHT HER 2 KIDS TO BE NATURAL SPEED READERS: A METHOD FOR YOU TO “COPY-CAT”
There are two types of Speed Readers out there:
#1. Natural Speed Readers (ie. people who learned to Speed Read on their own, usually by accident — They didn’t learn it from a class, or from an instruction book), and
#2. Speed Readers who have been taught the skill in a Speed Reading class, or from an instructional book or manual.
If you’re reading this, and you don’t know how to Speed Read yet (but you want to learn), then you may become one of those who are taught to Speed Read (#2 above), if you choose to take a Speed Reading class, or study some sort of Speed Reading self-help course. But you’ll never be a Natural Speed Reader.
Natural Speed Readers are rarely ever encountered. These are people who learned to Speed Read on their own, often without realizing that they are Speed Reading. Many of them learned to Speed Read by accident (if they even remember how they learned the skill). Many Natural Speed Readers (perhaps even the majority of them) learned to Speed Read before they entered 1st grade!
In other words, they often learned to Speed Read somewhere between the ages of 3 and 6. And then they have kept on using the skill on a daily basis throughout their lives, often without knowing that they are doing anything any differently than anyone else.
I’m not joking.
In my 23 years of teaching Speed Reading to children, I’ve only come across about 10 Natural Speed Readers (this is a personal estimate).
The purpose of this article is not to detail lots of facts about Natural Speed Readers, but to demonstrate to you one possible way that you can open up the opportunity for your own child to become a Natural Speed Reader.
You see, this has been done before.
We’re fortunate that in early 2018, one online interviewer interviewed a lady, only identified as Ashly, who had taught each of her two daughters to Speed Read, at the age of 3 (one daughter is 2 years older than the other). For her first child, Ashly taught her daughter to read using various different methods for teaching babies to read (ie. Glenn Doman method, Robert Titzer method, www.BrillKids.com, etc).
CREATE A POWERPOINT FILE
By the time the oldest daughter was 3 years old, she was reading independently, but very slowly. Ashly thought that she should help her girl to speed up a bit, so she took her daughter’s all-time favorite story, and typed the entire text into a PowerPoint file, in large-sized font, and at one-word-per-page.
(When a story is set up into the PowerPoint file this way, all the parent needs to do, it to press the “enter” key [or the “forward arrow” key], and the document will scroll through the entire story, one word at a time, as you continue to flip the pages forward by pressing the “enter” key.)
DO A QUICK LESSON EVERY DAY
Ashly then proceeded to do a quick lesson with her oldest daughter, by asking her to read [quietly] the PowerPoint file while she quickly pressed the “Enter” key quickly and repeatedly. Ashly doesn’t say how often this was done, but it was likely done for a minute or two only, on several different days. I believe this because Glenn Doman is pretty clear that any reading lessons to very young children should take only a minute or two per lesson — no more than that.
Ashly also didn’t say how many days or weeks passed before her daughter began catching on to Speed Reading. But listening to her story, it didn’t sound like it took a long time. I would guess that it took less than a month, for sure. Maybe only a week or so.
KEEP IT FUN AND EXCITING
Ashly didn’t specifically say that she kept it fun and exciting, but that part is obvious to most of us. I only mention this to make sure that nobody reading this article will overlook this.
If you fail to keep it fun and exciting, you won’t get your best results.
ENCOURAGE THEM TO KEEP ON SPEED READING A LITTLE BIT — DAILY — IN FUN STORIES
For a child to become a good Speed Reader, it’s not necessary to Speed Read all the time. It’s OK for them to spend some time Slow-Reading. But keep an eye on their Speed Reading to make sure that they at least use it a little bit each day. (even if you have to invent “games” to keep them using the skill). However, once your child gets good at Speed Reading, they may want to spend more time Speed Reading — simply because it is more efficient.
IF YOUR CHILD DOESN’T SEEM INTERESTED IN SPEED READING AFTER ONE MONTH OF GENTLE, FUN PERSUASION, DROP IT FOR A WHILE
Maybe your child isn’t ready for it right now. If this is the case, don’t feel guilty. You are not a failure. Maybe your child isn’t ready to Speed Read yet. You can try it again in 3 to 6 months.
CONCLUSION:
Many (maybe even most) Natural Speed Readers learned to Speed Read between the ages of 3 and 6 — accidentally. The only difference between you and one of the Natural Speed Readers, is that you weren’t fortunate enough to have the correct accident happen to you, in order to teach you the skill. However, Ashly’s accidental discovery of how she taught Speed Reading to her oldest daughter is an accident that you can “copy-cat,” in order to turn your own child into a Natural Speed Reader!
The author of this article, George Stancliffe, has been teaching Speed Reading to children as young as age 7 since 1997. If you want to contact him please do so at George “at” Speed Reading 4 Kids “dot” com (please take away the spaces and insert the appropriate symbols to reveal the real email address — You must include the words “speed reading” in the subject line or your email may not get noticed [George gets over 100 spam emails for each legitimate email, this helps to filter the junk out])
P.S. Unfortunately, sometime in mid-2019 the interview of Ashly vanished from the internet. The interviewer was contacted, and agreed to repost it again, but has not yet done so, as of this posting.