How to increase the amount of information your child can absorb?

This question touches on a deeply held desire of many parents with whom I work and rightly so, it’s fundamental. The question can be rephrased as ‘what are my realistic options to get my child to learn more, there are gaps appearing in his/her school performance?’

So, this article will be one of many to shed light on the possibilities. Moreover, I want this series of articles to give parents insight, as insight is empowering. Perhaps you’ll appreciate my approach (please do let me know what you’d prefer in the comments), which is to synthesise a number of books and academic research papers, the time consuming stuff, and from this basis develop a narrative to illuminate the GCSE students experience.Then provide practical tips.

The faster you read the faster you learn — true or false?

First, a very brief snippet on ‘information’.There are many ways to present information at school, chiefly, it’s the written word, graphics and audio (that monotone from the teacher). But by far, the primary source has to be the written word. All the textbooks, homework, personal notes and even the exam papers are written! This is the basis of our education system, which means reading is the principal method by which information is absorbed into the students mind. It would then follow that the faster someone can read, the more they can learn. It’s the conventional approach and all about increasing the speed of information input. The notion inspires a rather mechanical approach to learning and we end up training students like athletes preparing for a running race.

So, with the sport of learning in mind here’s is a brief insight into the mechanics reading, it’s useful and based on the widely cited research of Keith Rayner:

Your eye has three parts relevant to our discussion, the fovea, the parafovea and periphery. The fovea is where things come into sharp focus necessary for reading, it spans 2 visual degrees which is about 8 letters. After the fovea things become less focused, so the parafovea only allows you to read a letter or two and the periphery is a blur of colour. With this information it’s quick to see that speed reading techniques (more below) claiming to utilise peripheral sight are bogus — you know you’re in bad company if you read that on their website!

Focusing on these words takes about a quarter of a second, this is called fixation. During the fixation your eyes effectively recognise squiggles on a page as letters. Then your eyes jump to the next set of words, this jump is called a saccade and can be described as ballistic! Saccades are fascinating explosive movements that shift our fine focus point pointing visual or auditory stimuli. Then there is a period your brain needs to process what all these squiggles combined actually mean, this takes about half a second.

When you factor all these ‘delays’ in we can only read between 200 and 400 words per minute, and indeed this is the standard for university students too. If one tries to push beyond the 200 to 400 word limit they are usually rushing, not leaving enough time for the physical processes that develop understanding to take place and thus, comprehension usually dives off a cliff. And comprehension is everything when learning!

So the question now becomes, how to increase comprehension rates? And this is where it gets interesting, but firstly a side note and some insights into reading in general.

Side note:

If you’re interested, the highest rates recorded with good comprehension are usually around 500 to 600 words per minute, and this is rare. Ignore speed readers with claims of 1000 words per minute plus, they are skimming!

It’s good to know, find your Child’s reading speed

You can check if your child’s reading speed falls within range by giving them the story below and timing them. It’s 564 words and so the reading speed calculation is 564 words /total time in seconds * 60 = words per minute

/ means to divide

* means to multiply

The Dream, by Zarah Goff

You know when you wake up and feel a bit strange? Well that was me last Monday when I woke up with the strangest feeling. It was a tingling, sparkling feeling that started in my big toes. I looked down in wonder at the tiniest pieces of the shiniest gold glitter dancing in unison up and down my sleepy legs.

It was as though I was waving a magic wand at myself and saying abracadabra. Only there was no magic wand and I hadn’t said “abracadabra”. At that moment a brilliant clinging sound chimed three times and the heavenly glitter started to dance off my legs, over to the opposite end of my room where it started to create the most opulent, solid gold door just in front of where my desk was.

I felt my body being forced and pushed towards the golden door. Without me realising, my shaking hand reached over and twisted the robust, gold handle. I peeked inside and could not believe my eyes.

I stepped inside a land made entirely out of gold. When I say made entirely out of gold, I mean made entirely out of gold. The trees stood like the statues you find in a temple and the leaves looked as delicate as a duckling’s feather. The view all the way to the horizon was dazzling. My tummy started to rumble. “Breakfast time!” I whispered to myself. I wonder where I can find something to eat? At that moment a huge plate of my favourite spaghetti landed on a table right in front of me. A second later, the biggest mug of golden milk landed next to it. I walked over to the food, but felt sad as gold food was no use to me. It might look heavenly, but you can’t eat it. I suddenly felt anxious. “How could I survive here? Gold looks beautiful, but it can’t feed me. How will I survive here?.” I looked back and the door to my bedroom was slowly closing. I was running as fast as I could, but it wasn’t fast enough to reach the door in time. The seconds seemed like hours. It was very ironic that such a beautiful land can offer no life. My brain was trying to think of ways I could get home, but nothing came to mind.

The only solution I could find was to say “abracadabra”. In a flash, I was back in my room, in my bed, my pyjamas on and my mum shaking my shoulders saying “wake up!”

Was the land of gold just a dream? It felt so real, surely it can’t have been. I dragged myself out of bed and as I was walking downstairs for breakfast I felt something sharp in my slipper. It felt cold. I felt inside my shoe and to my astonishment pulled out a golden piece of precious gold spaghetti. But how did it get there?

What are the useful insights from Speed Reading?

Technique 1: Use a pointer

This small experiment actually blew my mind. Look to the left of the room you’re in and scan, keeping your head level, to the right. What do you notice every time an object comes into your line of sight? You’re eyes should jerk, that the fixation and saccade we spoke about earlier. You’ve probably experienced this at its maximum when looking out of a train window!

Now for part two of the experiment. Point your finger out in front of you and to the left of the room, now move your finger right scanning the room again. You should notice that this time your eyes run completely smoothly! It’s because you’ve switched from focusing on objects to tracking an object which is called smooth pursuit.

INSIGHT:

Speed readers claim that using smooth pursuit eliminates the pauses when we read, thus we can read faster. But we know those pauses have a function in comprehension so the best this method can offer is to enhance skim reading.

Technique 2: The ‘no backtracking’ rule

This rule requires that you don’t reread anything, once your eyes glide past a sentence or word you cannot reread it. Try it with two or three pages of any book — it is faster! But, personally, I find it exhausting. And of course, if something is not understood, I find it frustrating not to backtrack!

All that said, the reason for exhaustion is actually quite a fascinating insight into reading. It becomes apparent that though the sentences develop linearly, one after, that meaning doesn’t build in the same straight line. Thus, you are forced to remember everything you just read in order to make sense of what is being said next and eventually, you’re holding so many chunks of information in your mind that you’ve reached the limit. In fact, typically, your working memory only has the capacity to hold 4 chunks of information at any given time.

INSIGHT:

So, backtracking and rereading actually becomes part of the tool kit of a skilled reader focused on understanding!

Technique 3: The ‘quiet the voice in the mind’ rule

When you read, you’ll notice that there is a voice in your mind that narrates the words. One reason for this might be because the language system in our brains is audio based, and the written word is simply a representation of spoken language. Thus, to actually understand anything we read we must hear it first and therefore, are required to say the words in our mind. The other reason could be that the reading voice in our minds is a useless byproduct of being taught to read by speaking the words aloud, all children are taught to read this way. Either way, the issue here is that the fastest a person can talk is about 300 words per minute before it comes hard to understand.

Thus, speed readers claim, our reading speed is limited by our speaking speed and, since our eyes can absorb words much faster than we can say them, we should quiet the voice in our mind.

Try this with another three pages of a book. For me it begins to feel like an exercise in page turning, although I did see a lot of words in a short amount of time. And indeed, this is a well documented phenomenon, comprehension of what we read is related to the clarity of the voice in our minds.

INSIGHT:

Thus, it should be developed to improve our reading comprehension.

Also,another thing to note is that use of the phonological code (speech sounds) is not the same as physically speaking. Thus, phonology seems not only to be a fundamental part of reading but also, it doesn’t hinder reading speed — we can read faster than we speak.

With all that cleared up, here are some tips on how to increase comprehension rates:

Tip 1 — Solve the reading age problem

What is hindering your child’s comprehension and reading speed is most likely their reading age and/or the novelty of the material.

Let me explain: There is the concept of text having function words and content words. Function words create grammatical relations ships and we tend to skip over them. Content words are those that hold meaning and consume 85% of our focus when reading. The aim should be to make these content words familiar so it takes less time/focus to understand what they mean and thus, we can read faster and understand more — keep this in mind.

One’s reading age relates to the amount of vocabulary we have and our familiarity with complex grammar. The more familiar we are with vocab and grammar the less it surprises us when reading, we understand it instantly and can whizz through the paragraph.

So, it’s worth doing a simple test to see if your child’s reading age is appropriate to their level at school, here are a couple of sites to give an idea:

https://www.oxfordonlineenglish.com/english-level-test/reading

https://www.macmillanreaders.com/level-test/

To improve the reading age requires work and you guessed it, that work is more reading. However, the emphasis should be on reading a wide variety of texts with varying difficulties in order to rapidly expand experience with grammar and vocab. Personally, when I was younger I used to love reading encyclopedias and textbooks which really worked well for me academically. When others struggled with reading technical writing, it came naturally to me. However, I neglected stories where styles can vary massively between authors, a new novel would catch me off guard and be a real chore to get through. It’s exactly why these days I always try to be reading a story book, philosophy book and technical scientific article at any given period.

Tip 2 — Learn the SnowBall Method and overcome the obstacles

The other aspect should be to try to read new stuff, unfamiliar subject areas, references and topics. If Tolkein is your thing, try Murakami for a whole new world of Japanese references. It’s important to keep on expanding so that, in the future you already have mental framework into which new words and ideas can be filed. This is to develop the underlying memory structure that makes understanding what you read faster (explored as snowballing in Tip 2 and 3).

This marks the shift from reading as a sport, to absorb the maximum amount of information in the shortest time, to reading as a means of gathering new concepts. This is what reading is really about and now I’ll explain how students can maximise this element.

With regard to GCSE, this highlights the reason students struggle with text books. They are in a jungle of words all weird and new, never to be used outside of the specific context of their examination. The text book is effectively an obstacle course of words students are forever tripping over!

Thus, the focus of reading GCSE material at first, should be to clear the jungle. To clear all those obstacles and new words so they are automatically recognised.

So, there’s something I call the SnowBall Method to read new information as a student:

1. Get a bird’s eye view of the material by swiftly reading page.
2. Next, write down words that aren’t understood and research them online
3. Go through the page again taking time to backtrack, reread and relate various aspects.

If they follow these three steps, textbooks will open their doors and become accessible. Most students simply dive into the jungle of words and get lost! Let’s stop this and improve their technical reading skills.

If you’re interested I’m currently working on a resource which builds the GCSE from this point of view for a much smoother learning curve for students, please email me (address below)

Tip 3 — Create a multiplier effect though context

Why did I call it the SnowBall Method? Because step two is designed to create automatic word recognition by the next read, increasing speed. Then step three is designed to create new connections and frameworks in your mind so that when the next related topic comes it already has a place to go, increasing the speed of learning entire new topics! Each time one opens a text book their ability to understand is SnowBalling!

Tip three is therefore the focus, to increase reading and learning speed is all about developing the underlying memory structure of your mind, developing context. This means new information isn’t an isolated data point which takes a lot of effort to understand and remember, but simply an extension of what you already know. Think of how much easier it is to learn a new word in your native language than a foreign one.

Again, I’m passionate about helping students by putting this information into practice and have developed mind maps which relate concepts throughout the GCSE in multiple ways, creating context from the get go — email me to find out more!

Tip 4 — Create notes that eradicate barriers to learning

An article wouldn’t be complete without an edgy idea, a little controversy. So, considering the focus of the game is snowballing our ability to understand I propose the following, and it does work with my students:

Concepts at GCSE can be presented, not as vast oceans of words which take time to read and convert into mental representations, but as visuals that directly convey meaning and are the mental representation themselves.

Hence, for the student, I’m encouraging them to draw the concepts in their textbooks and so their notes completely bypass text.

But I understand this takes time, you need to understand the concepts perfectly in the first place and drawing isn’t for everyone. But seeing is for everyone and so, in a few short months I will be releasing GCSE Biology in visual form. I do encourage you to email me at [email protected] so I can notify you upon release.

In summary

To increase the amount of information children absorb we need to focus on how fast they can understand rather than how fast we can read. To do this:

1. Eliminate obstacles to our understanding, become familiar with all the technical terminology in text books first (this will actually increase reading speed too)
2. Create mental frameworks that allow new information to be easily understood and filed
3. Study in a way that encourages snowballing, that increases our ability to understand the new topic not yet learned.
4. Create notes which allow us to jump straight to absorbing the concepts and avoid words altogether, diagrams are a great tool.

Thank you for reading,

Chetan

Resources used:

Links to online interviews and articles:

Amaerican Academy of Ophthalmology, Saccade: https://eyewiki.aao.org/Saccade

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4HfRKgc2NHmNXPZPKRXNddX/kindness-never-dies

https://childrenofthecode.org/interviews/rayner.htm

https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/2015/01/19/speed-reading-redo/

https://www.thoughtco.com/content-and-function-words-1211726

Scientific papers:

Cognitive and Reading Factors in Reading Acquisition, Springer Open Source, Ludo Verhoeven Peiter Reitsma, Linda Siegal 2010

Eye movements as Reflection of Comprehension Processes in Reading, Scientific Studies of Reading, Keith Rayner, Kathryn H. Chace, Timothy J. Slattery, Jane Ashby 2006

Eye movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research, Psychological Bulletin, Keith Rayner 1998

So Much to Read So Little Time: How Do We Read, Can Speed Reading Help?, Online, Keith Rayner, Elizabeth R. Schotter, Michael E. J. Masson, Mary C. Potter, Rebecca Treiman 2016

The Effects of Word Frequency, Text Case, and Contextual Predictability on Binocular Fixation During Reading, University of Bedfordfordshire, Mohamed Abdul Khaled 2016

Word Acuity Threshold as a Function of Contrast and Retinal Eccentricity, Optometry and Visual Science, Ola Abdelnour and Michael Kalloniatis 2001

Books:

Essentials of Human Memory by Alan Baddeley 2013

Eye Movements in Reading: Perceptual and Language Process edited by Keith Rayner 1983

Psychology of Reading by Keith Rayner 2012