Learning Methods and Academic Skills – B2 English Listening Exercise

9 bad habits 10 baseline speed 11 inner voice 12 pointer

13 chunks 14 grammar words 15 subheadings

16 opening sentence 17 regression 18 short summary

Teacher: Hello everyone. I’m here today to talk about a vital skill that will save you hours of study time: speed reading. Now, when I mention this topic, a lot of students immediately assume I’m just going to tell them to skim the text or perhaps scan for specific keywords. However, true speed reading actually entails acquiring novel techniques and, most importantly, getting rid of your bad habits first. It’s not just about rushing through a book; it’s about reading smarter and training your brain to process information differently.

Before you learn how to read faster, you need to know exactly where you currently stand. Some people suggest just estimating or counting how many pages you can read in a minute, but the most accurate method is to calculate your baseline speed by timing yourself with a standard text and a stopwatch. Write that number down so you can track your progress over the coming weeks.

Once you know your starting point, the first major hurdle to overcome is subvocalization. When we first learn to read as children, we are taught to read out loud. As adults, we eventually stop moving our lips, but many of us still “hear” the words being spoken in our minds. You must learn to silence this inner voice because your brain can process visual information much faster than you can mentally speak it.

To help your eyes move smoothly and quickly across the page, you shouldn’t just rely on your eye muscles alone. Using a ruler or a blank piece of paper to cover the text might seem like a good idea to some, but the absolute best tool is a simple pointer, like a pen or even your index finger, gliding swiftly under the lines. Your eyes will naturally track the continuous movement.

Another incredibly common mistake is reading word by word. If you do this, your eyes have to stop constantly, which slows you down immensely. Instead, you need to widen your peripheral vision. Try not to fixate on single words; practice looking at text in chunks. By taking in three or four words at a single glance, you drastically reduce the number of times your eyes stop on a given line.

When you are reading these groups of words, you also need to prioritize. A sentence is full of vocabulary that doesn’t actually carry the core meaning. While it might be tempting to read every single adjective or adverb to get the stylistic flavor of the text, you should actively train your brain to ignore grammar words like ‘the’, ‘is’, or ‘and’, focusing instead on the essential nouns and verbs that deliver the actual message.

Now, let’s talk about the structure of the text itself. Before you dive into the main body of an article, you should always look at the layout. Titles and pictures are obviously useful, but paying close attention to any subheadings will give you the most reliable roadmap of how the author’s arguments are organized and developed.

When you are actually reading the paragraphs, remember that writers usually follow a standard format. Don’t waste your precious time hunting for the main idea in the middle or at the end of the paragraph. In academic texts, the opening sentence almost always contains the central point. If you understand that, you can often skim the rest of the paragraph, which is usually just supporting evidence or examples.

Another major speed-bump for readers is the habit of losing concentration and going back to re-read sentences you’ve just looked at. This is a technical flaw known as regression, and it ruins both your speed and your overall flow. To combat this, you simply have to force yourself to keep moving forward, trusting that the context will clarify any minor confusion.

Finally, the goal of speed reading isn’t just to look at words quickly; it’s to actually understand them. To ensure you aren’t sacrificing comprehension for speed, don’t just immediately start the next chapter or take a quiz. Instead, pause at the end of a section and mentally create a short summary of what you’ve just learned. If you can do that accurately, you’ve successfully speed read the text.

9 baseline speed 10 tablet 11 science fiction 12 school library

13 lighting 14 accuracy 15 certificate

16 eye movements 17 ten weeks 18 national conference

Mark: Hi everyone, my name is Mark, and I’m an educational researcher. Today, I’m going to talk to you about a recent project I ran with secondary school students, which involved using online reading comprehension tests. The main idea was to get students to time themselves reading various texts, so we could figure out their current reading habits and help them improve.

When we first set up the project, we considered focusing on vocabulary growth, as that’s always a useful metric. However, we eventually decided that our primary goal was to help students establish their baseline speed. That’s the vital starting point before any specific reading training can begin.

To conduct the online tests, we had to think about the hardware. We considered letting them use their own smartphones, but the screens are simply too small for long reading sessions. We also thought about the school’s desktop computers, but they can be a bit outdated. So, we eventually settled on a tablet for every student to ensure consistency and comfort.

When it came to the actual reading material for the tests, I initially wanted to use historical articles, thinking it would tie in nicely with their history classes. However, we took a vote, and the vast majority of the students preferred science fiction, so we went with that to keep them engaged and motivated.

Finding the right environment for the testing was also crucial. We needed a quiet place for them to time themselves. The standard classrooms can get quite noisy, and I really didn’t want them doing it at home where there are far too many distractions, like the TV or siblings. Ultimately, we booked the school library for all the testing sessions, which worked out perfectly.

During the study, we looked at various environmental factors that might affect how fast they read. We fully expected background noise from the corridor to be the biggest issue. But surprisingly, it was actually the lighting in the room that made the most significant difference to their reading rates. If it was too dim or too harsh, their speed dropped noticeably.

Of course, reading fast is completely pointless if you don’t understand a word of what you’re reading! To check this, we used multiple-choice questions at the end of each text. So, while they were timing themselves, we weren’t just measuring speed; we were actually more interested in their accuracy. That’s the true measure of reading comprehension.

Once the students had completed this initial online assessment to gauge their baseline, we wanted to give them a small reward. We thought about giving them a book token, but our budget was a bit tight, so instead we handed out a certificate to acknowledge their hard work and effort.

To help them improve their speed over the following weeks, we didn’t just tell them to ‘read more’. We had them practice specific exercises on the software. The most effective one focused on training their eye movements to take in whole blocks of text at once, rather than reading word-by-word.

We originally planned for the experiment to run for a full term, which is normally about twelve weeks here. But because of some unexpected school holidays and scheduling conflicts, the whole project ended up lasting for exactly ten weeks. Still, we gathered plenty of useful data.

Now that the study is over, we are looking at how to share our findings with other educators. We will definitely write a report for the school website, but our main goal is to present the data at a national conference next spring. It’s a great opportunity to show how online tests can boost reading skills.