The Rationale

The Rationale

What the Drills Do

Each part of the drills serves at least one purpose. This chapter explains the five main issues addressed by the drills. They are:

• Subvocalizing
• Regression
• Word groups and Meaning
• Reading pace
• Clarity of comprehension and emotional impact

Subvocalization

Most readers never stop reading out loud; they just get quieter. If you watch closely, you can see some people moving their lips when they read. If their lips are still, you can still see movement in their jaw and throat. Why? Because they are reading the same way as when they read out loud. They are hearing the words ``silently in their head''; this is called ``subvocalizing''. Subvocalizing is not all bad. If you are waiting at a bus stop while reading poetry, then subvocalizing is a good idea, unless you want people giving you odd looks. And, for goodness sake, don't speed read poetry. At least half the value of many poems is the way the words make rhythms and practically dance when read out loud. Speed reading doesn't capture the sound of the words, so speed reading is good for gathering data, it is good for understanding plot and action flow, but it's not so good for aural aspepcts of writing that are so important in much poetry and Shakespeare's plays. For some of your reading you won't care how the words sound, as long as you know what the words mean. That's the time for speed reading. You might be wondering, ``How can I know what a word means without knowing how it sounds?'' This question reflects a debate in educational circles. The debate is over the relative values of two ways to teach reading: Phonics and Whole Language. Phonics teaches reading based on the sounds of words. Whole Language treats words as single units, and teaches readers to use these units as part of complete thoughts. The truth is both Phonics and Whole Language can help people learn to read. Phonics and Whole Language concepts are both very useful for reading. Phonics is a wonderful tool, a powerful intermediate step in learning to read. ``Sounding words out'' is often the best way to cope with an unrecognized word, even for accomplished readers. Sadly, English is poorly designed for the ``sounding things out'' method. Using phonics, the word ``phonics'' would be pronounced, ``Pu-hon-iks''. When you were very young you didn't know the difference between a curve and a straight line. Later this difference became so clear that now you might have trouble remembering it as something you had to learn. You also learned to put curves and lines together in various ways to make designs called letters. This too was learned so well that you probably don't think of letters as being made up of anything, but they are, aren't they? Letters are just groups of lines and curves. Written words are made up of letters, but spoken words aren't. Spoken words are made up of sounds, not letters. Most sounds have more than one letter combination. Think about the sound of to, too, and two. If all you have is the sound of the spoken word, how can you know which word is meant? Without other words to provide a context, there is no way to tell the spoken ``to'' from the spoken ``too'' or the spoken ``two''. Often we can understand words faster and better from the word's context than we can from ``sounding out'' the word. Adding to the confusion, many letter combinations make different sounds based on the letters that come before and after them. That is, many letter combinations also rely on context! A famous example is the nonsense word ``ghoti''. Pronounce ``gh'' the same way you pronounce it in ``laugh''. Say ``o'' the way you say it in ``women''. The ``ti'' is the same as in ``action''. Put these together now: ``gh'' from ``laugh'', ``o'' from ``women'', ``ti'' from ``action''. What do you get?

l
a          a
u     w    c
GH    O    TI
      m    o
      e    n
      n

"F"  "I"  "SH"

Fish! With this little example of the limits of phonics behind us, we can skip the academic arguments and agree that a person armed with both Phonics and Whole Language skills will have obvious advantages. Phonics has a permanent place in every reader's bag of tricks, but if ``sounding words out'' was a requirement for reading, we would be limited to 100 words per minute or less. That's the catch with Phonics. Fortunately, we learn to recognize many words at a glance, without needing the time and effort of sounding them out. This is the Whole Language way, but there is a catch with Whole Language as well. What is a word? Ink on a page? Sounds from a mouth? Bumps of Braille? Gestures in sign language? Or is a word something in the reader's mind? Whatever words really are, we can use both writing and speech to transmit them. Although words come to us both through our eyes through our ears, as writing and as speech, we learn words as speech first. Spoken words precede written words. Whole Language is faster than sounding things out, phonics is a way of bridging the gap from the words we know as speech and the words we know in writing. Reading without either would be a vastly greater task. Most people never learn to do much more than recognize written words. Once they recognize a word they speak it out loud or ``in their head'', and then go on to the next word; this gets called reading. All too often this is where people stop. Most people read about two hundred words per minute because this is their speed of speech. It's a mistake to think you have to hear a word to understand it. This mistake will hold down your reading speed. Spoken words are made of sounds, so, if you are talking to someone then the speed of speech is about as fast as you can go. But when you read you are working with written words. Why bother hearing them? You can SEE them! How does the drill fight sub-vocalization? Counting out loud does the trick. The part of your brain that hears noises on the outside is the same part of your brain used when you subvocalize. By counting out loud while you look at the words you keep that part of your brain busy. This forces you to find the meaning of the words by seeing them. Normally you would see the letters, convert the letters to sounds, hear the word in your head, and then interpret the meaning. Counting out loud forces you to short circuit this process and get your meaning from the sight of the words. This is why YOU MUST COUNT OUT LOUD, to occupy the part of your brain that handles sounds. This forces you to see the words without hearing them. Starting the drills at one word per second also helps fight subvocalization. Whenever you learn new information, it helps to use methods that are comfortable for you. But what about when you learn new methods? When you learn a new method, you should use information that is comfortable. Some people call this ``separating the content from the process''; separating the what from the how. Speed reading is a new way to read; so it makes sense to use easy, comfortable material for your speed reading drills. Similarly, since you are learning to read a new way, it helps if you reduce the speed pressure. This way you can gain skill with the new method of reading while counting out loud. You learn to read with your eyes instead of the part of your brain that processes sounds. Reading sixty words a minute is easy, even while counting out loud. After learning to read by sight instead of by sound, reading faster is easy. You will start with solid success, reading by sight at Very Slow, then move to faster speeds to finally break the sound barrier. Remember, you must COUNT OUT LOUD DURING DRILLS. When you read at other times you might try counting silently in your head, but when you do the drills you must count out loud. Counting out loud during drills breaks the habit of subvocalizing.

Regression

The next purpose of the drills is to fight regression. Often the mind wanders while reading. When this happens you might re-read a word, sentence, or passage several times before finally continuing. This also happens in normal conversation. The listener fades out for a bit and then asks to have part of the conversation repeated. Regression is a fancy way of saying that sometimes we read things over and over without really getting it. Sometimes our concentration slips and we don't really notice what's going on as we turn the page. This is a huge time waster. It is better to understand what you read the first time you read it. As with sub-vocalization, regression isn't always bad. Sometimes the fun of reading is finding a book so challenging that you are forced to stop and re-read a section, as if asking yourself, ``Now what did that mean?'' Other times you might re-read a passage simply to enjoy the beauty of it a second time. This is good in the right time and place. Most of the time we would be better off to understand what we are reading the first time. How do the drills fight regression? By practicing at different speeds and with differently sized word groups, the drill makes you more aware of when you understand material and when you don't. You practice getting it right the first time. You build momentum and make a habit of moving steadily forward. You get the immediate reward of feeling certain when you understand, and instant feedback, a feeling of uncertainty when you don't understand what you have read. Reading one word at a time at fast speed can result in understanding less than reading word pairs at normal speed. Once you have experienced this a few times it will be second nature to read at the speed and word group size that gives the most satisfaction. You will also be much more sensitive to when your attention is wavering. When your attention starts to waver, take a break, at least for a minute. This break is a good time to think about what you have been reading. The drill gives you practice at noticing what it is like to go from high comprehension to low comprehension and back again. You get to experience what it is like to have the different kinds of understanding and comprehension that come with different reading styles. Having more structured experience with this helps you automatically adjust your reading methods to meet your needs.

One Word at a Time

We don't think one word at a time; we think in pictures and feelings and noises and smells and tastes. Then we use words to try to convey these experiences to other people. We still don't use the words one at a time at this point, because words can't be fully defined or understood without other words around them. Untrained readers take in word pairs or phrases automatically. You may recall reading in Chapter 1 that a speed of 360 words per minute is easier than reading 180 words per minute. There is nothing magical or illogical about this. The speed of 180 words per minute came from forcing you to read in an unnatural manner, one word at a time, at an unnaturally fast speed. This is what most people do when they try to ``speed read'', and it just doesn't work. Doing drills with different word group sizes and at different speeds gives you clear evidence that perceived speed is as important as words per minute. Reading at the proper perceived speed will allow you to dramatically increase the size of the word groups that you read. The drills teach you to adjust your perceived speed and word group size to fit your material, your mood, and your reading needs. Since we don't think one word at a time, it doesn't make sense to read that way. Once you break the subvocalizing habit you can start reading larger word groups. This is even true for reading out loud. A good ``performance'' reader doesn't read word by word. Instead they read ahead, and figure out--mostly in the back of their minds-which words go together and which ones don't. Then they alter their speed and volume and voice tone for different groups of words; that's what makes the reading come alive. Reading groups of words is even more important in speed reading than it is in performance reading. No word stands alone. In speed reading we break the habit of pretending that words in isolation have meaning. Instead we look at word groups. The drill starts with single words for the same reason we start counting at one count per second. It is important to start with success and build from there; that's why the drills start with Very Slow and single words. But the very first drill introduces the experience of working with word pairs. It may seem odd, at first, to count word pairs and ask yourself, ``Do these words go together?'' This helps make you conscious of something you already do. Once you get the knack of working with pairs, start looking for pairs of pairs, then phrases, clauses, and sentences. One issue with other systems is they place undue emphasis on words, lines, and pages. No one reads that way. What you will learn to do is look for larger and larger meaning-based word groups. This is the same kind of task as when you went from noticing curves and lines to noticing letters. First you looked at squiggles, lines and curves and the placement of little things that make the difference between a b and a p and a d or between a p and a q. Eventually you didn't need to look so close at individual pieces because you could recognize the whole pattern. Later you did much the same thing in the move from letters to sounds; this is what makes phonics work. Later still, you stopped paying attention to the individual sounds in favor of sound groups that make words; except that most people don't go all the way with this last step. Phonics is part of why most people never make the break from words to larger word groups such as phrases and clauses. Letters have sounds associated with them. We learn most words as sounds first, and as written letters second. There is a difference between how the spoken word sounds and how the same word would be pronounced phonetically. This difference holds most people back from learning to read larger word groups. You know the word ``action'' doesn't sound like ``act-eye-on''. You know what it really sounds like, and you also know what it means without the sound. When you speed read, you process letters to make meaning without the sounds. Counting breaks subvocalization and confirms that you don't need to hear a word to understand it. Add the idea that there are larger and more useful meaning units to pay attention to and you really get a boost in speed. If you use that speed for reading the newspaper, you will have time left over to enjoy the beauty of the words in other kinds of reading, at whatever speed you choose. Looking at word pairs puts you in a receptive mode for noticing larger meaningful word groups. You already know plenty about how words fit together. Linguists call this ``constituent structure'', a fancy way of saying you know what does, and what does not, make a meaningful group of words. Think about the sentence:

The painter of the mural hoped the public would like his work.

The words ``The'' and ``painter'' do not fit together the way ``painter'' and ``of'' do. The word ``hoped'' goes with the word ``painter'' in a way that it doesn't go with ``work''. You know all of these things without having to think about them. Normally you wouldn't stop to think about how the words go together, any more than you think about the specific muscles you use to shake someone's hand. However, when you do stop to ask yourself, ``Do these words go together?'' you are using an important part of your mind with extra precision. As a result you will naturally start seeing larger groups. There is a problem that comes up because of the way word groups are laid out on the page. Perhaps in a perfect world each new sentence would start a new line, and when the sentence ended the line would end. Instead, we use capitals and periods because doing it the other way takes too much space. What we end up with is a system where some sentences take up several lines, and some lines have more than one sentence. Sometimes a whole paragraph is only one word long. Maybe you remember asking your teacher, ``How long is a paragraph?'' One teacher told my seventh grade English class that a sentence is a complete thought. The next week, the same teacher told us that a paragraph is a complete thought. How could they be the same? Don't worry, even if you can't define the difference between a sentence and a paragraph, you still know what the difference is. You know it the same way you know the difference between, ``The cat ate the rat,'' and, ``The rat ate the cat''. The same words are in both sentences, but you intuitively knew how very different these two sentences were many years before you ever heard about subjects, verbs, or objects. There is no limit, in theory, to the size of a meaningful word group. In theory a book is a meaningful word group all it's own. In reality there are limits to the word group sizes we can use for reading. The natural speed readers I have studied say the paragraph is an upper limit. Some systems claim a they will teach page at a glance reading. Because a page is a ``printing group'' instead of a ``meaning group'' it seems unlikely that anyone ever really reads a page at a time. Chapter Three, The Obstacles, discusses the page-a-second claim in more detail. When you read phrases and clauses, you will begin to notice how often certain words occur. These words don't really have much effect on the meaning of the sentence, but good grammar requires them. We use tone of voice and facial expressions and gestures to keep things clear when we talk. Since these things are missing in print, we use helper words to keep things clear in print. You wouldn't say things they way you write them, and when you read at the larger meaning group levels you become aware of the amount of repetition and ``non-meaning'' words that are used in writing. As you get used to seeing these helper words they will let you take in even bigger groups of words. In a sentence such as

The cat chased the rat

there are five words, but only three meaning groups

1. The cat
2. chased
3. the rat

We use ``the'' in two of those groups for grammar, but you don't really need to pay much attention to them to understand the sentence and ``see'' the action. The more you drill with larger word groups the more you will automatically take in these kinds of words leaving your mind free to make pictures and understand meanings. You will even notice phrases that work the same way as helper words, letting you take in still larger groups.

Pacing Your Eyes

Every other system I have studied teaches you to pace your eyes by waving your hand over the page. This is supposed to make your eyes go faster than normal. Evelyn Wood and other speed reading teachers accord to hand movements a magical status completely out of proportion with their true value. The roots for this bizarre practice can be found in the story of how Wood ``discovered'' speed reading. The story goes that Wood was reading some book of fiction the usual way. Wood got mad and tossed the book aside, where it landed in some dirt. Magically, when she later picked up the book, she brushed some of the dirt off the page, and suddenly was reading at thousands of words per minute. This story can be found in many books as the explanation for using unnatural hand movements to pace the eyes. The traditional telling of the myth omits two important factors. First, some tellers of the tale fail to mention that Wood was methodically trying to learn to speed read. Wood was interviewing ``natural'' speed readers, trying to find out how they achieved their results. Second, the natural speed readers Wood studied did not use hand pacing. Not one of the naturals I have studied pace by hand. If the people Wood's studied had used hand pacing, she would have been honor bound to place the credit where it belongs, with the natural speed readers she studied. Other speed reading systems teach you to move your hand over the lines very fast. There are two problems with this practice. First, doing any thing at fast speed tends to get in the way of reading. If you have practiced the drill much you have already know that it is much easier to read a clause at a moderate speed than it is to read five individual words at fast speed. The second big problem with hand pacing is that it is awkward and uncomfortable. Reading is a physical skill. Coordination of the eye muscles to control focus while you read is a hard enough task. The drills in this system give you that coordination in a smooth, step-wise fashion. Using the hand to pace the eyes just gets in the way of training the eyes, and it makes you look ridiculous! The need for hand pacing is eliminated by the counting and by starting at 60 words per minute. By starting at an absurdly slow speed you practice pacing your eyes, without pointing at the page. This title of this book comes from this very important concept, that you can pace your eyes without using your hand. Varying the speed during a drill is like lifting variable weights. Your eye muscles literally become more coordinated just from doing the drill, without using your hand to point at the page.

Clearer Pictures and Stronger Emotions

In the end, the time and effort spent doing drills are only validated if you are reading ``faster and better''. The speed issue will come quickly and easily. So will the quality, for when you stop subvocalizing you will find that you are making clearer pictures, having stronger feelings, and understanding more. This is because you are reading for meaning instead of for words. When you read for meaning you get more meaning. This gives better pictures and visualization, with better understanding and emotional impact, all while spending less time reading. This is an exponential reward; higher yield for less invested. That is what speed reading is all about, and it can't be emphasized enough. Why bother to read at all? Why not rent a movie, or better still, why not do something active? There are two basic reasons to read; for fun, or to make a parent, teacher, friend or boss happy. If you are reading not from your own choice but because a boss or teacher or parent requires you to read, then this method is for you. You will get more done in less time and with less effort than you ever imagined. If you are reading for fun, the above is just as true, because you will get more fun from your books when you read at the speed that works best for you. You will know when to go fast and when to go slow. Poetry should not be read quickly. Many fine pieces of literature are meant to be savored. You should always adjust your speed up or down to suit your needs and mood.

What the Drills Do--Conclusion

The drills in chapter one do many things for you. The drills teach you to pace your eyes without using your hand. At the same time, the drills prevent regression. Comprehension goes up when you read by meaning groups. With increased comprehension come clearer pictures and stronger emotional responses. Reading several words at a time increases your speed. THE MOST IMPORTANT STEP IS COUNTING OUT LOUD. Counting out loud breaks subvocalization. This is the most important step in the system. Once you break subvocalization, the rest comes naturally. Once you stop subvocalizing, you will naturally rise to a new level of reading, even without the formal drills. As long as you subvocalize you will be chained to ``speed of speech'' reading. Counting out loud works, just keep in mind that counting out loud is only for drills. You won't actually read while counting out loud unless you so choose. For doing the drills, for breaking the shackles of subvocalization, there is no substitute for counting out loud. The good news about counting out loud is that it works. Other systems teach pacing by hand and leave the subvocalization problem to blind luck. Hand pacing does nothing to break subvocalization. Hand pacing is useless until the reader figures out how to break the subvocalization habit. Some people break the subvocalization habit without knowing how they did it, but the drills make it possible for anyone to succeed at breaking the habit of subvocalizing, if you COUNT OUT LOUD! In reward for doing the drills and counting out loud, you free yourself from the habit of subvocalization. The drills in this book teach you to speed read easily and naturally, anytime, anywhere. So, pick a private place, drill out loud for ten minutes a day, and reap the rewards!!

What Makes the Drills Work

People who observe different phenomena offer different descriptions of how your mind works. The description offered here is based on one criterion: it fits the facts of speed reading. There is no claim to ultimate or final truths on this issue. With the foregoing disclaimer in mind, let's think a bit about how your mind works. Imagine you have a cup full of sand. First, pour out three-fourths of it. Then pour out three-fourths of what's left. Now pour out half of the remainder. After throwing away so much of the sand, you couldn't possibly pretend the cup is still full, could you? Of course not. But this is exactly what we do most of the time when we think about reality. Our first level of contact with reality is our senses, but our senses just aren't up to the task. As an example, think about the sense of sound. Everyone knows that dogs can hear things we can't. It's just as if our ears took the information that dogs get and threw it away. Our eyes have the same problem; we only see a small fraction of the electro-magnetic spectrum. Snakes navigate by taste! We could never do that. Truth is, the real world has much about it that our senses will never be able to detect. And that is just the beginning. Our senses funnel in only a small amount of information about the real world, but the difference between what we can sense and what we do sense is enormous. Most people have never seen the Taj Mahal in person, or the Sphinx, or the Great Wall of China. These things can be sensed, but most of us never get the chance. The difference between what we could sense and what we do sense can be called experience. Our senses only give us a subset of reality, and our experience is only a subset of what is available to our senses. But we're not done pouring out sand just yet, because we notice only a small portion of what we experience; call this little bit perception. As an example, most of the time we don't perceive our breath. This doesn't mean that we weren't breathing, or that our breathing didn't stimulate the nerves that sense feelings; it just means that those signals lost the competition for certain resources eiher through failure to rise above a threshold value for that sensation or because competing signals were stronger. What exactly are the resources in question? We cal it attention, as in "pay attention to your breathing." But there is still some debate as to what that actually means, some confusion about the true role of conscious attention in human behavior. In review, our perceptions are a subset of our experiences; our experiences are a subset of what we could have sensed, and what we could have sensed is a subset of reality. Unfortunately most of us mistake our perceptions for reality all too often. It's time for more imagination. This time, pretend you are looking at a lake, high up in the mountains. As you look you notice the lake has five streams that feed into it. There is also an outlet that flows out the other end of the lake. Clearly , the lake is made up of the water coming in from the five streams. The mountain lake is another way of thinking about how your mind works. There is a lot of talk about how the human mind is like a computer, but that is stating the relationship in reverse. The computer is a super-fast adding machine that works with strings of 1's and 0's to simulate certain functions of the human mind. Actually, the human mind works much more like the mountain lake than like an adding machine. Like the mountain lake, the human mind is constantly changing, always taking in new information, never the same from moment to moment. The five streams are the five senses; the outlet represents our actions and behaviors as perceived by others. The surface of the lake is what some people call the conscious mind; the unconscious mind is the rest of the lake. Did you ever wonder what your unconscious mind is? One interesting opinion is offered by researcher George Miller, in a paper called ``The Magic Number 7 +/- 2''. This paper described Miller's efforts to measure the conscious mind. Miller concluded that most people, most of the time, can consciously pay attention to about seven things. When people relax and feel sharp the number goes up to nine; when they are tense and stressed the number goes down to five. At any moment, the five (or seven, or nine) things you have in mind make up your conscious mind; the rest is your unconscious. What you aren't conscious of is your unconscious. This may sound overly simple, but it works. The drills take advantage of Miller's work by helping you increase the attention paid to meaningful groups of words, while paying less and less attention to individual words in isolation. Another vital aspect of Miller's work is called ``Chunking''. Miller's research pointed out that most people, most of the time, have about seven ``chunks'' of conscious attention, but it turns out that a chunk can be any size. It is as easy to think consciously about seven planets as it is to think about seven peanuts, according to Miller's work. This is why you drill with different sized groups of words. The word ``decided'' can be broken into several different kinds of chunks: it can be seven letters, three syllables, or one word. Just as letters combine to make words, words combine to make larger chunks. Most of us read at the one-word-at-a-time level because we aren't taught to practice seeing larger chunks. Here is a third way to look at the way your mind works: pretend you have five brains. This is just a way of describing things, but it is interestingly useful. People often act as if there were a separate brain for each of their senses; a seeing brain, a feeling brain, a hearing brain, a smelling brain, and a tasting brain. These five brains work together sometimes, but other times they each work on their own agendas. What about talking to your self, imagining things, and memories of sensation? These are each handled by the five brains. When you talk to yourself you keep your hearing brain busy. When you daydream and visualize what you will see on vacation you are keeping your seeing brain busy. Whether processing sensations from the world outside, or internal creations and memories, it's the same five brains at work. One great thing about the human mind is the ability to do more than one thing at a time. Do you ever drive your car, listen to the radio, and converse with a passenger, all at the same time? That is an everyday example of parallel processing. Eating dinner while watching TV is another good example. Parallel processing is just a label for doing more than one thing at a time. Five brain theory gives one explanation for parallel processing. Information comes to us constantly from all five of the senses. Often what we hear has nothing to do with what we see. Often what we are looking at has nothing to do with what we are touching. When you drive, you can see the road, and your hands can move the steering wheel even if you are busy talking to a passenger or singing along with the radio. Your body can respond to the visual input even though you are also busy with sound input. Cross-referencing is the flip-side of parallel processing. Parallel processing is like each brain doing its own thing. Cross-referencing is when activity in one brain triggers activity in the other brains. An ex-lover's cologne, the scent of fresh cut grass, the odor of a new car, the aroma of a hospital; any of these can bring back memories strong enough to make you smile or cringe. The smells trigger pictures and sounds and feelings. It's as if the smelling brain sends a signal to the other brains saying, ``Hey, any of you have something to match up with this?'' Here is another useful set of ideas about how your mind works to consider before we get to clarifying what all this has to do with speed reading. The main premise came from research done on surgery patients. The surgery disconnected the two hemispheres of the brain. This research identified two kinds of thinking, sometimes called ``Linear'' and ``Global''. Experiments showed that the left half of the brain controls the right side of the body. The left half of the brain is also responsible for language, for talking and understanding words. The right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, and is responsible for pictures. Words only work when presented in a line, whereas pictures work all at once; you can see a whole picture at a glance. The two parts of the brain divide the labor; one part processes words and the other part processing pictures. This division means each side gets used to working either with little bits in a row (language) or with everything all at once (pictures). Language is linear, pictures are global, and each side of the brain specializes in one or the other. With spoken words you have no choice but to take them as they come, one at a time. But when you write words on a page you run into trouble. Your eyes see the page like a picture. The right side of the brain naturally and automatically wants to see the whole page at once, which will only lead to chaos. The conflict between the linear word processing side of the brain and the global picture processing side of the brain may even be implicated in dyslexia. Don't make the mistake of thinking that linear is better than global or that global is better than linear. Picture thinking (also called global, analogic, holistic, or right-brain thinking) and word thinking (also called particular, digital, linear, or left-brain thinking) are both extremely useful and valuable. No one can be complete without a good helping of both kinds of thinking. Imagine a world of words with no pictures to attach them to, or a world of sights that could never be described. The ability to bridge the gap, to use both picture thinking and word thinking is essential to being fully alive, fully human. Process and content are fancy ways of saying ``how'' and ``what''. Process is how a thing is done; content is the stuff on or with which the process works. As an example, words are the content of your reading; subvocalizing or not subvocalizing is the how of your reading. Using these terms together gives the greatest advantage. As a rule of thumb, if you want to teach someone something new, you should use a familiar method or process. We see this with children learning their multiplication tables; they use verbal repetition just as they did when learning their ABC's. Later they associate what they have learned using verbal repetition with sequences of written symbols: numbers and mathematical operators. A child who fails to make this connection will do poorly in mathematics. To repeat: if you want to teach new content, use a familiar process. But what if you want to teach a new process or method? When teaching a new method, a new process, a new ``how to'', you should use content that is simple and easy for the student. This is why the drills start out at one word per second. Sixty words a minute is super-easy for most people. By setting the speed to make the content easy the drills make it easy to focus on the new process of reading while counting out loud. For this same reason you will want to practice the drills using a book that is fairly easy for you. Drill time is the right time for childhood favorites like the Wizard of Oz, but the wrong time for the latest best seller on some topic totally new to you. Another thing to keep in mind, each of your ``five brains'', each of your senses can be used to process both types of information. Your eyes usually bring your pictures to be seen as a whole, but not when reading. When you read your eyes have to deal with linear information. On the other hand, listening to waves crashing at the shore, or listening to the sound of a river as is flows is using your ears to process global information. No amount of linear words will ever capture the sound of the ocean's roar. Each of your senses can gather and deal with both types of information. Each of your ``five brains'' will deal better with one kind of information than with the other, but they each can make do with either linear or global information in a pinch. Five brain theory is not a real theory, it's just a way to talk about your mind and how it works; but the left-brain/right-brain theory is based on good science. This gives us a total of seven kinds of brains, falling into two groups. First comes the ``five brains'' of the senses; this is a content group. These five brains group together because they identify the type of content being processed; sights, sounds, feelings, smells, or tastes. The other group, linear versus global, is a process group. Each process can handle each type of content, and vice-versa. In the next section we will talk about all seven kinds of brains. It is important to remember it's all just a way to describe what goes on in your head. It is also important to remember that five of the brains are really just a way of talking about the type of content being handled. The other two are a way to talk about the way that content is handled.

Frames of Reference and Re-framing

No word has meaning without a frame of reference. A word has meaning only when it is referenced to a listener's, or a reader's experience. This is simple enough to see, and thinking in these terms is a good habit. When we don't understand another person's actions it often helps to check their frame of reference. Without a web of associated sights and sounds and feelings we could never make meaning of anything. As noted before, we can't even understand as simple a word as ``run'' without a frame of reference. If the reference is a picture of a race track with horses coming around the final turn, run will mean what the horses are doing. If the reference is a picture of a woman's panty hose with small tear, run will mean the tear. If the picture is of Alaskan salmon swimming up stream to spawn, run will mean what the fish are doing. Without frames of reference, without a web of sights, sounds, feelings, smells, or tastes, we have no way to make sense of the world around us. Frames of reference control the way we interpret events, so it is a good idea to have ways to change a person's frame of reference. There's a classic zen story about a Chinese farmer who loses his horse. The farmer's neighbors tell him how sorry they are for the farmer, but he only replies, ``Is that so?'' Soon the horse returns, and with it comes a second horse. All the farmer's friends tell him how glad they are for his good fortune, but he only replies, ``Is that so?'' A week later, while trying to break the new horse, the farmer's oldest son--his most valuable worker--is thrown from the horse and breaks his leg. Again the neighbors offer sympathy, again the farmer replies, ``Is that so?'' When the warlord's men come through a week later, conscripting all the able-bodied young men in the village, the son with the broken leg is left behind. The neighbors proclaimed the farmer's incredible good luck not to have lost his son to the warlord--you can guess the farmer's reply. Losing the horse was bad when the frame of reference was needing a plow animal, but it was good when the frame of reference was doubling the farmer's ``horse power''. Having a second horse was good when the frame of reference was having more horse power, but it was bad when the frame of reference was breaking the son's leg. A son with a broken leg was bad in the frame of reference of getting the farm work done, but it was good when the frame of reference became not losing him forever to an army. All of this switching back and forth can be confusing. How can you say if the horse's getting lost was good or bad? Consider the event with any one frame of reference in mind and you can come to a clear answer; but if you take them all into account the answer is not so clear. Most people use their most recent experiences as the reference structure for the present. This can make trouble because what happened five minutes ago might have nothing to do with what is happening now. Stories like the one about the farmer help us remember to look for different frames of reference when interpreting life's events. Looking for alternate frames of reference is the first step in learning to change our frames of reference.

Examples

Reading as Cross-Referencing

Let's think for a bit about how the ideas described above apply to reading. Right off the bat you might notice reading is an example of cross-referencing. There is nothing chair-like about the word chair, but with those lines and curves making letters in that order, the seeing brain says to the others, ``Anyone got something to go with this?'' Usually the hearing brain answers, ``Sure, I've got some sounds here. Anyone got stuff to go with these sounds?'' Before long your five brains have gathered up a collection of images and feelings that go with the sounds that go with the letters of the written form of the word chair. Reading involves cross-referencing among the various senses. Since the right side of the brain does most seeing, and the left side of the brain processes most words, reading involves cross-referencing between the two sides of the brain. The drills take this into account; it is why you must count out loud.

Counting out loud as parallel processing

Counting out loud is an example of parallel processing. Counting out loud keeps the hearing brain busy, cutting off the chance to sub-vocalize. Counting out loud gives the hearing brain something to keep it busy and out of the way. Meanwhile the feeling brain is working from the speed of the counting to control the eye muscles, which lets the seeing brain get its information in a smooth linear fashion. Finally the seeing brain cross-references the words (or phrases, clauses, sentences, etc.) from the linear part of the brain to the global part of the brain, getting meaning in the form of pictures and feelings about those meanings and pictures. As you improve with the skills of speed reading you will be less and less aware of the words on the page. Instead, you will be and more and more aware of the pictures, sounds, and feelings that go with the meanings of the words.

Hand pacing as superstition

Cross-referencing and parallel processing can be great things, but they can also cause problems. One great example is the story of Evelyn Wood. As mentioned earlier in this book, Ms.

Wood was trying to learn how to speed read. She interviewed and studied speed readers, but couldn't quite master their methods. One day, while trying to speed read she became frustrated and tossed her book to the ground. Later, after the frustration ebbed, she picked up the book to try again, but noticed dirt on the pages. Wood used her hand to sweep away the dirt and suddenly found herself reading faster than she ever imagined--so of course she decided that the hand moving in a sweeping motion is what did the trick. Wood went on to pioneer the teaching of speed reading, but all her work assumed the need for hand pacing. She knew of the need to break subvocalization, but she didn't have concepts that let her address this problem directly. She was, no doubt, sincere in her belief that hand pacing was a necessity. How did this happen? And why call hand pacing a superstition? Let's start by agreeing on what is meant by the term ``superstition''. Superstition is believing an item or action has an effect that it doesn't really have. Common examples are carrying a rabbit's foot, yelling at a bowling ball as it rolls towards the pins, and wearing a lucky hat when playing poker. None of these things have any effect but people do them every day. Superstitions come to us in several ways. Sometimes we are simply told about them. Things like walking under ladders or black cats crossing your path are usually passed on this way. More interesting are the superstitions we make up on our own. These personalized superstitions come from a simple mistake of thinking, a mistake so powerful that some people never stop making it. Imagine seeing a shooting star, and five minutes later finding a one-hundred dollar bill in the road. When two events happen close in time there is a tendency to think they are related. When stated clearly we can see that it is utter nonsense to assume any relationship between the shooting star and the money. The only relation between the star and the money is time. Because time plays such a strong part in how our minds work, it is natural to make this kind of mistake. When something good happens we look for a way to make it happen again, and we usually latch onto the last thing we noticed before the good thing happened. The story of the superstitious horse can help us understand how something like Wood's superstition of hand pacing can be so powerful. Psychologists rigged a horse's stall with a metal plate beneath one of the horse's hooves. The metal plate was hooked to a circuit so it would shock the horse. The experimenters would ring a bell a few seconds before electrifying the metal plate. Soon the horse ``learned'' that the bell ``caused'' the shock, and started lifting its hoof as soon as the bell rang. The big test came after the experimenters stopped electrifying the plate. When the bell rang, the horse still lifted its hoof. How was the horse to know that the plate was no longer electrified when it never touched the metal plate? Similarly, it seems that Wood's belief in hand pacing was enough, when combined with what success her system had, to keep others from even trying to speed read without hand pacing.

Reference Frames for Speed Reading

Tops and Gyroscopes as Frames of Reference for Bicycling

Speed reading requires special frames of reference. Without certain experiences to refer to, speed reading is almost impossible for most people to learn. Whereas natural speed readers stumble upon these experiences, the drills provide you directly with the required frames of reference. Do you know how to ride a bicycle? Maybe you learned by using training wheels, as many people do. Training wheels give a youngster some of the feelings of bicycling, but there is a draw back. Training wheels prevent the cyclist from experiencing a unique aspect of cycling, which is the sense of balancing in line with the movement of the bike. To make training wheels work one or both of the training wheels must be in touch with the road yet they are often set so high a child can't even be truly upright while riding. Instead the child leans one way to get one of the training wheels on the ground, to get the sense of stability they crave. This is the exact opposite of what a competent cyclist does. Why do children need training wheels at all? They see people riding bicycles, the know the bike stays up somehow, but they don't know how. It is scary to get on something that can fall over without knowing what is holding it up. What does hold up a bicycle? The answer is easy, but for most people it is totally unconscious. The cyclist makes constant adjustments to their position, and those adjustments are geared to spin of the wheels. Competent cyclists know that below a certain speed a bike is less steady. Often you will see a cyclist push off to get the bike rolling as they mount; this gets them up to the critical speed at which the bike starts to stabilize itself. Have you ever tried walking your bike by holding the seat instead of holding the handle bars? If you go fast enough, the front wheel will just about keep itself upright. If you go too slow you spend all of your time trying to tilt the bike frame back and forth to get the front wheel in line. The principle involved is the same as that which keeps a spinning top upright. Spin a top fast enough and it will stand on a point. As the top loses speed it starts to wobble and finally falls over. Gyroscopes work the same way. Here's an experiment to try. With a string, suspend a gyroscope from one side of its axle. Next, hold the other side of the axle to the wheel is upright. You can spin the wheel and remove your hand-wheel will stay upright. I do this as a demonstration in my speed reading classes; but, instead of a little gyroscope, I use a bicycle wheel. It makes quite an impression to see the wheel, held only on one side of the ax le, spinning perfectly upright! Learning to feel and use the stabilizing force of a spinning wheel is a large part of cycling competence. If a child (or their teacher) doesn't know about this goal, how can they achieve it? If more children knew about this goal from seeing the wheel experiment described above, there might be a sharp drop in training wheel sales. Once a person has this experience as a frame of reference they never lose it. You can go years without getting on a bike, but the feeling of working with the stabilizing force produced by the wheel's spinning comes right back, ``Just like riding a bike.''

Drills as Frames of Reference for Information Without Subvocals

Tops and gyroscopes and the feeling of stabilization are the frames of reference for bicycling; what are the required frames of reference for speed reading? The most important frame of reference for speed reading is the experience of reading a word and knowing what it means, without hearing it. Remember the tests in the opening of this book, where you were asked to recite the pledge of allegiance or sing jingle bells? Those tests had one purpose, to give the experience of reading without subvocalizing. Reading while vocalizing something unrelated gives that experience. The rest of the drills continue to develop this frame of reference.

Drill as Frame of Reference for Meaningful Word Groups

The drills also provide experience with the difference between reading one word at a time and reading larger word groups. Some word groups are based on the number of words in the group. Some word groups are based on how you divide a line of print. The most important word groups are the ones based on meaning: phrases, clauses, sentences and paragraphs. It is nearly impossible to do three weeks of the drills and not come to the clear understanding that you can read more than one word at a time. Using the drills, most people find it is easier to read multiple words in a group than it is to read one word at a time.

Faster & Better?

The idea of speed reading assumes you want to read faster. Most people assume that faster is better and slowing down should be minimized. What a tragically limited view of reading! Poetry is an obvious example of faster being worse. Much poetry is meant to be savored, to roll around in the mind. If you speed read poetry you will get the data from the words, but you aren't as likely to get the subtleties of emotion. Often the longer you mull over a good poem, the better it gets. Good poetry gets better as you re-read it with different inflections, it gets better as you search for deeper meanings. And what is true of poetry can be equally true of all writing--often slower is better. Part of the problem comes from the way we use words. Most of us use words without thinking of what they mean, which is the way words should work. Imagine the time wasted if, every time you wanted to say, ``Pass me the salt,'' you had to say, ``Pass me that container of granulated sodium-chloride''. The second version is closer to what you really mean; but, luckily, most people know what you mean when you use the first version. Most of the time we can rely on words to mean what we generally think they mean. On the other hand, it is a mistake to forget that a group of words just might mean something unexpected. Many of life's biggest problems have their root in this kind or mistake. Most words have several forms, each with a shade difference from all of the others. A great example of this is the word ``believe''. Written this way we use ``believe'' as a verb, as in the sentence,

I believe everything I read

Another way to say nearly the same thing is,

Everything I read gives me a belief

These two sentences share one essential meaning, but the words used to express that meaning change quite a bit. In the second sentence, the verb``believe'' has changed into the noun ``belief''. What we have here is two versions of the same idea; in one version the idea shows up as an action, in the other version the idea shows up as a thing. That's part of the magic of language, verbs can become nouns, and this lets us say things many, many different ways. Just as saying, ``Pass me the salt,'' is usually better than saying, ``Pass me that container of granulated sodium-chloride'', so too there are many times when talking about beliefs is better than talking about what you believe, even though they mean much the same thing. In the English language it is usually easier to talk about things than it is to talk about actions. People don't ask, ``How do you earn your living?'' Instead they ask, ``What do you do?'' The word ``what'' is the question word for persons, places and things, but we use it when we want to know how a person pays their bills. That's more language magic. Like anything magical, language has to be used carefully. The same magic that can free your mind and ease your heart can also put burrs under your saddle and make your head spin. Words that shift back and forth from verb form to noun form are especially dangerous, because we don't often think about how much words can change. Things are what they are, or so we assume most of time. When the ``thing'' in question is as intangible as a belief, we can get into a lot of trouble. Take two sentences:

I have had this necklace since I was eighteen.

and

I have had this belief since I was eighteen.

The words ``necklace'' and ``belief'' are both nouns. They each act as the object of the sentence. You can put a necklace on a scale and see how much it weighs. But what if I asked you how much the belief weighs? What answer could you give? You certainly couldn't put a belief on a scale. Because belief is intangible we know it is really an alternative version of the action ``believe''. Another good example is ``relationship''. Early in a new romance we may say, ``I like this person, and they seem to like me too. So far we treat each other well''. Then we can say, ``I like the way we get along. I like the way we relate''. Later we say, ``We have a good relationship''. Still later, if things don't work out, we say, ``What a lousy relationship that turned out to be''. If this happens often enough, we soon say, ``I have bad luck with relationships''. Compare the two versions:

What a lousy relationship that turned out to be.

and

As we learned more about each other we didn't like each other so much. And as we spent more time together, we sometimes treated each other poorly.

Sure, the ``bad luck'' version is quicker, almost like mental short hand. But notice, there is no sense of responsibility, no sense of hope for making things better in the future. Now look at the long version. The ``As we learned'' version makes it easy and natural to think of ways to do better next time, ways to make better choices, ways to treat people better, and even ways to be treated better by others. This is more language magic. Pick one version and you might as well resign yourself to a life of loneliness. Pick the other version and you are on the way to solving the problem for future. Another piece of language magic: some words change from noun version to verb version without changing their spelling or pronunciation. With the ``relationship'' and ``belief'' examples we get clues that something is different. ``Relate'' changes to ``relationship'', ``believe'' changes to ``belief.'' What about words like love, trust, hope? These words are doubly tricky because they shift form without clue. The ancient question, ``What is love?'' is probably best answered, ``Love is a verb, love is something you do.'' To make matters worse, love isn't any single thing you do; many things you do can be called love. Which one is really ``LOVE''? That is like asking which kind of ``run'' is the real one. One home dictionary lists 88 versions, bigger dictionaries have as many as 140. Run is two kinds of verb, a noun, and an adjective, and each one is the real meaning of ``run''! Here are some common meanings for ``I love'':

I approve of...
I enjoy mightily...
I desire the presence of...
I treat well...
I have sex with...
My sense of well being requires the well being of...

That's a lot of ground to cover for one small word. No wonder people get confused! Because they are intangible we know ``run'' and ``love'' are actions first, even though we often talk about them as things. Many beautiful things have been said about what love is; what a shame it would be if we couldn't talk about love this way. ``Run'' and ``love'' are obvious examples of words that keep their spelling and pronunciation as they go from the verb version to the noun version. Two words less obvious examples are ``understanding,'' and ``reading.'' Both have a verb version and a noun version; both keep the same pronunciation and spelling in each form.

What is Reading?

First things first; ``reading'' is a version of the verb ``read''. ``Reading'' can be an alternative verb version of ``read''; it can also be a noun version of ``read''. ``Reading'' keeps its spelling and pronunciation in both the verb and the noun versions. This makes reading a magical word, capable of great good and great mischief. We need to ask, ``What does it mean to read, to be reading, to have finished reading, to have read in the past?'' Answering this question helps minimize the mischief ``reading'' can do. As with the question, ``What is love?'', there are many answers. Look in a dictionary and you will see many different meanings for the word ``read'', but we will limit ourselves to meanings that involve your eyes and printed material. A simple definition of ``read'' is, ``To gather information by seeing written material.'' This is the variation of ``read'' used in this book. So far so good, ``read'' means ``gather information by seeing written material.'' How do we do this? How do we gather information just by looking at a page full of marks? Most of us read by letting the seeing brain turn the sights over to the hearing brain, then the hearing brain figures out ``what the words are'' based on their sounds. This isn't your only option. When you were young, instead of words, the seeing brain dealt with each letter while hoping one of the other brains would help make sense of the letters. Since most of us learn the alphabet as a song long before we can tell by sight which letter is which guess which brain comes to the rescue and identifies the letters? In the early stages of learning our letters the hearing brain performs much the same task as it does in average reading. As time goes by, we learn the alphabet so well that we don't have to pay attention to the names and sounds of individual letters. We recognize the letters on sight, without hearing their names, without thinking. About this time we start paying attention to words instead of individual letters, but an odd thing happens. Long after we can recognize most words on sight, we continue to turn them over to the hearing brain. Why do we do this? Probably for two main reasons. First, it's a habit. Second, no one tells us do differently. Unless we are just hungry to read as much as possible, most of us just don't make the next step. At this next step we quit turning words over to the hearing brain and start recognizing words on sight, without hearing them, without thinking. This is really the same as when you quit hearing the names and sounds of individual letters and started paying attention to words. Reading is gathering information from seeing written words. In the same way, speed reading is gathering that information without the needless middle step of hearing the words. What does it mean to read? Here's another answer: it means using the brain that specializes in global information to gather linear information. Does that sound like a bit of a problem? It is. Vision works on whole images, all at once. It is unnatural to look at a piece of paper and see one bit at a time, in rows. The eye would really prefer to look at the entire page all at once. This all at once approach would be great, but word order affects meaning. Change the order of the words in a sentence and just watch the meaning change. As an example,

``The cat chased the rat''

is quite different from

``The rat chased the cat''.

Once we succeed in taking global sensations, the marks on the page, and converting them to linear data, words in sequence, we need to convert that linear data to global pictures and sounds and feelings and add them all together to make meaning. To review, we use the global visual channel to gather linear verbal information, words, then we convert the linear verbal information into global sights and sounds and feelings. Wouldn't it be great if we could skip a step? The drills teach how to skip at least part of a step. The drills force you to practice going straight from the visual words to their meanings. This is why drills start with word groups based on the number of words in a group, then switch to word groups based on meaning, such as phrases and clauses. Switching between these types of groups lets you experience the difference between arbitrary word groups and meaning-based word groups. The experience of increased comprehension that comes with reading by meaning-based word groups adds to your ability to get meaning directly from the sight of the words. What else does it mean to read? Does it mean to have fun? If so, then what's the rush? If you are reading solely for pleasure, then who cares how fast you read? It is nobody's business how fast you read. When reading for fun you should always read just as fast, or just as slow, as you want. You should read at the speed that makes your reading most fun, and sometimes slower will be better. A great example of slower being better is mentioned in the book, ``Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance''. The narrator of that book talks about traveling with his son on a cross-country motorcycle trip. There isn't much room on a motorcycle, so packing is a serious issue. The narrator always takes at least one book such as Thoreaus's ``Walden''. The narrator reads to his son when they camp for the night, and after two or three pages the son always has questions; which makes ``Walden'' a superb book for such trips. Some books are much more fun when read slowly and mulled over or talked about with friends. Other books are only fun when read straight through, like sitting through a movie. The best books might be those that work well both at both speeds. If you are reading for fun, who is to decide what speed is most fun for you? It's true that reading faster can bring you clearer pictures and stronger emotions, but sometimes there is much to gain by going slower. Does ``read'' mean anything else? Does it mean ``work''? Whether at school or on the job, most of us have a certain amount of reading that isn't much fun. What's the best way to do work reading? Sometimes fast, sometimes slow, depending on how well you know the topic, and what you are expected to do with material. When you read for work or school you read, not for fun, but for understanding. As pointed out earlier, ``understanding'' is a tricky word just like ``reading.''

What is ``Understanding''?

``Understanding'' comes from the word, ``understand'', the way ``reading'' comes from the word, ``read'', the same way ``relationship'' comes from the word, ``relate''. This time we ask, ``What does it mean to understand?'' This question is even harder to answer than, ``What does it mean to read?'' There are strong disagreements among experts about the answer. What do you mean when you say, ``I understand.'' Often we mean, ``I hear your words and follow their meanings. I am not confused by you.'' Most of the time this is all the understanding we need, but there are times when ``understand'' must mean more. How do you know someone understands you? If you are a teacher, you give a test. Teachers use tests to measure how well their students understand what has been taught. This is one way to look at understanding, and it has pluses and minuses. There are different ways to test for understanding, and each has different pros and cons. Sometimes understanding means scoring well on a multiple choice test. This is a popular method used to test student understanding. The student is presented with a question and offered set of possible answers. Teachers expect the student to choose the right answer if they understand, and to choose a wrong answer if they don't understand. More correct answers means better understanding. There are two basic problems with this kind of understanding. First, students can choose the right answer without understanding the material. Scholastic Aptitude Test ``prep'' courses teach methods such as looking at the question first then skimming the material to find the answer. This is a great way to score well on tests, but it is a lousy way to understand material. The second problem is when the student understands the material well, but doesn't understand the question. One young lady, a brilliant girl with a 4.0 grade point average in a rigorous college preparatory program, received only average marks on her S.A.T.. This did nothing to prevent her from continuing on to Yale with High Honors and following this with Berkeley Law. She was an avid reader, with deep understanding and appreciation for the written word, but the S.A.T. doesn't measure these things. Standardized tests are linear in nature, and this friend was better at big picture thinking. She would read a passage, then look at the question, then look at the answers--some of which were just plain dumb. From a big picture standpoint some of those answers were just too dumb for words, and this can be a powerful distraction for global thinkers. Imagine that you have staked your whole future on this one test. When you start seeing dumb things on the test, the big picture begins to look a little scary. How can college entrance be based on a test with dumb answers? Think like this long enough and you start getting anxious, which only makes it worse. When we read we use the global sense of sight to gather linear information, then we convert that information to global images and sounds and feelings. Standardized tests ask us to bring that information back to a linear format, which seems wrong to many people. What else does it mean to understand? Sometimes it means to speak or write about what we understand. This often happens in work settings, where we have to read material and then write a report or give a presentation. Many teachers give essay tests or require presentations. Like standardized tests, essays and presentations have their own plusses and minuses. The most important downside to essay tests and presentations is subtle. There is a huge difference between understanding something, and expressing yourself well in writing or speaking well on your feet. Many people do well in school, not because they understand so well, but because they are better than others on their feet or they write exceedingly well. So far we have described three kinds of understanding: ``follows my words without confusion'', ``scores well on multiple choice tests'', and ``speak or writes about the material well''. Many educators overlook a fourth, vital, kind of understanding, emotional involvement. Enjoying material, getting angry about material, having any emotion about the material is an important form of understanding. Emotional response may be the most important way to understand your leisure reading. Even your work reading can have emotional impact. Some teachers believe that if you understand with emotional response it will help with other kinds of understanding. Chuckles and tears are often better measures of understanding than essays, presentations, and multiple-choice tests. At all times you should read for the kind of understanding that suits your mood and your needs. Fighting subvocalization, fighting regression, doing away with hand pacing, and learning to read in meaningful groups of words are the four things accomplished by The Drills. Ideas like The Mountain Lake, Five Brain Theory, and Frames of Reference help explain how The Drills accomplish the goals established in The Rationale. But if it is as easy as doing the drills and acquiring the skills, if it is all as simple as it seems here, then why isn't speed reading common knowledge and standard practice? How could the superstition of hand pacing survive so long? There are no easy answers, but the next chapter, The Obstacles, looks at a selection of things that interfere with learning to speed read.