Need help...ummm...reading

[jordan]

Yes, I need help reading. Not so much the actual act of reading, but how to concentrate on reading. I can't focus for more than two or three sentences before I zone out. It takes me hours to read a chapter for philosophy when it should really only be about a half hour of reading. Is there anything I can do to focus better so I can get my homework done?

[Dak]

are you dyslexic? or do you find your work really booring? (trouble concentrating on reading being symptoms of both of those conditions).

 

other than that, try reading out-loud, and have a 5 minit break every 10/15 minutes (or even every 5, if nessesary).

[jordan]

I'm not dyslexic. I actually read really fast. But unless I'm deep into the reading I can't focus. I had to read Jurassic Park at the beginning of the year and that was the last book that I could read without losing focus to the point that I couldn't recite anything of what I had read. Now I'm trying Merchant's "The Death of Nature" for class and can't make it very far at all. I would take a break every 10/15 mintues but I can't focus for more than 10/15 seconds. Reading out loud works moderately better but it's very tough to find somewhere to do that without looking weird or being annoying.

[Nevermore]

Do you have ADD?

[Phi for All]

Sometimes the way things are written are not the way we would say them ourselves. This may make the words have less meaning to you and therefore hold your interest less.

 

If you could get into the habit of reading a sentence, then repeating the sentence to yourself in your own words, it may help you get through each chapter AND improve your comprehension. It sounds like a pain but you get used to it quickly.

 

I used to use this technique when memorizing lines for plays, especially Shakespeare and the Greek classics, which are so stylized in terms of speech. It helps to make the words more personal before going back to what's actually written.

[jordan]

Do you have ADD?

I could possibly. I haven't been diagnosed, but it would seem so. I'm going to try what Phi suggested here because I'm way behind on philosophy.

[Phi for All]

Do you have ADD?

My daughter was (unprofessionally) diagnosed with ADD while in preschool. We refused to go the traditional route of Ritalin and ignorance and investigated other solutions.

 

We found the Sensory Integration Institute in a town 30 miles away. My daughter was tested and they found she had a slight imbalance in her hearing, something most tests miss. It was causing aural input to lag behind other sensory input. They ran sessions with her being bombarded by lots of different sensations while being asked to perform certain actions (lying on an oscillating table in a dark room with a slowly pulsing colored light, listening to music on headphones adjusted for her hearing impairment, playing with glow-in-the-dark toys while answering questions).

 

The sessions forced her to integrate all the varied sensations and the results were very impressive. She has no problems with first grade and is doing extremely well socially, too. I've wanted to laugh in the face of the social worker who urged us to put her on Ritalin (she herself had been taking it since she was young).

 

jordan, you might want to try altering the sensory stimuli in your study area. Be scientific about it and try different lighting, listen to some music (instrumental only, like classical or some good jazz), even try sitting on an exercise ball or something with different tactile input. Try lighting a scented candle also. Record your observations and how much you read and comprehend. Perhaps some sensory combination will lead you to better success.

[jordan]

Awesome Phi. I'll give it a shot and report back soon.

[ecoli]

Good judgment Phi... I have a theory that the government is trying to get all the children on Ritilin to try and give everyone a chemical lobatomy, so they only have to deal with a half-drugged population that will offer them no resistance when they decide to control us.

[insane_alien]

meh the hardest drug i put into my body is an anti-histamine and maybe a parecetemol or asprin if i really need it. don't like drugs

[senexa]

Jordan, the problem may not be with your concentration ability at all but with accessing of the neural network of long-term memory storage.

 

Maybe your diet is contributing if you are eating a lot of preservatives and fast-food, or maybe you are not getting enough sleep to allow your brain time to adequately sort and store the learning and memories you entered into the data banks during the day.

 

Either way, you can help yourself by attaching your reading time to tactile experience. A good way to do this is to highlight important sentences with a highlighter pen, and jot down a note in the margin about that thought. The very act of writing something out in long-hand will help move it from your short-term or working memory into the long-term, recoverable memory you need for scholarship.

 

Here's a cool site that you might find helpful:

 

http://www.memorymentor.com/