Step Three - Word Pairs

In the previous exercises you were moving your eyes one word at a time, to match the pace of your counting. In the next phase of the drills you will look at word pairs instead of single words. Read the paragraph below four times. The first time, use your Slow speed, and for each count, move your eyes to the next pair of words. The second time look at the word pairs while counting at Normal speed. The third reading is at Fast, and the fourth is at Very Fast, each time stopping on a pair of words with the count. For all four readings, move your eyes from pair to pair as you count, odd number on bolded pairs, even numbers on plain pairs.

It was a dark and stormy night. The spooky old house was silent and still, sitting alone at the top of the hill. John tried not to be afraid as he walked up the steps, crossed the porch, and timidly knocked on the heavy oak door. There was no answer, but the door slowly creaked open from being knocked upon. Through the opening John could see a foyer, with a coat rack on his right. What wallpaper he could see was old and peeling, but he could just make out, in the flashing of the lightning, an eerie pattern of trees or an ancient forest. As he stared through the opened door, trying to discern the shapes of the shadows on the wall, John was completely surprised by what he saw next.

The formatting in the paragraph above makes it easier to see the words in pairs. As you looked at each pair, you probably noticed that some pairs don't fit together so well. In the third sentence, the words "the" and "heavy" don't go together the same way as do "oak" and "door." "Oak door" is a complete phrase, but "the heavy" isn't. Recognizing how words go together is an important part of how you process language, as explained in more detail in "The Rationale." For now just read through the formatted paragraph again, at each of the four speeds. For each word pair, instead of looking directly at the words, look at the space between them. Notice how you can still see both words without looking directly at either one. Also, without looking directly at either word, you can still understand the words well enough to sense whether a pair fits together well or poorly.

Going Faster by Going Slower

The "dark and stormy night" paragraph is repeated below, this time with no special formatting. Your next task is to read the word pairs in the paragraph nine times. Don't worry if you get a little confused on the count, or if you miss a pair or look at a trio by mistake. You might even find the line breaks trick you into occasionally looking at a single word. None of these things are important. Let yourself get used to the idea of looking at more than one word at a time and thinking about how they fit together to make meaning. Hold as close as you can to word pairs while reading at the different rhythms as indicated below:

1. Normal speed, a single word per count,
2. Fast speed, a single word per count,
3. Very Fast speed, a single word per count,
4. Slow speed, a pair of words per count,
5. Normal speed, a pair of words per count,
6. Slow speed, a pair of words per count,
7. Very Fast speed, a single word per count,
8. Fast speed, a single word per count,
9. Normal speed, a single word per count.

It was a dark and stormy night. The spooky old house was silent and still, sitting alone at the top of the hill. John tried not to be afraid as he walked up the steps, crossed the porch, and timidly knocked on the heavy oak door. There was no answer, but the door slowly creaked open from being knocked upon. Through the opening John could see a foyer, with a coat rack on his right. What wallpaper he could see was old and peeling, but he could just make out, in the flashing of the lightning, an eerie pattern of trees or an ancient forest. As he stared through the opened door, trying to discern the shapes of the shadows on the wall, John was completely surprised by what he saw next.

Congratulations