What is marking in speed reading?

Marking is step 3 of Speed Readingo's method: at the end of a paragraph you tie the idea you need to something you already know, usually a vivid picture. It keeps remembering separate from reading, so you can read at pace and still keep the key points.

How do you remember what you read when you read fast?

Separate reading from remembering: read the paragraph at pace, then stop and mark one idea, and test yourself on it later. Self-testing and spaced review are the study techniques with the strongest evidence (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

Do memory techniques like this really work?

For lists of words and terms, yes: in 13 randomised trials, the memory palace improved recall by a medium amount, though many trials were weak in design (Twomey & Kroneisen, 2021). For learning from whole texts, imagery techniques were rated low-utility, so pair marks with self-testing (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

Marking: Tie What You Read to a Picture So It Sticks

Why speed reading needs a memory step

The course starts from a simple observation: when you read fast, there is no time to stop and think, so information slips away almost as fast as it arrives. Its answer is step 3, marking: keep the remembering apart from the reading.

Two rules come first:

Stop at the end of the paragraph, not in the middle. Only break up a paragraph that is very long.
Keep only what you need. Memorising every fact in a book just to have it costs time and energy. Pick the term, the definition or the idea you will actually use.

What a mark is

Marking means memorising by building a connection: tying the new idea to something already in your head, such as something you know well, a memory of your own, or a feeling.

You have seen this at school. Good teachers explain with funny comparisons, a silly sentence helps you remember a formula, and a list of authors sticks better as a made-up word. Work is no different: a new colleague’s name sticks faster if you already know someone called that. As the course puts it, the more meaning you attach, the longer it lasts.

The founder’s favourite hook is a picture, ideally placed somewhere real that you know, like a campus you have walked around.

How to make a mark

Find a hook in the word: a sound-alike, a part you recognise, or a person or place it reminds you of.
Make it vivid: movement, size, colour, something a little ridiculous.
Put it somewhere you know: your office, your street, a campus you have visited.
Hold it for a few seconds, then read on.

It sounds slow written out, but in your head it takes a moment. The first marks feel hard if you have never memorised this way, so expect a few clumsy ones and keep going.

Two examples from the course

Three AI terms. Reading an article on artificial intelligence, the founder stops at the end of the section and marks three definitions:

Deep learning: you lift neurons out of a human brain with your own hands and put them into a machine.
Machine learning: the same machine falls over again and again, all day, without a break, because machines don’t get tired. It learns by falling.
Artificial intelligence: the machine now watches a person and imitates them, with a “character” loaded into it from a phone.

As the course puts it, such images make strong connections and reinforce the information, silly as they are.

The hippocampus. Split the word: a hippo on a university campus. To add what it does, the course has the hippo carrying an armful of USB sticks full of memories. One scene holds both the name and the job.

What the research says

Mnemonics like these have real evidence behind them, mostly for word lists and terms.

Picture-and-place techniques improve recall of lists. Across 13 randomised trials, mostly with university students, the memory palace improved recall by a medium amount, though many trials were weak in design (Twomey & Kroneisen, 2021).
They can be learned. Novices who trained the technique for six weeks, in 40 half-hour sessions, recalled far more words than people who did not, and the advantage lasted four months (Dresler et al., 2017).
For learning from text, the evidence is weaker. A large review of study techniques rated imagery for text and keyword mnemonics as low-utility, and practice testing and spaced practice as the most useful (Dunlosky et al., 2013).

So use marks for what they are good at: terms, names, definitions and short lists you must recall. A mark won’t make you understand an argument, and it fades without review. The next lesson turns marks into notes and flashcards, the part of the method with the strongest evidence.

At work and in study

People: a new client called Mark? Picture him marking your report with a giant red pen.
Reports: mark the one decision or number per section you will be asked about, not every figure.
Textbooks: split long terms into parts you recognise, as with the hippocampus.
Books: mark only the two or three ideas per chapter you want to keep.

Try it

Take a page you need to remember from today’s reading. Read it paragraph by paragraph and stop at the end of each one to make a single mark. To practise on a fresh text, paste it into the RSVP reader, pause at each paragraph end and mark before you go on. Tomorrow, try to recall your marks before you look.

Next lesson: notes, flashcards and AI: keep what you read.

Marking: Tie What Matters to a Picture