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Reading quickly (at the speed of sound) is much better than reading slowly. That’s the counterintuitive conclusion I arrived at after opening the children’s book ‘Barbar’ (the story about elephants (translated into Japanese)) recently.

It’s much simpler than the material I’d been using. It is a child’s book. But here’s what happened. I went through it carefully, one word at a time. When I didn’t immediately recognize a word, I slowed down. That’s only natural, isn’t it?

But then, when I came to word that I didn’t know, I stopped completely. I shut the book!

There’s a lesson in that.