sight reading questions

[LVB op.57]

I have a few questions regarding improving sight reading.

1. Is it a good idea to use a metronome, just so you can learn to keep a steady tempo without pausing, even if it mean missing notes?

2.  Is it like normal playing in that you that you shouldn't try anything to hard for you?

3. How do you deal with fingering while sight reading?

Thanks in advance for any answers.

[lagin]

Use a metronome at first if you need it.  Maybe for a few weeks, then count out loud.  Eventually count in your head.
 For exams sightread two grades below your level.  Hopefully you're doing grades or else this won't apply.
Scan the piece for maybe 40 seconds before attempting to work out any fingering or tough spots in your head or lightly touching, but not playing the keys.  Better to do it in your head, though.
I'm assuming you mean sight reading as an exercise and not as in actually preparing to learn the piece.  If you want to actually learn the piece work out fingering on score with pencil.
And if this is for exams,  make sure you play confidently even if you're not.  Never, never, pause!  Better to smack a wrong note in a wild guess and loss one mark than pause for two seconds and lose two.  Besides you might actually hit it correctly
Depending on what grade of exam your doing (if this be the case) the examiner will eventually start looking for style--Baroque with detached notes, Romantic using legato, phrasing, ect.

[LVB op.57]

More than anything, I mean improving my sight reading for the sake of learning pieces at a quicker pace. Anyway, thanks for the advice, I'll definitely try your idea of sightreading two grades. below my own.

[ramseytheii]

One should mainly sight read the works that intrigue one the most, sometimes easier sometimes harder.  Beyond that one should sight read everything and there is no shame or waste of time to sight read works that are easier.  The metronome can be a helpful thing, but shouldn't be abused.
The key in sight-reading is to do as the folk singer does at the concert; they are playing some chords on the guitar, then they shout out the upcoming words for the next bar, or two bars, or whatever, to the audience.  The audience hears them ahead of time, and sings when it is time.  And so it goes with sight reading.  We are playing one thing, and looknig always to the next bar.  We are playing one thing, hearing the next, and we hear it actually, before it happens.  If you cannot grasp this coordination at first, it is best to go slow, super slow.  I mean to cultivate slow tempos.  You will see that it is the only way to sight read, and in fact, the only way to perform music.  That we hear it first, and then respond, by playing. 

Walter Ramsey