Learning how to improve your outlook is key to increasing your reading speed. That doesn’t mean that you need to have a cheerful and optimistic attitude towards your speed-reading goals (though of course that helps!) but rather that you need to work on what you see when you look out of your eyes at a page of printed material.

When you read, your eyes constantly jump from word to word. Each jump ends with your eyes fixed at one spot (a “fixation”) while you focus on what you’re seeing. If you’re reading individual words, this fixation/focus process is happening for every single word. This leads to greater fatigue and eyestrain, and greatly reduces your reading speed.

Learning to fixate on “chunks” of words instead of individual words will eliminate a significant percentage of the number of fixation/focus events you experience when reading. In most cases, many of the words in a specific block of text aren’t important. That is, you don’t bother to mentally define the words and or the, or simple concepts and terms, so why waste time focusing on them? Learn to target the important words in each block of text, and let your brain – which does see every word, even though you might not consciously realize it – fill in the basic meanings for you. Here’s a visual image for you: imagine you’re crossing a broad shallow stream by stepping on large flat stones that stick up above the water. In order to get to the other side of the stream, you only need to use the large stones, though the stream bed is full of smaller stones, which you could also walk on, of course, but which aren’t necessary for your passage.

Continuing this analogy, think of vocabulary words as those large useful stones. The more words you know, the more stones are available to use in crossing any stream of words, no matter how wide. Not only that, but as your vocabulary increases with the addition of words that encapsulate multiple meanings and ideas, the number of “stones” you need will decrease, which means you’ll have larger groups of words and fewer fixation/focus events as you read. Improving and expanding your vocabulary will help you build bridges to new levels of comprehension and faster reading speeds.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

When you learned to read, it was probably a guided process, in a group of other young children, all of you carefully sounding out letters and syllables until you could say each word out loud correctly. That may have been the right way for you to learn at the time, but if you’re still using that method to read, you’re slowing yourself down. If the habit of vocalization (saying words out loud) or subvocalization (saying words to yourself) is one that you’ve kept since you first learned to read, then your reading speed might not be much faster than it was back then.

Most people don’t actually read out loud to themselves, but many people unconsciously move their lips while they read. Many more people actually take the time – again, unconsciously – to pronounce the words in their head as they read. By doing this, they limit their reading speed to what how fast they can pronounce words, whether in their heads or out of their mouths. The process slows down even further when some words are unfamiliar, whether in meaning or in pronunciation.

By eliminating the focus on individual words and relying on the brain’s instinctive ability to fill in meaning by context, you can break the habit of subvocalization, especially if you’re only creating a purely internal word-by-word echo of what you’re reading. There are two things you can do to help eliminate this habit: first, work on expanding the number of words you focus on at one time by reading in “chunks” of words; and second, practice visualizing what you’re reading. By letting your eyes and brain absorb words in groups, rather than one by one, you’ll automatically bypass your mouth, because it’s impossible to say all words in a group at once. By visualizing and creating mental images of what you’re reading, you’ll involve the right side of your brain as well as the left, which will increase the activity across your cortex and speed up all of your mental functions.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

All of the knowledge you’ve gained from your reading and study remains in your brain, even though you might not keep those facts in your consciousness at all time. In many ways your brain is like a huge database, with millions of stored ideas and details and answers that wait to be retrieved or recalled when they’re needed. This recall doesn’t have to be like a computer command, though. One mistake people make while reading is thinking that they have to stop and make a specific and deliberate “request” to themselves to remember a word or its meaning, and this slows down their reading speed – or brings it to a complete stop.

Learning how to read through unfamiliar words is a skill that will help you to increase your reading speed. Many people think that in order to understand the meaning of a sentence, they need to know the exact definition of every word. In many cases, though, your comprehension of what the author is trying to communicate will not be greatly affected by the use of unfamiliar words, if the context of the phrase makes the overall sense of the sentences clear. Here’s an example:

Julianna ate a large spoonful of the porkolt and immediately reached for a glass of water. The dish was so fuszeres that her tongue felt scorched and drops of sweat rolled down her face.

Now, unless you speak Hungarian, there were at least two words in that passage that you didn’t know. However, you probably had a mental image of the scene, and perhaps a memory of being in the same situation, when you’d accidentally eaten something that was extremely hot or spicy. You didn’t need to know that porkolt is the word for “stew” and fuszeres means “spicy.” In fact, it could have just meant “hot” (as in temperature) and the sense of the passage would have been the same.

Your brain works behind the scenes, as it were, to fill in the missing meanings with information you have stored in your mental database. This allows you to skim over what you might think of as potholes in your personal information highway, so you don’t have to stop and fill each of them in in order to make progress.

Remember, the more you add to your personal database, the better able your brain will be in filling in these gaps as you read, and the faster your reading speed will increase. Read as much as you can, on a wide range of topics, and your stored knowledge will support you in your speed-reading goals.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

One of the big stumbling blocks for people when they’re trying to increase and improve their reading speed is a lack of adequate vocabulary. In fact, your eyes literally “stumble” over words you’re not familiar with, and your smooth reading flow comes to a sudden stop as you have to pause, look up a word (or try to guess its meaning), apply the right meaning to the context of the sentence, and pick up where you’ve left off.

You’ve probably noticed that it’s easier to quickly read and comprehend material on a familiar subject – you have most of the vocabulary firmly in your brain, and any less-familiar words are often either related to words you already know, or easy to define based on how they’re used. While no one can be an expert on everything, it’s a fact that the more you know about different topics, the more words you’ll know, because every topic, subject, and field has its own specific set of useful words. By expanding the quantity and variety of what you read (essays, articles, reviews and summaries, novels, research publications, etc.) you will also make it easier to increase your reading speed, by smoothing out the “new word” bumps in the road.

You’ve heard the phrase “vicious circle” no doubt; by contrast, this is a helpful and creative circle, an endless loop of progress rolling forward, as the more you read, the more knowledge you gain, making it easier for you to read works on diverse topics, which gives you an even greater knowledge base to build on. Your ability to quickly assimilate and comprehend information will increase as your reading skills and speed increase, giving you the competitive edge you need to succeed in today’s information-based economy.

Taking the time to read a variety of materials will not only give you valuable knowledge and insight that will help you succeed at work, but will make you a sought-after conversational partner in both professional and casual settings. Your wide range of knowledge will help you participate in discussions on many topics.

Take the time today to pick out something new to read, and the speed of your improvement will soon become apparent.

Cross-posted at The Vocabulary Builder’s Blog.

There are a number of different techniques that are suggested for those who want to know how to increase reading speed. Improving the speed at which you read should be done in such a way that you don’t decrease your comprehension of what you are reading. While you can take in a great deal more information in a much shorter space of time by speed reading, using different techniques at different times will ensure that you don’t miss vital information. On average, someone who is reading at a regular speed will read around 200 words each minute. This can be doubled or even trebled with the right speed reading techniques. (more…)

There are a number of advantages to speed reading, but the greatest advantage of knowing how to speed read is that a much greater amount of information to be absorbed in a significantly reduced time. Using a range of different techniques, the reader can quickly increase their knowledge of a subject, which can be extremely useful whether speed reading for work or for study.

What is speed reading?

Speed reading is the use of one or more techniques to dramatically increase the number of words that you can read per minute. The average reader can cover approximately 200 words per minute, but with speed reading techniques, this can increase to 400 or even 600 words per minute or more. The trick with speed reading is to balance speed with comprehension, as ultimately, the extra words taken in need to be comprehended to have been of any real usefulness.

The following are some of the keys to successfully learning to speed read:

Reducing sub-vocalisation – The term sub-vocalization refers to the way that we ‘say’ the word in our heads while we are reading. When you reduce the amount of sub-vocalising you do while reading, you’ll speed up the pace you read at, without decreasing your level of comprehension of a given subject.

Sweep (Skim reading) – The term sweep reading refers to actively skimming the content of the book or document you are reading. This process involves drawing out the key points of the text and honing your focus on the most important points of the text. If care is not taken when doing, the downside is that it important points may be missed.

Meta reading – When discussing how to speed read, the term meta reading refers to the use of an object to direct the eye to where you want to read. This could be simply using your finger to guide you through a passage you are reading, or it may involved the use of a ruler or piece of card to guide you as you read down a page.

Options for learning to speed read

When learning how to speed read there are two main options that you may chose between. The first option is to undertake a speed reading course. Doing a speed reading course or workshop may be one option to help you to increase your reading speed while still retaining and comprehending the information you need from reading. Prices can vary considerably if you decide to undertake one of these courses, and the content covered can vary quite significantly from one to the next.

Computer based programs that teach you how to speed read are also quite varied, so it pays to understand the different techniques that can be combined to successfully speed read. Some programs only offer a few options, but the most comprehensive programs will cover a range of speed reading techniques. Shop around for a program that covers a greater number of techniques, the final outcome will be that you know how to speed read more successfully.

Knowing how to speed read gives you an edge. You learn and retain more information far more quickly than other students and employees. That in turn means you fulfil your goals and reach your potential with more ease than other co-workers or students how lack the same knowledge of speed reading.