As we’ve discussed before, subvocalization is one of the bad habits that you need to eliminate in order to maximize your reading speed. The good news is that the faster you read, the easier it is to stop subvocalizing. That’s because when you’re subvocalizing, you’re “reading aloud” to yourself, even if only in your head. Most people have a standard speech rate of about 125 words per minute, but that’s very much slower than the standard reading rate of 250 words per minute – which is itself slow compared to the 600+ words per minute that speed readers achieve. When you read faster than you speak, it’s impossible for you to “sound out” individual words in your head. The harder it is for you to subvocalize, the faster you’ll read; the faster you read, the harder it becomes to subvocalize.

If you find that you’re still mentally sounding out words as you read, there might be some unconscious physical movements you’re making that are contributing to this tendency. To find out, record yourself reading with your cell phone or computer-screen camera. Read silently for long enough that you lose any feeling of self-consciousness. When you’re finished, review the film and focus on your cheeks and lips in the recording. Do you see any muscles twitching as you read? That can be an indication that you’re so much in the habit of subvocalizing that your body automatically tries to match the physical motions of reading out loud. Once you identify this problem, you can focus on stopping it. After enough practice, your facial muscles will lose the habit of movement while reading, and you can devote your mental muscles to increasing your reading speed.