Learning to improve your reading speed is not that much different form learning to improve a physical skill. People that wish to improve their running speed, keyboarding speed, or bicycling speed usually follow a similar pattern. This pattern can be adopted for reading speed as well.
When people want to improve they first go to an expert. The expert will time them to determine their current ability. This gives the expert, as well as the student, a starting point. With reading, in order to get faster you must know your current speed. A simple exercise of reading a simple passage from a newspaper or book along with a stop watch will suffice. Time your self for a full minute. At the end of the minute mark the place where you stopped reading. Then count the words from that mark back to the beginning of the reading. This gives you the number of words per minute reading time.
After the expert has gauged the student’s starting point they will look for any weak areas. Again, reading is similar. Most people have weak areas in reading when it comes to speed. There are a few primary weak areas in reading. Re-reading is a common weakness. This is when a person reads over a paragraph or a sentence and then for some reason decides to read it again. Another common problem that slows people’s reading speed is internal pronunciation. This is the practice of “saying” each word within our minds.
After gauging the base line and identifying the weaknesses the expert will outline a series of exercises or drills for the student. When learning to improve your reading speed you will learn some new skills as well. Block reading is a very important skill to master. This allows you to look at a group of words at the same time instead of focusing on each individual word.
After the student has spent a number of days with the new drills and exercises the expert will test them again. It would seem that this new test would be to look for improvement. Without a doubt, one goal of the test is to determine any improvement. But the new test is also designed to see how well the student is adapting to the new skills.
When learning to improve your reading speed you should also take a new reading test periodically. This will allow you to see if you are reading faster and also determine how well you are adapting to the new method for reading.
Finally, once the student has reached a new personal best, the expert is ready to set the student free. The student has now learned the skills and techniques that will greatly improve their abilities if they continue to practice.
Improving your reading is exactly the same. You must practice consistently in order to get substantially better.
