People are born with certain natural skills and talents, but most everyone can learn to read faster. The ability to process, comprehend, and recall information is becoming m ore important in our current society. Those individuals that choose to improve their ability to read and increase their reading speed will have a much better advantage over their peers.
In order to learn to read faster people must first analyze their current ability. This will set a base mark from which growth and improvement can be compared. To begin, most people should set an appointment with their optometrist. This will determine if there are any diseases or impairing conditions that need medical attention.
After the doctor has determined the level of vision a person must test themselves. There are a few online reading tests that can measure a person’s reading speed. Another approach would simply be to get a stop watch and mark the time needed to completely read through 1000 words. This will become the time to beat for all future tests.
Removing existing bad habits will help increase reading speed. The first bad habit that most people has is isolating words. This appears in two ways. First, people are sounding or pronouncing the word within their mind. Secondly, this sounding process forces the eyes and mind to focus on that word until it is “said” internally. This saps away time that could be spent moving on to the next word. Learning to read without the internal pronunciation is a big first step towards learning how to read fast.
The next logical step would be to focus on groups of words or even a whole sentence. This allows your mind to gather a lot more information compared to the method of reading a word at a time. This will take some practice to get accustomed to the technique. But once you have trained your eyes and brain to look at a group of words rather than individual words you should see your reading times improve greatly.
Once you have become proficient at reading groups or sentences at a glance you can start previewing materials. Often times we are presented with different materials to read and the main part we need is buried somewhere beneath a lot of less important items. Glancing over the material and picking out the most important points will help you get the gist of the material and provide you with the opportunity to save time.
Throughout this learning process you should focus on reading everything one time. People do not realize it but many of us re-read sections and sentences over and over. This slows down comprehension and wastes time. Read it once and move on.
Put these tips into action and start timing yourself periodically. You should soon see a significant improvement in the time it takes you to read as well as your comprehension
