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- Break the ingrained reading habits that are slowing you down
- Know what types of material are best suited to speed-reading techniques
- Practice strategic reading to help you pick up the pace and get to the point
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What Is Speed-Reading?
Think back to when you first learned to read as a child. Your eyes moved slowly over the text, and you processed and sounded out each word in a sentence. Once you mastered the mechanics of word recognition, you started a complex decoding process that focused on the idea or meaning of the whole passage rather than on the individual words. And when you finished working out a passage, you were tested with comprehension questions that proved to you, and the teacher, that you really understood what you’d read.
Speed-reading has the same goal of understanding the text, but it requires rethinking the way you view reading. To read more efficiently, you’ll need to unlearn certain habits you acquired a long time ago. You’ll also need to:
- Expand your focus (literally, the number of words you see at one time)
- Resist reading aloud internally to yourself
- Become aware of how certain texts are written
- Focus on what you want to learn
- Ask yourself questions about what you’re reading
Why Learn Speed-Reading?
In today’s media-saturated world, there is more material for people to read than ever before. From scanning headlines in the morning newspaper to digesting complex work-related material on the internet to just keeping up with your favorite magazine, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the enormous amount of information you take in every day.
The key to increasing your reading speed is to recognize that speed-reading is a complement to your normal reading habits, not a complete replacement. At the most basic level, speed-reading is the rapid visual apprehension of text. At a higher level, it is a set of techniques that empowers you to handle reading demands more strategically. Even doubling your basic reading rate can give you lots of extra time for leisure reading or other activities. Speed-reading can be particularly beneficial to professionals in industries where heavy reading is crucial to success. These fields include:
- Law
- Finance
- Marketing
- Management
- Education
What Prevents People from Reading Faster?
To learn speed-reading, you’ll likely have to conquer certain ingrained reading habits. Many of the following obstacles that hinder reading faster are common, and you’ll probably recognize some of them.
- Subvocalization: One of the most specific causes of slow reading, subvocalization is the habit of sounding out words in your head, enabling you to hear as well as see what’s written. Almost everyone sounds out words internally, but the degree to which you rely on it limits your speed. It’s no coincidence that the average reading rate and the average speaking rate coincide: they’re both about 250 words per minute.
- Word-by-word reading: This habit is usually a result of the way you were taught to read. It emphasizes the mechanics of reading, or recognizing words one by one, rather than quick visual apprehension of meaning. This emphasis slows you down.
- Reading regression: This is habitual rereading of the same sentence multiple times before moving on. It results from a lack of concentration. Research shows that the typical reader spends one third of his time rereading, often without realizing it.
- Inflexibility: This refers to reading everything the same way, regardless of what the material is or why it is being read. This tendency may stem from having been taught to read in a systematically cautious way.
- Lack of background knowledge: How much you already know about the material you’re reading plays a significant role in your reading rate. The better you understand the topic, the faster you’ll read. You’ll have to adjust your reading rate to compensate for any gaps.
Speed-Reading Rates
Most speed-reading systems or courses define themselves by a goal in words per minute (WPM). Research suggests that the average reading rate is 200–240 WPM, with college-educated readers scoring slightly higher at 300 WPM. The 600–2,000 WPM range is considered speed-reading. Though you should be skeptical if you see fantastic claims about reading 20,000 WPM, you can in fact attain the 600–1,000 WPM range with practice.
Without a conscious intent to remember or learn, few readers register more than 70% comprehension, even at normal reading speeds. Comprehension rates aren’t likely to improve at high speed, but for certain purposes—for example, locating new information within already familiar material—speed-reading techniques are very effective. The balance between speed and adequate comprehension varies from task to task and reader to reader.
Misconceptions About Speed-Reading
Unrealistic expectations and unsubstantiated claims have helped create a mystique surrounding speed-reading that’s based more on exaggeration than reality. As a result, misconceptions abound regarding what speed-reading is, how it’s learned, and how effective it is.
For starters, you probably won’t double or triple your reading rate simply by reading this guide. And if you’re someone who doesn’t particularly like to read, you won’t suddenly morph into someone who really loves to read. However, by learning the ideas and techniques explained here and practicing them regularly, you can and will see significant improvements in your reading speed and efficiency.
| Acknowledgments & Disclaimer |
