Do you know how to read faster? Better still, CAN you read faster? Reading is one skill that people around the world take for granted. As parents, we’re more concerned about teaching our kids to read, but hardly bother about the speed of reading.
Your Potential to Be a Speed Reader
In this age of information overload, we cannot ignore speed reading. In fact, we cannot do without this skill.
There is so much to read in a day — the morning newspaper, emails — both important and otherwise. And don’t forget office reports, publications, books for those who love to read, magazines, study material for those who have enrolled in courses, reading the moving television headlines or movie casting, and lots more. You cannot think of assimilating all this stuff without a good speed in reading.
Contrary to popular belief, reading textbooks and several feet high study material during your school days doesn’t necessarily make you a fast reader. There are people who have reached the zenith of education, yet take their sweet time in finishing just one page. It’d help them immensely to know tips on how to read faster, so that they can utilize their time better.
Moreover, reading fast doesn’t mean you simply scan the words without comprehending them. A good reader reads efficiently while absorbing and processing whatever is written.
6 Easy Tips on How to Read Faster
- Move your hands from the right margin of the page to the left one while reading.
- Let your eyes follow the movement of your hand. Try to be physically quick but limited to a pace that allows you to understand each line. Your peripheral vision can help with guessing the words at the end of the line, potentially doubling your overall reading speed. Regular practice can increase your speed by another 10 to 15 percent.
- Avoid speaking each word aloud while you read. Sub-vocalization decreases your speed tremendously. Moreover, you need to speak words aloud only when you’re giving a presentation, or improving your pronunciation, or training in sound pitch and accent.
- Scan the text quickly before actually reading it. This helps your mind to detect paragraphs that contain useful information, so that you can read them later. Scanning also trains your brain to assimilate information at an accelerated rate. The technique also helps to read better when you need to read several or more pages in a short space of time. With practice, you can teach your brain to grasp 400-500 words per minute!
- As you read, visualize the words at the back of your mind.
- Try a speed reading program online.
A Plan to Hone Your Reading Skills
Many websites offer easy remedies and tricks to help you increase the speed of reading. To read faster, first unlearn any habits that cause you to read slowly. A couple of poor reading habits are to: (i) re-read or skip back to read the line again and (ii) read while the television or music are going.
If you wish to know how to read faster, you need to increase your concentration. It also helps to have a good vocabulary, so that you come across fewer “strange” words and need not grab the dictionary again and again for them.
Hope the above tips on how to read faster help you become a fast reader. You can read more in a day and enrich your life with greater knowledge.
A number of speed reading sites offer tricks and techniques to help you master speed reading. Visit them to get audio files and more tips on how to read faster.