We hope that by now you are convinced about the advantages attached to speed reading. While there is no dearth of training material for speed reading in the market, there are certain tips which can help you master this critical art with considerate ease.
- Control your eyes with a pointer!
Our eyes have a habit of absorbing much more information than what is needed at any point of time. The first lesson of speed reading is to learn how to keep your eyes stable to the point where the word is written. Every time your eye moves away from the word that you are supposed to read next, it loses a fraction of second while coming back to where it needs to be.
Kids are advised to use their index finger as the 'reading finger' and keep it beneath the word they are supposed to read. This technique can actually work for kids and adults alike. People usually take up this habit and remove their finger after a couple of lines. This is where things go wrong. While the first couple of pages can turn to be tedious, slow and cumbersome, you would be able to witness an increase in your speed shortly after that. Is it easy? No! Is it effective? Absolutely!
- Control comes first, speed later
Training the mind is an important component of speed reading. The faster movement of your reading finger would result in a higher reading speed than usual and vice versa. The reader's speed of reading depends upon the words contained in the text. While the frequently used words are easy to read through quickly, lesser used words certainly take a moment to be read. Training the mind to handle such words without breaking the flow is much needed in order to master speed reading.
Believe it or not, slow reading is as important as speed reading. In the midst of speed reading, the motto of comprehending the text must not be overlooked. A number of authors like to repeat their text using different words. Such paragraphs containing repeated information can be read in no time. On the other hand, the new texts would require the reader to spend more time.
- Let go of Subvocalizing
From reading out loud as a kid, we have reached a stage where we silently repeat inside our mind, whatever we read. While it may be helpful in following the flow of the text, it greatly hinders the speed of reading the text. We are not asking you to skip any words in between the text, rather, we are just asking you to push the lever and read in top gear.
Jsut as yuo cna undrstdn tihs clearyl, you need not repeat each and every word in your mind in order to comprehend it.
- Practice has no substitutes
When they said 'Practice makes a man perfect', they weren't kidding! The more material you read, the better you would end up at speed reading. The reason behind this is simple. The moment you come across a new word, you would take more time in reading it as compared to the ones you are familiar with. The first step towards speed reading is reading. Unless you love reading, mastering the art of speed reading would be a distant aim.
- Stop Relapsing
A number of people have a habit of going back to what they read a couple of lines ago and re-reading it to make sure they read it fine. A very common phenomenon, relapsing on the words highly decreased the speed of reading. This situation can be avoided by the use of a pointer. Pointing at the current word would help you avoid jumping back to the previous words.