Speed reading tips

There are many times when you have a stack of papers that you need to look over and that you wish that you could do it faster. Nobody in their right mind would enjoy reading some boring papers that don’t hold any interest to them.  One way to get through something like that quicker is to learn how to read faster. There is many ways that can help you read faster but reading faster is not only about how quick you read but also how well you comprehend the subject. Wouldn't it be fun to read an entire book in two hours and then enjoy some time by doing other things. The main thing that you need to keep in mind is that it takes practice to actually learn how to read faster. You are not going to wake up tomorrow knowing how to read quicker because you read an article about it. If you don’t practice these techniques for a long time, it’s not going to help that much. Speed reading is a skill like any other such as playing a piano or a guitar, and it takes years to master it.

There’s many courses which you can take that teach you how to speed read but if you’re looking for something that you can do yourself then here is three simple speed reading techniques that will help you improve your speed:

Use your hand

When you were young you were probably told by your teachers not to use your hands when you read. Well I’m here to tell you that your teachers were wrong. Using your hand to read helps not only with speed, but with the understanding of the material which you’re reading. When you use your finger to point at the text you’re reading, you basically tell the brain how fast you want to read. You have the full control of the speed that you read because you tend to focus more on the things that you read.  If you don’t use your hand you can probably notice that you read slower and that is mostly because you are focusing more on each word instead of groups of words. This is something that I’m going to talk about next. What I mean by that is that you are reading each word inside your head which slows you down in the process.

Stopped reading word by word

Learning how to read faster will require you to forget about your previous habits which are also reading word by word. This is done by a lot of people and they don’t realize how much this affects their reading speed. Instead try to focus on blocks of words. This in fact will make it easier for you to understand the text because you will be focusing on words which are connected to each other instead of reading words as a separate piece.

Don’t read aloud

There is many useful speed reading techniques but this one must be one of the most important. If you want to read faster then read it in your mind. Reading aloud will really decrease your speed because you will have to vocalize each syllable. When you read words in your mind you can take in groups of words at the same time which will unmistakably increase the speed of your reading.

Skip through unnecessary text 

When reading articles you probably noticed that you already know some of the information that is being talked about. Most of that are explanations or illustrations that help you with the comprehension of the concept that is being discussed in the article. So it is not necessary for you to read those unless you don’t understand it. So the right thing to do is to just skip over those things because they will hold no real value to.

With these speed reading techniques you will increase the rate of your reading from about 10% to 20%. Make sure to practice these techniques whenever you read something. Whether it’s a magazine, work related papers, or your favorite book. Soon you will be reading faster and you will have more time for other things.