Reading at a much quicker pace would be such a great advantage to everyone. Speed reading is slowly rising to fame these days and is becoming the latest self-help technique that is earning billions because more and more people are seeing its benefits. You don’t really have to spend much if you want to find out how it works. No need to splurge on an expensive book or buy dozens of magazines. All it takes is a little resourcefulness in order to obtain these techniques.
Just like most self-help techniques, it is important in speed reading that you find out what your baseline rate is before you start using the different steps. This way you can see the progress you’re getting at as you advance. Assessing yourself is not that hard at all. All you need is a reading material that is preferably easy to read such as a newspaper. Make sure you have a timer with you to check how many words per minute you can do. Another way is by reading an article and try to see how long it will take you to finish reading it. This way, when you try on the different methods, you will be able to see the progress.
As you begin, you need to first start reading slow. Just like in most aspects that we do, we may have developed “bad habits” in our reading that may be the cause as to why it takes too much time for us to finish reading. In order for us to get rid of these “bad habits”, we may need to undergo reformation. This simply means doing away with those unnecessary things we do that slows our reading and taking on new and proper techniques.
Amongst billions of readers all over the world, one very common habit done that can really slow down the pace of reading is sub-vocalization. Sub-vocalizing means reading a word and sounding it in our thoughts. We may think that this is normal, well it is if you have just started learning to read but as time goes by, we may have to read words by digesting it in our thoughts but not necessarily sounding it. You may be surprised but this actually eats up a lot of time when we read.
When you have learned how to stop sub-vocalizing, you then practice doing a quick scan over the text of your reading material. Don’t worry because scanning does not mean by merely looking at the words you already know what the whole thing says. Scanning means paying attention to details such as the font, which ones are highlighted, what words are in bold letters or italicized. These could be not just words but in phrases. The reason for this is because, the author or writer wants to emphasize on these details giving out hints or clues to the readers what the content is about.
This makes it easier to understand what the reading material is making reading not only quicker but also improving on your comprehension skills.
These are just a few of the many Speed reading techniques out there. Always remember, whichever method you use, always do Speed reading exercises in order to improve on this unique skill.