Speed Reading
Radically Increasing Your Reading Speed
Speed Reading can help you to read and understand
written information much more quickly. This makes it an essential skill in any environment
where you have to master large volumes of information quickly,
as is the norm in fast-moving professional environments. What's more,
it's a key technique to learn if you suffer from "information
overload", because it helps you to become much more discriminating about the information that you consume.
The Key Insight
The most important trick about speed reading
is to know what information you want from a document before
you start reading it. If you only want an outline of the issue
that the document discusses, then you can skim the document
quickly and extract only the essential facts. If you need to
understand the real detail of the document, then you need to
read it slowly enough to gain the full understanding you need.
You will get the greatest time savings from
speed reading by learning to skim excessively detailed documents, although the techniques you'll learn will help you improve the speed of all the reading you do.
Technical Issues
Even when you know how to ignore irrelevant detail, there are
other technical improvements you can make to your reading style
which will increase your reading speed.
Most people learn to read the way young children read –
either letter-by-letter, or word-by-word. As an adult, this
is probably not the way you read now: Just think about how
your eye muscles are moving as you read this. You will probably
find that you are fixing your eyes on one block of words, then
moving your eyes to the next block of words, and so on. You
are reading blocks of words at a time, not individual words
one-by-one. You may also notice that you do not always go from
one block to the next: sometimes you may move back to a previous
block if you are unsure about something.
A skilled reader will read many words in each block. He or
she will only dwell on each block for an instant, and will then
move on. Only rarely will the reader's eyes skip back to a previous
block of words. This reduces the amount of work that the reader's
eyes have to do. It also increases the volume of information
that can be assimilated in a given period of time.
A poor reader will become bogged down, spending a lot of time
reading small blocks of words. He or she will skip back often,
losing the flow and structure of the text, and confusing his or her overall understanding
of the subject. This irregular eye movement makes reading tiring.
Poor readers tend to dislike reading, and they may find it harder
to concentrate, and understand written information.
How to Use Tool
Speed reading aims to improve reading skills
by:
-
Increasing the number of words read in each block.
-
Reducing the length of time spent reading each block.
-
And reducing the number of times your eyes skip back to a previous
sentence.
These are explained below:
- Increasing the number of words in each
block:
This needs a conscious effort. Try to expand the number of
words that you read at a time: With practice, you'll find
you read faster. You may also find that you can increase the
number of words in each block by holding the text a little
further from your eyes. The more words you can read in each
block, the faster you will read!
- Reducing fixation time:
The minimum length of time needed to read each block is probably
only a quarter of a second. By pushing yourself to reduce
the time you take, you will get better at picking up information
quickly. Again, this is a matter of practice and confidence.
- Reducing skip-back:
To reduce the number of times that your eyes skip back to
a previous sentence, run a pointer along the line as you read.
This could be a finger, or a pen or pencil. Your eyes will
follow the tip of your pointer, smoothing the flow of your
reading. The speed at which you read using this method will
largely depend on the speed at which you move the pointer.
You will be able to increase your reading speed a certain amount
on your own by applying these speed reading techniques.
What you don't get out of self-study is the use of specialist
reading machines and the confidence gained from successful speed-reading
– this is where a good one-day course can revolutionize
your reading skills.
Key points:
By speed reading you can read information more quickly. You
may also get a better understanding of it, as you will hold more
of it in short term memory.
To improve the speed of your reading, read more words in each
block and reduce the length of time spent reading each block.
Use a pointer to smooth the way your eyes move and reduce skip-back.
Learning about speed reading is just one of the ways that you can use MindTools.com to boost your career. If you've found this article useful, why not subscribe to our free career skills newsletter, and learn new skills like this twice a
month? When you do, you get a free copy of our Mind Tools Read Smarter! workbook, worth US$9.99. This teaches you a range of strategies that you can use to increase your reading speed and improve your recall of written information.
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In the next article, we look at use of Reading Strategies,
the second key technique you need to read faster, and beat information
overload. To read this article, click "Next article"
below. And to learn more about this subject, look at the "Extension Resources" section at the foot of this article.
Spread
the word:
Extension Resources (Not included in the
Mind Tools E-book.)
Chunking
- Grouping information so it's more easily understood.
Questioning
Techniques - Asking questions effectively
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