Speed Reading

I once worked a couple of weeks at Amazon. One of the more popular categories of books that were ordered were the computer certification books. The one overriding memory I have for working at that place (apart from the lousy pay) was how heavy those computer books were. Not surprising as most of them were nearing 1000 pages or so. There’s no getting around the fact that there is a ton of information that you need to read and absorb when studying for a computer certification so anything that makes that task easier has to be a good thing. Right? Well, here are some tips on getting the most from your reading time.

How to tackle reading those huge computer books…

Spend some time reading the chapter headings and sub-headings from the index page. Get familiar with the framework of the book, how the book is organized and broken down into it’s sub sections, and the overall feel of the book.

Skim the book. What is meant by skimming is to casually read over each page without trying to remember the material. Read a sentence here, a sentence there, look at a diagram here, a diagram there. Look for new terminology that you haven’t come across before, look at diagrams and graphs and get a feel for the topic. This will help you get a feel for the new terminology before you have to really study the concepts, as well as help you ascertain the sequence within the book that these new concepts are introduced. Skimming will also help you to locate specific charts, diagrams or tables later on.

After you have skimmed the book, read the entire book through superficially. Only concentrate on the sections of the book that you already know or understand, and completely skip over entries in the book that you don’t. This includes entire pages, paragraphs, diagrams etc. Anything that you come across that you don't understand, skip it. Even if it means skipping more than 50% of the book, it doesn’t matter. This is just the first reading - so don’t get swamped trying to take in something that you don’t understand. That can come later.

Lastly, read the book again and this time study the material. This will essentially be the third time that you’ve looked at the book, and a lot of the content, the structure and the feel of the book will be familiar to you. You should be able to tackle the entire book much easier.

First off, there is a difference in reading speed for most people depending on if they are reading technical or non-technical books. The average reading speed for a University student is about 250 to 350 words per minute. A decent reading speed would be about 500 to 700 words per minute, and it’s been known for some people to be able to read over 1000 words per minute and still be able to comprehend fully the text that they are reading. Note however that these figures are for non-technical books. Obviously you wouldn’t expect those sort of figures when trying to absorb the nuances of Cisco routers for example.

Not everyone can improve his or her reading speed. There is no point in being able to read fast if you’re unable to comprehend the text that you are reading, so a person’s reading comprehension skills need to be adequate to begin with. Most adults however are able to improve their reading speed whilst at least maintaining their comprehension – and recent studies suggest that by increasing your reading speed you’ll actually be able to increase your comprehension also. Simply moving your eyes more rapidly across the text without developing your reading habits however does not constitute effective speed-reading and usually results in lower comprehension.

In order to understand how you can increase your reading speed, you first need to know about the causes that can decrease your reading speed. Many factors can slow down your reading speed:

Word-by-word reading
Slow reaction time
Slow comprehension
Vocalisation (the need of a reader to ‘voice’ the words as they read them to be able to comprehend the text)
Inability to maintain attention (my biggest issue)
Lack of retention (resulting in having to re-read sentences and paragraphs)
Lack of reading practice
Deliberate slow reading in order to try to maximize comprehension
Attempting to remember everything rather than remembering selectively.

This list is by no means comprehensive, as there are many, many other factors which can reduce your reading speed. As this is merely a Speed Reading 101 course, if you wish to delve further into this there are many good books on the market on the subject.

A closer look at the list above will highlight the fact that many of those symptoms will probably lead to a lowering of your comprehension also, so it stands to reason that by eliminating a number of these causes should result in a higher comprehension rate. So the key to speed reading is not to simply move your eyes faster over the words - that will likely exacerbate the causes of slow reading and result in reduced comprehension. No, the key to speed reading is to address the above causes in conjunction with actually reading faster, and develop a more effective reading habit.