Speed Reading

Speed reading is achieved by learning specific reading skills. These are skills that have to be practiced and developed if you wish to increase your reading and comprehension level.

Perhaps the first step to increasing your reading speed is to know what you want to get out of the text that you are reading. In the case of a computer book you are essentially wanting to absorb the general concepts of the book as well as detailed specific information in certain areas.

By utilizing the skimming method you can extract the key points of the text while being able to ignore or discard irrelevant sentences. A good example would be the 'Dummies Guide to ……'. If you’ve ever read one of those books you’ll know that indeed they do explain things very simply - great for the new user to that particular topic. But they also tend to have a lot of ‘filler’ sentences that don’t really add to the educational content of the book. Effectively skimming those books would enable you to extract the detailed information that you require, yet discarding the filler material.

One of the key reasons people read slowly is because of the need to vocalize the words as they read. If you are such a person then you will only be reading slightly faster than you can talk, which is about 30 – 50% slower than you should be able to read if you were reading silently. If you are such a reader, then try to only vocalize every 3rd word or so as you try to train yourself to read silently.

Don’t re-read. On average a reader will re-read a word, a sentence, or a paragraph about 10-20 times per page. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Once you become aware of that fact it makes it easier to identify just how often you do re-read. By reading a text faster you can easier eliminate the need to re-read passages. You’ll often find that should you miss the context of a particular sentence, rather than having to re-read the sentence you can get a better feel for the context of that sentence by continuing to read and not going back to re-visit the text. Re-reading is a habit, and you can train yourself out of it. Use a pointer of some description, like your finger or the tip of a pen or pencil, to move along the text as you read. This will help you to acknowledge the amount of times that you have to stop and re-read a section of the text. Slowly train yourself to ignore the need to go back and re-read a section.

Train your eyes to take in more than one word at a time. Learn to read in blocks of words, not individual words. By being able to focus on more than one word you are able to learn in phrases rather than individual words. In time, you’ll be able to pick out key words and ideas from blocks of words at a glance, thus increasing your reading speed even further. This is something that you’ll have to practice and make a conscious effort to do. It’s probably best to practice these techniques away from your study routine as you’ll probably be focusing more on the reading exercises than the computer certification that you’re trying to study for. Once you’re comfortable with your new method of reading, introduce it to your study regime.

You will be surprised just how much more effective your reading can become by just practicing these simple techniques at home. If you wish to develop your skills further there are some very good practice exercises that you can do for free from RocketReader, and there are plenty of books that cover the subject in much more detail. This is by no means a comprehensive look into the world of speed reading, but hopefully it will give you some insight into what is possible with a bit of training.

Speed Reading (cont.)

So, how do you increase your reading speed...