5 Speed Reading Techniques You Can Do Indoors

This entry is part 2 of 19 in the series Speed Reading
Speed Reading

If you wish you could master speed reading, you are not alone. There are plenty of people who wish to learn speed reading techniques. It’s a common desire because it’s so useful in this age of information overload and instant access to information. Many people think that speed reading is difficult to achieve or that it requires some kind of special abilities; that cannot be less true. Anyone can learn how to speed read with these five handy techniques.

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The first thing you need to do if you want to learn speed reading is to figure out the importance and required comprehension level of the piece you will be reading. There are some things you do not need to read through too carefully – you just need the basic gist of what the article is saying. Other works are more demanding and require that you pay close attention to each word or at least each sentence. You need to differentiate between these two because they require different speed reading techniques. In fact, it may not sometimes even be possible in the case of a highly technical document to actually read quickly.

If the work you have to speed read through is easily comprehended and requires you only to get just an essence of what you have to know, you can then move to the next step in speed reading. This step involves knowing what is important or unimportant about the text. Often, especially when we are reading something over the internet, we find that there are plenty of “filler sentences” that don’t contain useful information.

Your third step is to control or stop altogether what is known as “subvocalization.” Subvocalization is when you read to yourself. This may happen as you read aloud to yourself – even if you are reading “aloud” in your head – or as you move your lips while you read. You are usually not aware of doing this as it is happening unconsciously. In order to break this habit, you need to first become conscious of it. The next time you are reading something, think about whether you are pronouncing the words in your head. If it’s true, try to stop. It may not be easy, but eventually your speed should increase.

Another speed reading technique is to read your sentences as a whole. A sentence generally expresses a complete thought, and all the words in that sentence make up that complete thought. Thus, it is only natural that you read each sentence as a single complete thought rather than reading each word individually.

Your final tip should be to find some good speed reading techniques online. This is especially true if you wish to increase both your speed and comprehension when speed reading.

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