In today’s world, we are constantly being bombarded with information from different sources.
These sources may be from emails, reports, websites, books, magazines and even social media.
The crazy thing is that we are expected to digest this information in a certain way to help us to make informed decisions.
But, how do we get through all this information without superhuman reading speed?
To make matters a little more complicated, the amount of information that we need to process is growing at an exponential rate.
We may not be at a point in human evolution where we reach superhuman reading and comprehension speed.
Or, where we can get artificial intelligence (AI) brain implant like the TV program Robocop.
Until such time, it is necessary that we learn to speed read like a boss.
Speed reading gives you the ability to rapidly go through a ton of reading material without succumbing under the pressure to ‘stay in the loop’.
The secret that is known to a few privileged individuals is the fine art of speed reading. It is not out in the open.
You can find free information on different websites scattered across the web or even on various video sharing sites like youtube to improve your reading speed.
I like the information presented on Get better grades now website. They provide information in an easy to follow format, share strategies and learning the material to boost your study experience.
Whatever source of reading materials, whether it be a textbook, journal or a website different strategies are provided for you to improve your reading and retention rate.
You make the best decisions possible when you desire to improve your reading speed.
What is speed reading?
Speed reading is the process of quickly recognizing and absorbing phrases or sentences on a page in chunks, rather than identifying individual words.
The average individual read at an average rate of 250 words per minute (wpm), though some are naturally quicker than others.
Let us go through a number of techniques that can be used to drastically improve your speed reading skills. Especially if you want to learn how to speed read for college.
Learn to speed read: What you need to do to improve your reading speed?
You may be a mere mortal when it comes to reading. There is hope to read much faster.
Most individual, that goes through the process of learning to speed read, in most cases, at least double their rate of reading.
What is the average reading speed for different groups of people?
Explore some key ideas that you can implement today to accelerate your reading speed. The average reading speed of different age group may surprise you.
Most adults read at about 150-250 words per minute (wpm).
I know that reading speed is really slow. The main culprit is the fact that most individuals read at the rate at which they speak – 150 to 250 words per minute.
You can quickly have a read of a document and discover your reading speed. The average reading speed of different people is divulged below.
Now it is your time to check your reading speed and do a comparison of your speed against the average. For your convenience, I have listed average reading speed below:
- At 150 –250 wpm is the expected reading speed for someone age 12 or older.
- At 250 – 450 wpm is the reading speed of the average college student.
- At 450 – 600 wpm, you’re reading as fast as a college student skimming for the main points. It would be ideal if you are able to do this with near total comprehension.
- At 600–1000 wpm, you’re reading as fast as a college student scanning to find key ideas within a document. While retaining about 75% of their normal comprehension.
- At 1,000 wpm and above, you’re reading at the level of competitive speed readers. At this speed, you may not get a chance to read every word cluster. Instead, you may skip over most of the text in the document you are reading. It takes a special skill to skip over unimportant information and focus on the bits that are critical to the understanding of the text. At this lightning speed, most individuals will only remember little of the text being read.
How to check your own reading level?
It is quite easy to determine your current reading speed. Let’s do it now, take the book you would like to practice with, lay it flat and count the number of words in ten lines.
Divide this number of words by ten, and you have your average number of words-per-line.
Example: 80 words/10 lines = 8 words per line.
The next step is quite simple, count the number of text lines on 5 pages and divide by 5 to arrive at the average number of lines per page.
Multiply this by the average number of words-per-line, and you have your average number of words per page.
Example: 150 lines/5 pages = 30, 30 lines per page x 8 words-per-line = 240 words per page.
Make a note of your starting point from the first line and read with a timer for 1 minute exactly.
Read at your normal reading speed, i.e., no faster than normal. Read not only for speed but also for comprehension.
After exactly one minute, multiply the number of lines read by your average words-per-line to determine your current words-per-minute (wpm) rate.
You can compare yourself with the reading rate scale above to see exactly where you fall, what level you are reading at.
If you are not where you want to be, you can check out the website to get better grades now for strategies on how to improve reading, memory, and concentration.
Basic strategies you can follow today to improve reading speed
#1 Silence the voice in your head.
Self-talk is one of the most prevalent culprits that prevent us from developing superhuman like reading speed.
We can think faster than we can speak therefore talking while we read only slow us down to the average talking speed of around 150 to 200 words per minute.
This inner talk as we read is known as subvocalization.
Saying each word under our breath or in your head, as you read is considered Subvocalization. It is learned from childhood. Our teacher taught us to read one word at a time, sounding each word out loud as you go.
We never go to the next level and read one sentence at a time.
Subvocalization is one of the biggest hurdles to effective reading. It is very hard to get rid of, most people never even realize they are doing it.
From childhood, our brains are trained to read words instead of seeing them.
Your brain is visual and is capable of reading much faster than you can speak. Finding a way to overcome subvocalization will allow your read at a much faster rate and read more efficiently.
How to get over the habit of subvocalization?
In an effort to read much faster you have to overcome the most difficult obstacle to speed reading is to get rid of the bad habit of reading aloud in your head.
Hence, we can only speak as fast as we can talk.
The obvious solution to this problem is to stop pronouncing words in our heads as we read.
If we want to continue to increase our reading speed, we will have to eliminate the beast.
As of today try reading without calling the words.
It can be done, when you drive on the road, do we see a picture of the stop sign and understand what is say or do we sound each letter of the word stop in our mind?
Distracting ourselves while reading will keep the brain more focused on the information being read and less on subvocalization. You will still be able to process words being read.
#2 Chunking: See words in groups
When reading, if you focus on one word at a time you are slowing down your brain. Not only is this a slow way to read, but it is also boring. You got to help your brain because it craves stimulation. Reading one word at a time is no good, I got to read clusters of words.
Grouping words together will help to stimulate the brain. While reading, seeing word groups is what your brain loves. Even though you read in groups, your brain will still comprehend each word group at the same time.
Training your brain to recognize and see words in the group is possible. Your brain can be trained to see a group of words at once and as a result, increase your reading speed.
When we were learning to read. We sounding each letter, then we pronounced words. We pronounced individual words one by one in each sentence.
This slows our speed. We did not go to the next level and chunk words together.
Or even later chunk sentences together so that we could read at superhuman speeds. Research shows that a person can take in several words at a time.
The first step is to use your peripheral vision to increase the number of words that you can see in one go.
How to start seeing words in groups?
A difficult skill to learn is how to take in phrases or chunks of text at a time, rather than individual words.
Your eye span is actually 1.5 inches long, which means you can read up to nine words at a time!
Amazing. Looking at every fifth word or so will allow you to take in more at once and dramatically increase your reading speed.
Just by moving from reading a single word to two words at a time, you have already doubled your reading speed!
Focus on trying to read three to five words with every glance.
You will still be able to process and comprehend what you read, but spend far less time doing it.
Here’s a quick exercise to understand grouping:
- Take a ruler and a pencil, divide one page of a book into three different vertical sections by drawing two parallel lines down the page.
- Start at the top left of the page and use a pencil, as a pointer, to read each separate section line by line.
- Take a moment to focus on the group of words in each section, one at a time, and try to see the group of words, instead of moving word-by-word.
This is a simple way to retrain your brain to see groups of words instead of one word at a time.
Chunk words together, and read them at a glance as you would a road sign.
Keep doing this down the page, moving the pointer accordingly and you will, over time, notice an increase in your reading speed.
#3 Do not reread
Your brain is capable of processing over one thousand pieces of information at a time but most people, reading is much slower.
It is like having a Ferrari and driving in the slow lane. This will only damage your car, no wonder we get bored easily and hate reading.
Because of poor reading habits, we have the tendency to reread words on a page. Just by breaking the habit of rereading you could increase your reading speed by over 20%.
How to fix this problem
Back-skipping, regression, and minimization of the duration of fixation can be done using a tracker and pacer. The easiest way is to use your finger as a pointer.
You may look crazy at first but your brain will love it as you will be reading much faster.
Keep your fingers running back and forth across the page, without stopping or going back. Your eyes are made to track a moving object, use your finger, therefore, to trace down the page, as your eyes keep track of the words or group of words.
By the time you reach the end of the document, you would have hopefully remembered a bit of what you read without retracing the page.
#4 Fluid eye movement
Your brain is one of the most powerful machines and earth and is capable of processing over a thousand pieces of information at one time. However, for most people, reading is much slower.
If I am being generous, the average person reads at about 200 words per minute. This is like driving a sports car in traffic, it is no good. Reading at 200 wpm forces your mind to wander, to find somewhere more exciting to go. For your brain, it is just too boring to stick around at that reading speed.
This can happen when your eyes are moving inefficiently. Your eyes are designed to follow and not to make movement independently.
Your eyes in its natural state take tiny jumps to call saccades as your brain takes small pictures of the words before moving on.
It may take some effort but you can train your eyes to move more fluidly across the pages or your book. As you may realise, making more fluid eye movements can stop the habit of focusing on one word at a time instead of a cluster of words at a time. Stopping this habit can effectively increasing your reading speed and decreasing the number of stops within each sentence.
#5 Learn to speed read using RSVP software
Practice always makes perfect. You can try a reading rapid serial visual presentation RSVP software to increase your reading speed.
This software comes in the form of a phone app that you can download on your phone from the IOS or Play store. Alternatively, you can get it on your computer. This software works by flashing text a single word at a time.
This lets you choose any reading speed you like, too fast and you will lose comprehension and too slow and your brain will get bored.
The phone app is best as it is with you all the dime so you can practice. It can be used to increase peripheral vision if a group of words are chunked together instead of one word at a time.
Learn to skim read texts like a boss
Skimming is another way to read quickly. When you skim a text is you reading quickly to get a general idea from a passage, book or other media.
We sometimes scan documents, not with a scanner but by reading quickly to find key points with a reading source. When we scan it is to find a specific piece of information.
We do this while reading books where finding information such as names of people or places is important. In addition, we do this to find specific figures or dates.
skimming and scanning, two techniques that involve looking only for the most relevant bits of information.
It will prime you for what’s to come. Since you’re already familiar with the main parts of the text, you won’t be slowed down by a confusing or complicated part when you are doing your main reading.
Conclusion
For your brain’s sake learn to speed read and improve your reading speed skills. Your brain loves learning and is excited to acquire new knowledge. Follow the simple strategies above and learn to speed read on your terms. Double or triple your reading speed and accelerate your learning.
(If you’d like to supercharge your speed-reading efforts by learning how to: speed-read, increase your memory, and develop a system for managing a flood of new information, then I recommend checking out the get better grades now website.)
Source: infinitemind | Tim.blog | Bigbrainspark
