How To Increase Your Reading Speed

By Author: Jacker Hall
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Reading is an essential task on a daily basis. However, speed reading ensures reading and thoroughly comprehending the written information quicker. Not only is this beneficial to the individual in gathering information faster, it is also an essential skill in any environment. To take in large amounts of information quickly is the norm in any fast-paced professional environment.

There are several programs designed to help you increase your reading speed. Nowadays, we have the opportunity to sit in the comfort of our own home and attain this valuable skill. Nevertheless, you can increase your speed in reading and maintaining accuracy through a few useful techniques, such as focussing on key insight, practicing daily, elude distraction, and avoiding re-reading.

Key Insight

The most vital tip in reading quicker is to know exactly what information is required from the document or book before beginning to read it. If you only require an outline of the issue, it is better to just skim through the document and extract essential details only. On the other hand, if a more in-depth analysis is required, this would ...
... require reading the text thoroughly, but quickly to gain adequate understanding, which skill would require plenty of practice.

Daily Practice

As with mastering any skill, practice is required to increase reading speed. It is beneficial to know your reading speed initially. Timing reading speed can be calculated by reading an article. With plenty of practice, the time taken to read the article should significantly reduce.

Through practice a reader gains skill by reading many words at a time. Very rarely would the reader's eyes bounce back to a previous set of words. However, an essential aspect with increasing reading speed is not to be diverted by any distraction.

Eluding Distraction

It is quite difficult to escape from interruption especially in a fast-paced business environment. However, with plenty of distractions, it can be fairly demanding to maintain concentration. Nevertheless, make sure to practice speed reading in a quiet environment initially. Distraction can result in re-reading the text and reduce reading speed. Apart from practice, when actually required to speed read due to professional or business circumstances, it is best to ensure a distraction free/quiet environment say by simply closing the door and switching the phone off.

Prevent Re-Reading

It is tempting to re-read the text, especially if an in-depth analysis of the document is required. Most often, the reader does not even know that he/she is re-reading the same words over and over again. However, this would slow down reading speed significantly. The best way to prevent this is to use a plain piece of paper/card and cover the lines down the page as you have read them. This would prevent the chance of your eyes wandering back to them. Moreover, experts do suggest holding the text a tad further from your eyes. This would allow you to see and read more words within a section. With time and practice, you would not require the paper/card any more.

On the other hand, reading speed can decrease significantly if the reader is genuinely not interested in the text or document. Research has suggested that this problem is due to poor or disinterested readers spending time on reading small word chunks. Most often the reader would skip back and forth, which looses the flow. Overtime, this would not only reduce concentration span and prevent the reader from understanding the written information, it would also make reading more tiring.

Since reading is a task required in daily life it is easy to practice increasing reading speed on a regular basis. Remember that practice is the key to speed reading. Humans are born with the intellectual skill to read. Thus, do not give up if it is difficult initially. Nothing is impossible in this world and that includes increasing your reading speed.

Clinton Broxton is a speed reading expert and author of Increasing Reading Speed. Visit us: http://www.spreeder.com/blog/increasing-reading-speed-by-limiting-habits/ .