How To Read FASTER - Speed Reading
What Exactly is Happening When You Read?
How fast and well you can read depends on three primary factors
Eye movements - how well your eyes coordinate to move across a line of words on a page
Cognitive Process - ability to understand the information
Regression - having to re-read information due to lack of understanding (or zoning out)
Let’s take a look at each of these in a bit more detail..
Eye Movements
2 major types of eye movements when we read: Fixation and Saccades
Fixation = normal field of vision excluding peripheral vision. It's when you focus on something or where you're directly looking
Saccades = rapid, jumping, eye movements between words
When you read, your eyes move in saccadic fashion and then fixate on a word
Average saccade length is about 2 degrees which is the same as 8 letters
30 milliseconds to perform each saccade
100-250 milliseconds for each period of fixation
Cognitive Process
Cognitive processing (working memory), or how well you are able to understand the material you’re reading. These include:
Pauses for comprehension (300- 500 milliseconds)
Regression
Re-reading material that you have already read, but didn't quite comprehend
The more material you understand right away, the less you have to use regression—> limiting this obviously increases reading speeds
4 Tips to Improve Reading Speeds
Break the sub-vocalization
Sub-vocalization = reading every single word out loud in your head. This comes from when we first established how we learned to read. For most of us, the last time we took a class called "reading" we were in grade school. We are taught to read silently to ourselves the same way that we read out-loud. This means:
Reading speed = talking speed because you talk through what you're reading out loud in your head
This makes sense that the average reading speed for the casual reader is also the average speaking speed, which is around 200-250 words per minute (wpm)
How can we get rid of this? You want to begin to read with you EYES instead of pronouncing every single word. It's sort of like seeing a STOP sign. We are so used to it that we don't pronounce the word "STOP" in our heads every single time we see a stop sign, but we actually process the word without even realizing it.
The way to accomplish this is to set little check points where you can group words together and read the words as a group instead of saying every single word individually. This takes practice and time to get used to.
Use a pen or finger to trace under each line as you read
Doing this will keep your eyes focused where you want them to be (because our eyes tend to dance around when we zone out). It also facilitates easier saccadic rhythm while reading to keep your eyes going to those check points set in the first tip. Also, while doing this, you're less likely to undergo regression (reading things over again).
If you want to read faster while maintaining a high comprehension rate, you must do so in a quiet, distraction free place
Be MINDFUL when reading
If you want to read faster while maintaining a high comprehension rate, you must do so in a quiet, distraction free place
Read OFTEN & read challenging material
Reading is a skill that takes time to master
In order to put these four tips into actual practice:
Figure out your baseline reading speed in words per minute either online or time yourself while reading a page or two of a book (calculated in number of words read per minute).
Practice each of these tips by taking something relatively simple and reading it over and over again
NOTE: your comprehension won't be as high initially because you're training your brain to read in a new way that it's not used to. Again this takes PRACTICE to get really good and efficiency at it, but I guarantee doing these four things will increase your reading speed dramatically
Sources
Jordan Harry's TEdX Talk "How to Read a Book a Day"
My medical school curriculum..
http://wexler.free.fr/library/files/rayner (1998) eye movements in reading and information processing. 20 years of research.pdf
