What is Speed Reading?
An adult can read between 200 - 300 words per minute. Speed reading skills can increase your reading pace to about 1500 words per minute. Although this number may seem exaggerated, it is achievable.
You must first comprehend how the human brain processes reading to learn everything there is to know about this skill and understand its mechanism.
The Reading Process
The reading process' first step is looking at a word with eyes, which takes about 0.25 seconds of fixation on each word. Then, you move your eyes to the next word. It takes 0.1 seconds for the brain to move from one word to the next, known as the "Saccade" eye movement.
Typically, your mind simultaneously comprehends 4-5 words, or even a sentence. After all the focus and saccadic movement, the brain scans the entire phrase again to process the meaning, taking about half a second.
Generally, this means that ordinary people read from 200 to 300 words per minute.
Speeding up the Process
The concept of speed reading is to speed up this process by at least 5 times. Since the saccade period cannot be shortened any further, speed reading emphasizes quicker fixations.
To achieve this, scientists recommend avoiding subvocalization, the practice of silently pronouncing words in one's head even when reading quietly.
Speed reading is a technique for looking at words only instead of subvocal reading but beware of confusing it with skimming. When a reader skims a text, they skip parts that their brain deems unnecessary, which could cause important information to be missed. Furthermore, when you skim, your brain doesn't retain what you've read.
Speed Reading Importance
Speed reading is not only quick but also effective. This skill saves you a lot of time without omitting any information.
Speed reading has also been proven to improve memory. The brain’s performance improves during speed reading, allowing the reader to remember more information. Additionally, speed reading stabilizes the brain's state, ensuring faster and more efficient information processing.
You might doubt this, but this technique also helps to enhance focus and lessen the negative effects of distractions. The brain receives much information during speed reading, focusing only on the current task.
Consider the brain as a muscle that requires continuous training to keep its strength, just like any other muscle. Therefore, speed reading is an effective exercise.
A focused brain means improved logical thinking. As your brain gets used to receiving and organizing so much information so quickly, your thinking process will become faster. Your mind will get to work solving problems efficiently as soon as you come across them; in a matter of seconds, you'll be able to retrieve stored information, recognize connections, and generate new solutions.
Speed Reading Great Advantages
Increasing self-esteem is one of the many areas of your life where things will go better for you the better your mental health is.
Comprehending information more quickly enables you to take advantage of more opportunities around you. Understanding deep information in a shorter period boosts your confidence with little effort. Additionally, each of the advantages above lowers your stress levels.
With all these advantages, your emotional health will improve, and stress levels will drop. Your mind will learn to process problems efficiently, and speed reading will help you lead a more stress-free and leisurely life.
How to Learn Speed Reading?
Never underestimate the speed-reading skill. Fortunately, unlike other skills, it is an acquired one. Various techniques can be used to master this skill, and here are a few of them; choose the one that most closely matches your learning style:
1. The Pointer Method
Evelyn Wood, who popularized speed reading, created the pointer method. In this simple technique, the reader uses their index finger to follow the text.
The brain follows the finger movement, which helps to maintain distraction-free focus where the finger goes. Readers tend to regress in their reading. The pointer method helps to avoid that, potentially cutting reading time in half at least.
2. The Scanning Method
In this technique, the reader's eyes move along only one part of the page—either the left or right side, though the center is typically the most convenient. The vision goes from top to bottom rather than reading the entire text from right to left.
This technique lowers saccadic eye movement by concentrating on keywords, such as nouns, shapes, or other terms.
3. Expanding Peripheral Vision
Generally, a reader focuses on each word separately. However, this technique helps the brain read multiple words simultaneously, improving the reader's peripheral vision.
The point is that while it takes the same amount of time to focus and expand the peripheral vision, the number of words the eye concentrates on doubles, and the brain effectively processes five times as much information in the same amount of time.
Mastering this technique is the hardest and takes the most time to learn, so practice extending your peripheral vision by using speed reading tools. Once you have mastered this technique, you will be able to read more quickly and absorb more information.
Best Speed-Reading Apps
Make the most of your smartphone to turn it into a useful tool for completing tasks in any given field.
It has been demonstrated that the quickest way to acquire the speed-reading skill is to practice it frequently. You can use mobile apps to learn how to read quickly in your free time. The following apps are excellent for learning speed reading:
1. Reedy
You can download the Reedy app on your Android smartphone or install it as an extension on your laptop's Chrome browser to enjoy speed reading.
This app trains readers to read faster by displaying words one after another on the screen. The Reedy app trains the user to focus on one word at a time instead of following lines or long texts.
While it might not be the best method for rapidly learning to read lengthy texts, this is a great place to start.
2. ReadMe!
The app is available for download on iOS for iPhones and Android devices, and it has some e-book-related features for practicing speed reading.
You can choose your preferred font size, color, display method, and other settings. Also, many reading modes are available for the user to select from.
Choose the focused reading mode if you want to practice reading sentence by sentence, or short paragraph after the other. The beeline reader mode changes the text color to guide the eye to read from beginning to end at a certain pace.
Finally, you can choose the spritz mode, where the app focuses on a group of words at once, allowing control of the reader's peripheral vision. However, the free app version does not fully support this mode.
3. Spreeder
The app is available for download on iOS for iPhones and Android devices. Users can also use the Spreeder website, where the app lets users paste any text to read it quickly.
The app starts at a somewhat low speed, with words flashing one after another, and the speed gradually increases as the user gets used to the app. It trains the user to speed read carefully without skipping any words.
Unlike other apps, this one tracks the user's reading progress by logging total reading time and speed.
The Controversy Surrounding Speed Reading
Despite its advantages, speed reading is still viewed with skepticism because it's difficult to accept that reading at such a fast pace won't compromise the quality of the information being absorbed.
Perhaps that's why some people do not trust the speed-reading process, as they believe that reading speed affects comprehension quality.
However, regardless of your reading speed, you will not gain any benefit from speed reading if you do not comprehend the text at hand.
Similarly, you won't benefit if you read slowly and fail to retain or understand the information you read.
However, there are some factors to consider here, as reading at a normal pace may give your brain more time to get distracted in between each step of the process.
While skimming allows you to skip parts of the text, speed reading allows you to focus entirely on the text, preventing distractions and ensuring that your brain receives all the information without any loss.
In Conclusion
Your doubts about speed reading being a ruse or an ineffective strategy will vanish if you can master it. Science has endorsed this technique, and many readers have used this skill to improve their learning and reading comprehension, even if they were reading just for pleasure.
Ultimately, it is up to you to decide whether or not to believe in this process. However, rest assured that speed reading will lead to many opportunities and doors opening for you to take advantage of.
Learning new information more quickly enables you to keep up with the fast-paced world we live in today, where our adaption means our survival.
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