Let’s see what these speed reading techniques are and how to increase reading speed.

Speed reading techniques are some methods and exercises which are aimed to increase a person's average reading speed. There are many speed reading methods available which one can be trained. Up to now I have seen some speed reading courses. In this page I will talk about the basics of speed reading, what I have understood and what to expect from a speed reading program.

From a very young age, we learn how to read. Speed reading courses claim that the way we’ve been taught to read is obsolete and restricts significantly the average reading speed. Because so many years we used to read as we learned from school, it’s difficult to change now our reading habits. If we had learned to read with a speed reading technique then we could enjoy an average reading speed of 20000 words per minute (wpm)! This is incredibly fast. You could finish a whole book in a couple of hours.

But, this doesn’t mean that you cannot increase your reading speed. You may not reach an average speed of 20000 words per minute, but you can double or triple it. As you may assumed this requires practice, lots of practice and patience. Don’t believe that some courses will make you read fast in just one week. In one week you will see just the speed reading techniques. A lot more time is needed for these techniques to become skills and take a place into your long term procedural memory. So do not expect to read 1000 words per minute in just 1 or 2 weeks.

The average reading speed is 150-200 wpm. The reading speed of a normal person is ranked into this range. Attending a speed reading course may double or triple your reading speed in a quite fast time, but in order to achieve higher speeds you need more time for your eyes and mind to get used to it.

Also somebody's reading speed is not stable throughout his day. On some hours his performance may be higher while on some others may be lower than the average. This depends on many factors such as fatigue, quality of sleep, diet, mood and many others. So, do not get disappointed if today your reading speed is lower than it was yesterday.

A very important thing you should know about speed reading is that speed is conversely analogical to comprehension. This is totally logical if you think about it. You cannot read 25000 wpm and understand perfectly what you read. This fact is showed in the following figure.

Theory says that the human mind can read subconsciously everything at an extremely high speed. There have been made many experiments onto this theory and the results showed that it is likely to be true. Your mind can read text at extremely high speed but you are unaware of it. This knowledge must become somehow conscious in order to be useful to you. Photoreading course by Paul Scheely claims that it can activate your subconscious readings. I cannot confirm if this is true because I haven’t tried this course yet.

So what will you develop with a speed reading course?

Speed reading consists of many eye-brain exercises. This means that your eyes will be trained to receive information faster. This translates to identifying words faster than you do now. I forgot to tell you that when you read you don’t see all the letters of a word, but just the first and last letter. So looking at a word you see it as a whole and you do not read the letters. Although you understand immediately typos, this has to do with the stored image of the word in your mind. You understand that something is different from the normal and then you detect the typo.

Another aim of speed reading techniques is to shut your inner voice. While we read, we hear inside our heads a voice that rehearses the text. So reading is like listening to someone speaking the text we read. Many speed reading courses will help you stop rehearsing while reading. This is one of the most important goals of speed reading courses. It’s the most limiting factor you need to eliminate.

You will learn to see multiple words at a time than just one word. Now your eyes read a word and stop, then they move to the next word and so on. While you practice with speed reading your eyes may see three or four words at a time and they do not stop. They move constantly, feeding your mind with information in a constant fast flow. This is difficult in the beginning but if you insist your mind will be forced to process the meanings of whole sentences instantly as it does now with words. So in the same amount of time that you read a word now, you will read a whole sentence. As this skill improves you may be able to read two or three lines at a time.

Practicing with speed reading will strengthen your eye muscles. This is a requirement to reach very high reading speeds. If your eyes muscles are weak then you will tire quickly as you try speed reading techniques. So some eye exercises are essential before training in high reading speeds. All the speed reading techniques needs eye preparation with special eye exercises. Speed reading software make this easy as there is a standard process you follow before each session to ensure that you won’t have an eye strain or something.

Your vision field will expand. As you learn to focus to multiple lines of sentences, your vision does not focus to a small spot but to the big picture. What I mean here is that you will not see more than you see now but you will be more conscious of what you see.

Now we’ve seen some advantages of speed reading let’s see some disadvantages.

In my opinion the greatest disadvantage of speed reading techniques is that require lots of patience. You need to remember every time you read to use a speed reading technique. I tried many times and for a long time to keep up with speed reading but trust me it’s very difficult to apply it constantly.

Another negative factor is that as you start your training and you try to read at a higher speed, your comprehension lowers. So, if something you want to read is very important, you are forced to slow down to understand it fully. As nowadays you don’t spend your time to read unimportant stories, this fact limits your training with speed reading techniques. The good news here are that this depends on your will and if your will is strong then you can overcome this obstacle.

As I mentioned earlier, your eyes are not used to read at such high speeds. This also needs time. You may feel tired when you try any speed reading technique and a need to stop reading immediately. This has to do with the fatigue which is added up to your eyeballs because of your untrained eye muscles. If you are patient your eye muscles will strengthen and you will not get tired so quickly.

This inner voice I told you… Does not shut up! It is very difficult not to hear this voice. In the beginning you just ignore it, but after a while you realize that you listen to it again. It’s indeed the most difficult part on speed reading.

Now I will give you some tips on speed reading I use when I want to read something fast.

Tip 1:

When you read try to see between the words instead on every word. You double your reading speed that way. It is easy without sacrificing too much comprehension. Check the following example:

When you read a text, focus your attention to the upper part of the words. You can imagine a mental line just on top of the sentences. Follow this line without stops. Do not focus attention on words. Just follow the line. Check the following example:

Speed reading is indeed a mind power technique requiring great amounts of patience. I believe that it is a worthy mind expanding technique which needs decisiveness. Think that if you finally overcome all the difficulties you will enjoy so much knowledge; your mind will expand greatly.

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