Read Faster and Understand More of What You Read

by Kim Allarie

You might have read the hype about speed reading being able to transform your life by enabling you to take in information considerably more quickly than usual, thereby enhancing your skills as well as upping your value as an employee.

For some people reading fast is the primary goal, whereas for others, it is far more important to improve their understanding and retention of information. A good speed reading course should deliver both outcomes and as a result improve both your personal and work life.

The average reading speed is about two words per second with normal comprehension. For normal reading needs this may well be enough, however a basic speed reading course can help increase the average reading speed to four (possibly six) words per second with the same comprehension level.

But there are those who have very particular reading requirements and wish to improve their reading speed to ten-plus words per second with better than normal understanding. A comprehensive speed reading program with lots of practice and testing can help them reach their objective.

Many speed reading programs train students to rapidly search through the text to ignore irrelevant information and pick out the pertinent parts. The idea is to be able to gather the essence of the material through reading entire sentences or phrases as a block, instead of just individual words.

Gaining Speed Without Losing Quality

One of the biggest challenges in speed reading is what is termed sub-vocalization. Children in their early years are taught to read to themselves, causing them to sound out every word in their head as they are reading. With speed reading, the words are not silently read in their mind while going through the material and only the words that have meaning to the context of the material are retained to become part of the comprehension of the material.

Different instruction techniques are taught for speed reading and they may not all have the same desirable outcome for each person looking to improve their reading speed. Unlike repetitious physical tasks where the same movements performed with practice will enable a person to perform the task quicker, speed reading attempts to train the brain to recognize only the words that are important to the materials being read without the need to hear them in their mind.

As with learning any new skill, regular speed reading practice will improve your reading speed over time.

About the Author:

Kim Allarie would love to find a course in speed writing, but is content to learn speed reading for now. Learn more about this useful skill at The Speed Reading Site.