What Is Speed Reading?
Reading engages the eyes, ears, mouth, and brain. Speed reading engages these senses even more than normal reading because you use your senses and brain power even more efficiently. The following sections what goes on in your eyes, ears, mouth, and brain when you speed read.
Speed reading is silent reading
When you read, you speak words to yourself (aloud or in your head) because you learned to read with the sound-it-out method. In school, your teacher taught that you can always read a word by sounding out the letters and letter combinations, and he was right. Being able to sound out words is an essential skill for beginning readers.
The problem with the sound-it-out approach to reading is that it slows you down. You read not at the speed you think but rather at the speed you talk. Sounding it out is fine for beginning readers, but at some point you have to dispense with sound if you want to be a speed reader. Saying the words, even if you only whisper them inside the confines of your skull, takes time.
In speed-reading terminology, saying and hearing words as you read them is called vocalizing. Remember that
Vocalizing is a throwback to your early reading education; you must abandon it to be a speed reader.
Training yourself not to vocalize when you read is one of the most important speed-reading skills you can acquire.
Speed reading is comprehending
The purpose of reading is to comprehend what you read. How well you comprehend what you read is determined by your reading speed, the breadth of your vocabulary, and your degree of familiarity with the subject matter.
Speed reading actually increases reading comprehension. Because you read several words at a time when you speed read, you can pick up the meaning of words in context. Speed reading also has a snowball effect on the size of your vocabulary and general knowledge, which increases your reading speed.
Speed reading is concentrating
All reading requires concentration, if only for a moment. Speed reading, however, requires sustained, forceful concentration because, when you speed read, you do many things at once. To speed read well, you must see and read the words on the page, remain alert to the author’s main ideas, think along with the author and detect how she presents the material so you can pin down the main ideas, and read with more perspective to separate the details from weightier stuff. You have to know when to skim, when to read fast, and when to slow down to get the gist of it
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