Speed Reading Tips To Increase Your Reading Speed

The pace of modern life in the age of information means that we are all under pressure to read faster, but there is so much information that we have to read and process. Sifting through information is one thing and understanding it is a different thing. The gap between these two processes is often the driving force behind the desire to increase the reading speed.

It is important to increase your reading speed, because cognitive tests have concluded that we memorize facts better when we read then many times using a process called "speed reading". Memory works by sending sensory information to the short term memory where it is coded and then transferred to long term memory. Short term memory is wiped out by new information, but long term memory can hold facts for a life time.

To increase your reading speed it is necessary to understand how vision and peripheral vision works. Educational psychologists devised the tachistoscope, a machine designed to flash images at a screen, at varying speeds.

The experiment was initially conducted with large aeroplanes flashing onto a screen and then the image was reduced and the speed increased until it reached one five hundredth of a second. Incredibly after an initial training period most of the people tested could recognize very tiny aeroplanes at the fast flickering at the fast rate.

This experiment had implications for skimming words, rather than reading them slowly and enunciating the words. The increase in reading speed and comprehending what had been read was achieved by improving the visual process. Training your peripheral vision can increase your reading speed by three hundred percent.

Evelyn Wood developed the "Wood method" of speed reading in the 1950's; she began by trying to train herself to improve her own reading skills. Her personal frustration allegedly led to a breakthrough, discarding the book in temper her hand swept the page. She realized that the hand could act as a pointer, and it focused the eye which resulted in a natural increase in the speed of reading.

Normally when you read the eye moves backwards and forwards, but the finger focuses the vision. To test this find a newspaper column or other reading material that is not very wide, six or seven words is ideal, and run your finger down the center of the page. Most people will find that one technique alone will improve your reading speed, and then that the width of the columns can be increased.

In real terms there is no such thing as a normal reading speed, some people read more easily, confidently or faster than others by utilizing a series of techniques.

These techniques include not vocalizing every word, breaking the reading material into chunks and skim reading the central parts of the passages and identifying words without formulating each individual letter. Sub vocalization is the art of reading something whilst saying the word and this decreases the ability to read fast.

However, those that to this, often do it often do it subconsciously without thinking. Unlearning how an to undo an unconscious act can be difficult but some people find good results from reading to music. The music forces them to concentrate and focus on the words and reading and not on vocalization of the words.

There is no doubt that the techniques work, but once you start to practice there is a trade off, and not everyone achieves a hundred percent comprehension. Speed reading is such an imperative part of life these days than many universities actually teach the skill.

The student who masters the techniques can improve their learning skills, because they can read through text books at an incredible rate, but also improve their memory skills. Skimming a text three or four times generally means that mot people remember the text better than when it has been read once and each word enunciated. So speed reading is not only faster reading it is smarter reading.

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