Speed Reading - How To:

Speed Reading helps you to read and understand text more quickly. It is an essential skill in any environment where you have to master large volumes of information quickly, as is the norm in fast-moving professional environments.

 Key:

The most important trick about speed reading is to know what information you want from a document before you start reading it: if you only want an outline of the issue that the document discusses, then you can skim the document very quickly and extract only the essential facts. If you need to understand the real detail of the document, then you need to read it slowly enough to fully understand it.

 You will get the greatest time savings from speed reading by learning to skim excessively detailed documents.

Improve:

 ·        Increasing the number of words in each block:
This needs a conscious effort. Try to expand the number of words that you read at a time. Practice will help you to read faster. You may also find that you can increase the number of words read by holding the text a little further from your eyes. The more words you can read in each block, the faster you will read!

 ·        Reducing Fixation Time:
The minimum length of time needed to read each block is probably only a quarter of a second. By pushing yourself to reduce the time you take, you will get better at picking up information quickly. Again, this is a matter of practice and confidence.

 ·        Reducing Skip-Back:
To reduce the number of times that your eyes skip back to a previous sentence, run a pointer along the line as you read. This could be a finger, or a pen or pencil. Your eyes will follow the tip of your pointer, smoothing the flow of your reading. The speed at which you read using this method will largely depend on the speed at which you move the pointer.

By speed reading you can read information more quickly. You may also get a better understanding of it as you will hold more of it in short term memory.
To improve the speed of your reading, read more words in each block and reduce the length of time spent reading each block. Use a pointer to smooth the way your eyes move and reduce skip-back.