Fri, 29 Mar, 2024

Speed Reading

By Nirmal KC

How cool would it be if you could read something really fast? It will just take your five minutes to learn something. This can be done using speed reading. From its name it is clear that speed reading means reading something really fast. And not just fast but you will be able to understand what you are reading as well. So question arises, how is it done? For that let’s start with the basic way of reading and that is of two ways

  1. reading the words out loud

  2. reading silently with our inner voice in our head

These are the basic methods most of the people follow while reading. And this way of reading is slow as it done to our speed of thinking but to our speed of speech which is comparatively slow. The best way of reading fast is by visual external to visual internal. What does this mean is when we read through words our mind creates image of those words and organize them. When we read some word we can create image of that word in our mind. It is even possible to create an image of the sentence and even make a small movie from a paragraph. This helps to increase our imagination as well.

As mentioned earlier, the best way to read something fast is by visual external to visual internal and this method is not very easy to learn. It requires a lot of practice and concentration. The easiest way of learning this method is with the help of a pen. First check your reading speed in wpm(words per minute) to know your current reading speed. This can be done online as well.

So after knowing your wmp get a pen and place your pen at the beginning of the paragraph, then move the pen with a steady pace from left to right and read according with the pace of pen. After some practice your brain will start to read according with the pace of the pen. The best way of doing it is to start with a slower left to right movement and speed up eventually when you get better at it.  After doing it for sometimes check your wmp again and you can see a difference. The main advantage of this method is it ensures that you read at your current top speed.

After getting comfortable with different pace while moving from left to right, you can try different ways that suits you to help you read faster.

Start practicing speed reading with the pen, and as you get better try without the pen. Although it takes a lot of practice, take your time and get better at it. You will find it helpful someday

Some materials are referenced from:  http://www.asianefficiency.com/systems/speed-reading/