In a world of information, it’s crucial to get as much knowledge as possible and to use it in the best possible way.
To help you with this, Bhaskar Health found some tips that will help you to read much more quickly, which will help you get much more useful information. It will save you significant time and effort. And at the end of the article, you can find interesting facts about some well-known speed readers.
1. Don’t read to yourself.
When we read, we usually imagine ourselves speaking the words, and it decreases the speed of reading significantly. So, first of all, you should stop doing that. Chewing gum while you read may help you to get rid of this habit as it occupies the muscles of your mouth and tongue and prevents you from "speaking" to yourself.
2. Don’t read every word.
A person is normally able to scan a piece of text of 1.5″ (4 cm), which usually contains from 3 to 5 words. So instead of reading every word, move your eyes and scan from one piece of 3 to 5 words to another. Use your peripheral vision, and don’t focus on particular words.
3. Make fewer eye movements.
While reading, you move your eyes jerkily because you react to particular words. More likely, you will stop your sight on words that are very long or unfamiliar to you. You can read faster if you decrease the number of eye movements per line. So get used not to stopping on particular words but to moving on to particular places on the page instead (remember about 1.5″).
4. Don’t go back.
While reading, you often move your eyes back to earlier words both consciously and unconsciously. We spend a lot of time on regression and back-skipping. To train yourself not to go back to earlier words and lines, you can use a sheet of paper to cover the lines you’ve already read.
5. Read what’s necessary.
If you need to check a newspaper for necessary material or prepare for a test, read titles and headings of sections, read the beginning and the end of every section, and mark important words in the text. If you are not reading something very important, just read the sections that are relevant to your purpose. When you read selectively, you have the chance to get the main points of many more texts.
6. Try special apps.
There are special phone apps and computer software that flash text one word at a time, and you can choose any reading speed. Choose the speed that is comfortable for you, and then increase it little by little as you progress.
7. Test yourself.
Using a timer, check how many words or pages you can read per minute. Do it regularly, set yourself goals, and try to beat your own records until you are happy with the speed of your reading.
Bonus: Well-known speed readers and their achievements
George Washington even read books while riding horseback.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was able to read and absorb an entire paragraph at a single glance.
Theodore Roosevelt was said to read a whole book every day before breakfast.
John F. Kennedy was able to read about 1,200 words per minute.
Do you think that speed reading is a really useful skill? Or can you do perfectly well without it? Share your opinion in the comments.
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