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Try this Ten Minute Speed Reading Course
The typical speed reading course is expensive and promises
something new. The truth is that most courses advise the same
basic strategies, which are laid out below. This little lesson
in itself can increase your reading speed dramatically if you
practice, and if you want to go further with your efforts there
is a recommendation following the article, for a course that
is affordable and efficient.
Step One: Learn Speed Reading Shortcuts
In most of the things you will read the important elements
are in the first and last parts of each paragraph. This is true
of this paragraph, for example. Thus, if you want to quickly
get the "meat" of the article or book or other piece
of writing, you can scan the paragraphs and focus on the first
and last sentences. In addition, important parts are often in
bullet points or lists. Thus, you can speed up your comprehension
of written works by scanning for highlighted, italicized and
otherwise emphasized parts.
Step Two: Expand Your Vision
Practice taking in more of what is front of you by trying
to read a whole sentence at once. If this isn’t possible,
you can perhaps take in a whole fragment of a sentence and work
up to longer ones. This kind of practice gets you in the habit
of using more of your peripheral vision - that part of the scene
that is to the left or right (or above and below) your point
of focus. Eventually you can learn to comprehend whole sentences
or at least several words at one glance, thus speeding up your
reading.
Step Three: Force Your Speed
The basic idea here is to force yourself to read faster, initially
without any concern for comprehension. Use your fingers to guide
you, gliding them down the page as you read. You can start by
reading normally to see where your speed is at. Then force the
speed. If, for example, you normally read ten pages of a novel
in twenty minutes, or two minutes-per-page, Move your fingertips
down the page at a rate that is three or four times as fast,
and follow with your eyes, reading as well as you can.
Do this a couple times, and then try it even faster. Aim for
ten times as fast as normal. You will almost certainly not understand
what you’re reading at that speed, but that’s okay.
Keep doing this several times at the fastest speed, for about
ten pages each time. After you have practiced this for a while,
try ten more pages at a speed that is comfortable enough for
normal comprehension. You’ll notice that you are reading
faster than before, and still understanding what you read at
least as well as you used to. The forced speed adjusts your habitual
reading speed upwards.
These three steps are what the average speed reading course
will teach you. You can do this on your own as described here,
but there are advantages to having a full course. Many come with
recorded instruction, for example, and tell you when to turn
the page as you do the forced-speed exercise. This makes it much
easier to do the exercise consistently. A good low-cost speed
reading course is recommended below.
(I have used this course and found that it really
works. - Steve)
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