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Basic Speed Reading Techniques

Several good speed reading techniques can be learned quickly and put to use today. But the key to their effectiveness is not just in how well you understand the idea. Reading about them is not of much help. You need to actually practice. The following are two of the most basic practices. You can work on them for an hour and see some results. A little more work and you'll be reading twice as fast.

Forcing Your Speed

Forcing yourself to read faster is one of the primary techniques you'll learn from most speed reading lessons. We can see and process a lot more information than we realize, and more quickly than you might suspect. The way to train yourself to do this is to simply force yourself to read faster than normal. Practice with a novel or other non-technical book. To control your pace, you'll run your fingers down the pages as you read.

To test yourself and to see how much this kind of practice can help, you should first read ten pages at your normal speed, to see how long it takes. Time yourself using any watch or clock. Don't worry about being too precise, because the difference between your "before" and "after" reading speed will be more than a few seconds.

After timing yourself at normal speed, force yourself to read the next ten pages twice as fast. Do this by moving your hand down those pages faster and following the page above your fingertips, reading what you can at that speed. Do this "double speed" reading several times, and then try it even faster.

Don't worry about comprehension at this point. The idea is to train yourself to use a different pace when reading, and comprehension will improve in time. Spend an hour reading extremely fast, trying to catch all the words but without worrying about understanding them. Do this and when you return to a more normal pace at which you can comprehend what you're reading, you'll find that you cannot help but read faster. Simply practicing speed alone changes the "normal" pace of your reading.

Training Your Peripheral Vision

Most of us habitually read a word at a time, but that isn't the only way we can read. In fact, with a bit of practice we can start to "see" and process whole phrases and sentences. For this you need to work on your peripheral vision - your ability to see and comprehend things to the right and left of where your eyes are focused. You'll discover that when you no longer need to move your eyes back and forth so much it's easier to read at a faster pace.

Practicing this skill involves allowing your eyes to take in a chunk of text or even a whole sentence all at one glance. Try it right now as you read this and you'll find that you do not actually need to move your eyes to see six or more words at a time. Reading one word at a time is just a matter of habit.

Use your hand or fingers to help you do this. Slide your fingertips down the middle of the page when reading, and keep your eyes following them (the text just above them), while still taking in the words to either side of your focus. Although this is more difficult than the forced speed exercise, it really helps you increase your speed, and you'll notice improvements if you work on this for an hour or two.

Once you've practiced that a while, just put the two speed reading techniques together. Now time yourself again as you read ten pages of a book (preferably the same book but different pages). As mentioned, a novel is probably best for these exercises. If you have actually spent an hour or two of practicing these techniques you should notice a substantial increase your reading speed.