Read More Words At a Time

The human mind is capable of accomplishing wondrous feats. It only needs to be trained. You yourself are the only one that can train your mind. No one else can do it for you. Other people can only provide you with guidelines or tips. I’ll be doing just that today. I will teach you how to read large chunks of words simultaneously.

Most people have the habit of reading one word at a time. Reading like this is slow and unnecessary. There is no place for slow things in today’s world. By reading one word at a time, you are putting a severe limit on the processing power of your mind. Reading only one word at a time is the reason for boredom and distraction when reading. Your mind is capable of processing so much more. Once you begin practicing speed reading, you will be amazed at how much more fascinating books and information in general will become.

First, practice by widening your eye span on the page. This doesn’t mean just look at more words at a time, instead try to understand more words at a time. Most people have a very small focus point when reading. They take in one- or two-word-fragments of the line they're on - just enough for the reading to be smooth. Start by adding few words to your reading fragment and increase it daily. You will be surprised to find that the text you read will start to make more sense. Reading larger line fragments instead of word by word is more meaningful to the mind. People always tend to understand information more easily and quickly when the information is not presented extremely slowly.

If I were to speak extremely slowly to you, then by the time I finished my argument, you would forget how it began. The same is even more true for reading speed. When you read slowly, your comprehension suffers for more than just that reason.

The most popular question we speed reading teachers get is this: "how will reading large fragments increase my reading speed?" The answer is quite simple. I will demonstrate my explanation with a simple example. Just imagine that you read approximately three words at a time. At that rate, what happens is that your eyes read the first three words, then move on to the next three. They will stop here, read the words and then move on to the next three. If the text is 300 words long your will stop about 100 times.

Now, what if you had the habit of reading six words at a time? Your eyes would read the first six words, then move on to the next six. They would stop there, read the words, and move on to the next six, thus stopping only 50 times in a 300 hundred word text. Just 3 more words at a time halves the amount of stops. Less stops means more fluidity. For your brain, this fluidity is extremely useful.

Too many fragments has the same effect of listening to someone with an incomprehensible stutter. With reading, this problem has a very clear and very simple solution; simply increase the amount of words you intake at a time.

Speed Reading Is Useful

Speed reading is often associated with words like "scanning", or "skimming through". That is a depressingly common mistake. Speed reading is only similar to skimming or “glancing over” in that it is quick.

Unlike those other methods of reading, (proper) speed reading does not harm comprehension in any way. Speed reading in fact improves comprehension.

It is easy to see how an exciting movie (with lots happening) can keep your interest – but it is apparently not quite as easy to see how reading quickly (with lots of information coming to you) can be easy to concentrate on.

When the text you are reading is so intense, so informative, and so interesting as it is when speed reading, it becomes not only easy, but natural to comprehend more. You would definitely understand and enjoy more of it than you would if you were reading something that seemed boring, ordinary, and slow.

Observe that I used the word “seemed” right there. The text that you read is, more often than not, actually more interesting and more exciting if you speed read it. An dull and uninteresting article can all of a sudden seem much more appealing if you speed read it.

The facts, the descriptions, and the rest of the information present in the article will never leave, regardless of whether or not you speed read. If you stay focused, nothing will be lost if you read properly – because the information is all in the words. Regardless of the way you read, the content will not change - only the way you perceive it.

Speed reading allows you to read more, and read it better. You will enjoy reading more if you speed read. As far as productivity, education, and fun are concerned, learning how to speed read is an excellent idea.