It is useful to know the characteristics of speed reading before undertaking any speed reading course.
We always like to know what we’re getting into, especially if it’s something we know little about. There are basic features of speed reading that need to be practiced in order to be able to read quickly. How they are learned can vary, as courses can be taken through a personal instructor or purchased as computer software. Some people have even mastered the techniques on their own. Others can read fast without even having a clue how they do it!
Scanning, skimming, and looking are methods used by many speed readers. Skimming and skimming helps us preview the chapter before reading it to determine, in general, what the writing is about, what the main idea is, and how the ideas are written. This initial preview usually takes between 30 and 60 seconds, depending on the length of the section of work you want to study. Skim through the work, noting the chapter title, headings, subheadings, and bold or italics. Take note of any illustrations, graphs, or charts. To understand a bit more of the information in the paragraphs, take a quick look at the first and last paragraphs, as well as the first sentence of each paragraph.
Scanning will be the speed reading feature where you will very quickly read each paragraph. Take note of the important keywords in the sentences. What is a keyword? If one were to remove the keywords, the sentence would be meaningless. Therefore, the other words that make up the sentence are not important, just “filler” words.
The most important thing is that an efficient reader will not read each word separately. You will read large groups of words or paragraphs simultaneously. This is done by increasing our natural peripheral visual ability when reading. When you look at an image, you don’t just focus on a small section, you see the whole picture. Speed readers have learned to apply this tactic to their reading.
Elimination of backward skipping habits and subvocalization are also important features of speed reading. Skipping backwards is the bad habit of many readers, without realizing it, of rereading the same word or phrase once, twice or even more times. This drastically slows down the reading speed.
Subvocalization is also a habit that most of us do without realizing that there is something wrong with it. Maybe not bad, but definitely not useful for speed reading. Subvocalization is the reading of words out loud in our head. The problem with this is that it allows us to read as fast as we can think, and not as fast as our brains can process the information. Which is faster than you ever imagined.
Efficient speed readers adjust their pace according to the difficulty of the text. Higher speeds can be maintained for easier reads, while lower speeds will be needed for difficult or more technical writes. Of course, high speeds aren’t very applicable to reading fiction or poetry, but practicing speed reading features whenever you can is important.
All the features of speed reading have excellent benefits for the reader. Even if only one of these tactics were to be achieved, his reading speed would improve significantly.
