Reading is an indispensable part of our everyday life. We read the newspaper to catch up what’s going round the World; we read journals to know about various subjects, documents, letters, reports, emails, books, etc. It is such an important aspect that we take it for granted and assume that we all can read and comprehend easily.
No doubt reading is a task that we all can do very easily but reading with a good speed along with complete comprehension is the task that only a few of us think about. Learning at a faster pace will allow us to taste the beauty of even more works of literature and science within our limited years of life. The average reading speed is about 250 words per minute, but one can improve drastically by improving upon their reading habits.
While reading a text, most of us have the habit of repeating them in our heads, and this is known as sub-vocalization. It increases the reading time as mind also takes some time to repeat the word. Improving upon this requires practice and conscious efforts not to allow brain to repeat.
Another habit that needs to be improved is word-by-word reading. Actually, what happens is that a sentence contains some key words as well as supporting words. To understand a sentence all we need to read are the key words leaving the supporting ones aside. Only those key words generate up the complete meaning and also saves considerable time wasted on reading the supporting ones.
“Since ever grow up never smoke regarded habit as barbarous, dirty and harmful.”
“Since ever I have grown up, I have never desired to smoke and have always regarded the habit of smoking as barbarous, dirty and harmful.”
The above two sentences give you the same meaning but yes you can save a lot of time by reading the first one. So key words reading does not reduce your comprehending power but surely improves your speed.
While reading our eyes needs to focus on the words and sentences we read, but actually, our eyes turn around to the whole text making it difficult to focus on the lines. To avoid this, its advisable to use a pointer to move below the lines we read. The pointer can be your finger, a pencil or pen moving along the lines. The faster you read, the faster will be its movement and your understanding level also improves. Avoid going back to the previous pages or paragraphs as it slows down your speed considerably. It also reduces your flow and the structure of the text, thus reducing the overall understanding of the text.
The last but not the least is your concentration; it is the most important aspect for good speed as well as proper understanding. Stop multi-tasking while reading and stay away from any distractions. These distractions can be both externally or internally. External obviously are the outside noises or reading with the T.V. on while the internals ones include your sub-vocalization, your internal thought process about the recent argument with your friend or about the evening party. To become an efficient reader, you need to avoid all this and enjoy the text you are dealing with.
So now improve upon your reading speed and better understand the texts to get into the finest works of great authors but before getting into speed, reading doesn’t forget to benchmark your speed so that you can always keep practicing and improving your speed. This will help you for your self-assessment and impress the people around you.