Here is a simple speed reading exercise you can do start training yourself to become a speed reader. Take a book you have already read in the past and start reading it again. I recommend one that is actually worth reading a second time. The point of doing this is to get yourself used to reading at a quicker pace. Because you already read the material once in the past, it’ll be easier to go through faster this time and you’ll easily read at a faster speed. As you are doing this you are actually conditioning your brain to keep up with words at a faster pace.

One thing you may notice while reading material you already read before is that you eyes will start grabbing groups of words, rather than fixating on a word by word basis (most people read this way). This is because you’re already familiar with the material and your brain will want to process information faster befause it knows what to expect. The more you do this, the easier it is to condition your brain and eyes to look for groups of words and phrases, rather than just words by themselves. Fixation is a reading habit that we need to change if we are going to start reading faster.

Reading material you read in the past will also help you learn to prioritize while reading. We all know that some parts of a chapter are more important than others. So it’s important to anticipate which parts of our reading are more important to us. If you’ve read the material before you’ll easily be able to do this. But by practicing this in previously read material, you are still conditioning your brain to do something similar in material that is new.

Aside from conditioning yourself to getting used to reading faster, reading something you have previously has other benefits. For example, there are some types of technical material that need to be read more than once to really understand the information. Some novels are more enjoyable the second time around when you already know what will happen in the story. Informational material can be read again to reinforce ideas that were gathered before. Re-reading something for repetition helps you learn it better and also trains you to start reading faster in other types of new material that you haven’t read. Try to set aside a certain amount of time each day, maybe 15 minutes, to reading material that you have already read previously. This will help you learn better and it will help you read faster.

In order to accelerate your reading speed over a long term you can challenge yourself to read a little faster. The average reading speed is about 200 words per minute. If you forced someone that is reading 200 words a minute to read at 250 which is 50 words per minute faster, they would probably get about the same amount of comprehension. Why is that? The fact of the matter is, when you go a little faster you actually force yourself to focus more.

One concept behind trying to improve your reading speed is forcing yourself to go a little faster than you normally would. This whole idea of pushing yourself to make improvements and going outside of your comfort zone is not that different from other things where you try to make improvements in your life. Let us say you are trying to play a sport or an instrument. If you have a coach, he or she will be pushing you to go a little faster and will encourage you to get out of your comfort zone. At the same time, he or she will push you to make improvements.

The way we make improvements in anything is by pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zones. I want you to think about what your reading speed is right now. What if you were just to push yourself just a little faster? How much comprehension could you get? I want you to actually test this out. Do an exercise and practice on your own because the only way that you are going to make improvements is by actually putting in the work and doing the practice. So, I really want you to do this.

I want you to set aside some time. I want you to try and go a little faster than you normally read through the material. Don’t be scared. Think of this as practice so that if you mess up it’s no big deal, it’s just practice. I want you to try and see. Read for about 15 minutes. Take some material that you are currently working on, maybe it’s a novel, a textbook, a work-related material or anything else. I want you to try to read it a little faster than you normally would.

Some of you are going to find that by going a little faster you can actually improve your focus. I want you to think about it like this, when you are going faster you are challenging your mind to keep up. When you challenge your mind to keep up, you’ll naturally focus a little more. If you do this, you will not only have a little more speed but you are also going to have better comprehension.

Think of it just like when you drive. If you are driving 70 miles an hour down the highway, you are more focused right? It is because of the fact that if you make one mistake, your life is on the line. What if at 5 miles an hour? How much do you have to focus if you are only going 5 miles an hour?  I think all of us would agree that you do not have to focus as much as if you are going at 70 miles an hour.

Sometimes, that increase of speed is what will help you focus more. This is one simple thing that you can do to teach yourself and to train yourself to read faster. Try going a little faster than you normally would. Push yourself outside of that comfort zone. Take 15 minutes. Try to read in this kind of a manner. Try to go a little faster than you normally would, whatever feels comfortable. Push yourself a little more.  See how much comprehension you can get. Think of it completely as an experiment. You might want to try this out for 15 minutes.

Here is what I recommend that you might want to try doing. Maybe you read in 5 minutes increments. Read for 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes is over, give yourself an estimate from 0 to 100 percent on what your comprehension was during those 5 minutes. Then, read for another 5 minutes and give yourself an estimate of your comprehension again.

Obviously, if you are estimating your comprehension, it is not a real score for your comprehension but it is actually a self analysis. The whole point of this is to get that self analysis and see how much comprehension you can actually get if you go little faster than you normally would. As you would imagine, the more you practice doing this, the more you push yourself outside of your comfort zone, the more improvements you are going to make. Try this out. If you have maybe 10-15 minutes, set aside the time and try to go a little faster than you normally would through a material that you have to read.

Subvocalization (also known as auditory reassurance) is a very common habit among readers. It involves saying words in your head while reading and it’s one of the main reasons why people read slowly and have trouble improving their reading speed.

Many speed-reading programs tend to exaggerate and will falsely claim that the key to speed reading is to eliminate the habit of subvocalization. However, study after study shows that eliminating the habit completely is not possible.

In this article I will discuss how you can minimize subvocalization, instead of eliminating it. Minimizing subvocalization will help you boost your reading speed and it will also help you improve your comprehension.

Are You Hearing Voices in Your Head?

If you’re hearing voices in your head while reading, don’t be alarmed. You aren’t crazy. This is how most people were taught to read; to say the word silently in their head.

When you were initially taught to read, you are taught to read out loud. Once you were fluent enough, your teacher probably told you to start vocalizing the words in your head. This is how the habit of subvocalization usually originates. Most people continue reading this way for the rest of their lives. But if you want to start reading faster, you need to change this habit of subvocalization.

You don’t need to say every word in your head to be able to understand what you are reading. When you were younger it was absolutely necessary to say each and every single word, but now you can extract the meaning of words by simply seeing them. You don’t need to pronouce them, out loud or in your head, to get that same understanding.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Think about when you are driving. When you see a stop sign, do you actually vocalize the word “STOP” in your head? You may have done so right now while reading the words in the sentence, but when you see a stop sign while driving you’re unlikely to say the word. You see it and recognize that it’s a stop sign automatically.

If you’re like most readers, you probably subvocalize all, or almost all, the words in your head. But you don’t always vocalize everything you read. Here’s another example of what I mean. If you were reading and came across the year “1977″ you probably wouldn’t vocalize in your head “Nineteen Seventy Seven.” You would probably see the number and understand the year. Or if you saw the number “3,472,382,977″ you probably wouldn’t vocalize the words “three billion, four hundred seventy two million, three hundred eighty two thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven.” That’s a mouthful. For a number like that, you see it and know it’s a big one. The understanding comes quickly. You don’t subvocalize it. If you did, you’d be staring at that number for a while without making progress through the sentence.

It Isn’t About Words, It’s About Ideas

Reading isn’t even about words, reading is about is about extracting ideas, absorbing information and getting details. Words by themselves don’t mean much unless they’re surrounded by other words.  When you read the words “New York City” do you even think of it as three words? If you’re like most people you would equate those three words (New York City) to a city. NYC would mean the same thing right?

So we have to change this habit of subvocalization in order to boost our reading speed. Why do we have to do this? Because it limits how fast we can actually read. Think about it this way. If you are saying every word in your head, doesn’t that mean that you can only read as fast as you can talk? If you’re saying every single word in your head, your limit is going to be your talking speed.

Reading Speed = Talking Speed for Most People

The average reading speed is about 150-250 words per minute (wpm). The average talking speed is exactly the same. Beause most people say words in their head while reading (subvoclization), they tend to read around at around the same rate as they talk. You can test this out for yourself if you like. Try reading for one minute normally and then try reading out loud for one minute. If you’re like most people, your reading speed and talking speed will be similar (within 50 words higher or lower).

Why do most people read between 150 and 250 wpm and not above 300 wpm? Because it’s hard to talk that fast. So we need to change this habit of subvocalization. You don’t want to get stuck reading as fast as you talk. You’re capable of reading as fast as you can think.

Changing the habit of subvocalization is easier said than done. You can’t just turn this voice in your head off. Instead of eliminating this habit, you want to minimize it. For example, if you are reading a text that said, “The boy jumped over the fence.” That sentence has a number of words in it. To minimize subvocalization, you might just say in your head, “Boy jumped fence,” three words rather than six words in that sentence. Some people think this means skipping words, but you are not actually skipping them. Your eyes still see all the other words. You are simply just saying a few of the words. This is how you minimize subvocalization.

Keep in mind that there are a lot of words in sentences and paragraphs that are not essential to the meaning of that paragraph. Remember, we are reading for ideas, not words.

How Subvocalization Can Sometimes Be Useful

Saying words in your head can sometimes be helpful. For example, when you are reading material that has technical terminology or vocabulary that you are not familiar. In situations like this, saying words in your head, or even out loud, can be a useful way to improve and expand your vocabulary.

Here’s another way subvocalization can be useful. If you have to memorize something word for word, subvocalizing the words or saying the words out loud would be helpful. How do you think actors and actresses remember their lines? Reading out loud can help you memorize something word for word, but when you noramlly read, you very rarely need to know something word for word. Most of the time you are reading to extraction information, ideas and details.

To boost your reading speed, you need to minimize subvocalization by saying only a few words per line. If you say every word, you’ll be limited to your talking speed.

How do you know if you are changing this habit? If you start reading over 300 words per minute, you are probably not saying every word in your head (because you can’t talk that fast). If you are going over 400 words a minute you are definitely making progress and probably just saying some of the words in your head.

5 Ways To Minimize Subvocalization:

1. Use Your Hand to Guide Your Eyes While Reading

We keep on emphasizing the importance of using your hand to guide your eyes. It’s a central principle to all speed-reading techniques and it’s something that will help you minimize subvocalization. Using your hand to guide your eyes will also help you grab groups of words while reading, helping you avoid another common reading habit, fixation.

2. Distract Yourself

To minimize subvocalization, try distracting yourself from saying words in your head. How should you distract yourself? There are a couple of ways to do it. One way is try to chew gum while you read. If you chew gum while reading it will distract you from saying the words in your head.

You can also distract yourself from saying words by occupying that voice in your head with another voice. Try counting from one to three while you are reading the material (example: “one, two three” line-by-line). While you are doing this, try fixating your eyes somewhere at the beginning of the line, somewhere in the middle of the line, and somewhere at the end of the line. While you are looking in those three places you want to be counting “one, two, three.” By doing this you will also be fixating on three groups of words, rather than each and every single word. You can count “one, two, three” out loud (maybe whispering) or in your head. Either way, you’ll distract yourself from saying the actual words you are reading. With some practice, you’ll find it easier to avoid saying all the words in your head as you read.

3. Listen To Music While Reading

This will not only help you minimize subvocalization, but listening to music may also help you concentrate better. However, keep in mind that not all types of music are going to help you concentrate. You want to avoid listening to music with lyrics or anything with a strong beat because it is going to throw off your concentration. You may also want to avoid listening to songs that remind you of other things (your high school sweetheart, a fight scene from a movie or anything else that might further distract you).

Listen to something that is instrumental. Classical music usually works best. That will help you to improve your concentration and it will also help you to minimize your habit of subvocalization.

4. Use the AccelaReader RSVP Application

AccelaReader uses Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) to help you boost your reading speed and minimize subvocalization. The application is simple to use. You simply paste the text you want to read into a textbox. Set your reading speed and press play. The words then blink on the screen at the speed that you set. You can also choose how many words you want to blink at a time.

I recommend setting a speed of at least 300 words per minute. Anything higher than that will help you avoid subvocalizing all the words. The faster you go, the less words you will be able to say in your head. With some practice, you’ll find it easier to minimize this habit of subvocalization.

5. Force Yourself To Read Faster Than You Normally Would

Let’s say you normally read 250 wpm. Try going a little faster (maybe 300 or 350 wpm). If you force yourself to go a little faster than you normally read, you’ll minimize the amount of words you say in your head. In addition to minimizing subvocalization, you’ll also improve your focus because you have to pay attention more when you read a little faster. Again, the more you practice pushing yourself faster, the faster you will get.

Conclusion

As I mentioned earlier, many speed-reading programs tend to exaaggerate what is possible by falsely claiming that you can eliminate subvocalization. Your goal should be to minimize this habit, not eliminate it. The five tips mentioned above will help you minimize the habit of subvocalization so you can start reading at the speed of thought.

How Deadlines Help You Read Faster

Let’s rewind the clock and think back to when we were in school when you had to write an eight-page paper. When did you write that eight-page paper? What if it was due in three weeks? Did you start writing it at the day you were assigned? Probably not, I think most of us when we remember that we had to write our papers, we probably did them the day or the night before.

I remember when there was this one paper that I had to do when I was in college. It had to be emailed to the professor by midnight and I remembered about it at the last moment, around 9:45pm. I didn’t get started on it until 10 pm. I had two hours to write this eight-page paper. Somehow, that paper was completed.

Procrastination isn’t a good thing. But what happens when you only have two hours to complete something that must be done in time? For most of us, if there is a time limit on something, we find a way to make it happen. Sometimes, just having a deadline can improve our focus.  I want you to think about how the speed at which I did that paper was actually improved because I only had two hours to do it. The funny thing is, I actually scored pretty well on that paper. But it wasn’t because I procrastinated. It was because I was able to focus all of my attention on a single task. The deadline made it possible for me to sharpen my focus and write that paper faster than I normally would have.

How would this apply to reading? Simple. Start setting deadlines on the amount of time it should take you to read a page in your book.

Speed Reading Exercise: The Deadline Technique

Here’s an exercise you can try out for yourself. Take a book that you are currently reading. All you need is a book you are currently reading and a timer. For most books (fiction & non-fiction), you will have anywhere from 300 to 500 words per page. Let’s assume your book has about 400 words per page. Your goal in this exercise should be to at least read one page per minute. This would be double the average person’s reading speed (the average is 200 words per minute).

If you do not have exactly 400 words per page you can still do the exercise. You can adjust the time or the amount of pages you try to read to achieve a rate of 400 wpm. For example, if your book has 800 words per page, try reading one page in two minutes (this would still be a rate of 400 wpm). Or if you only have 200 words per page, you might want to try and read two pages in one minute (still 400 wpm). Although it doesn’t have to be exactly a rate of 400 wpm, I recommend you try to get as close to this rate as possible, or faster if you feel comfortable going faster. Think of the exercise as a form of practice. You are practicing to see if you can read through a certain amount of material in a certain amount of time.

Having this deadline will help you get faster. I recommend you try this kind of exercise for 15 minutes a day, for two weeks. As you practice this, you’ll notice that it gets easier and easier to go faster. You’ll also notice that by having a deadline, you can improve your focus while reading.

Keep Track of Your Progress

I recommend that you keep track of your progress with a spreadsheet or you can make a little grid on a separate sheet of paper. To keep track of your progress, create 15 rows and label them 1 through 15. Each row will represent an attempt in the exercise.

You’ll also need a few columns. Label the first column “Yes or No?”. This will signify whether or not you made it to your deadline. For example, if you time yourself to read one page in one minute, just put a yes or not if you made it though the material in the amount of time you set. In the next column create a label with the word comprehension. After each attempt, you are going to do a self-assessment of your comprehension. Think of it as more of an estimate than a real comprehension score. On a scale from zero to a hundred percent, you are going to estimate what your comprehension level was during the time you spent reading.

If you are trying to read at 400 wpm, it may initially be a challenge. You may not make it through the entire page in time. Or you might make it, but your comprehension felt terrible. That’s alright initially. But if you keep practicing, you’ll notice that it will become easier to make to read at that speed with better comprehension. Having a deadline will force you to focus specifically on the material you are reading.

Later, you can modify the exercise. For example, instead of just doing one minute per page, you may want to do two pages in two minutes. You can even try increasing your reading rate if 400 wpm is too easy for you.

The simplest way to speed up your reading is to use your hand (or a pen). Using your hand to guide your eyes can help you make an immediate boost in your reading speed. Because your eyes are naturally attracted to motion, using your hand as a pacer can help to improve your speed by guiding your eyes along the line. You simply move you hand from left to right, line by line.

Reading with your hand improves your focus

It’s becoming harder and harder to focus while reading. Our lives are filled from distractions that easily keep us from focused reading. Imagine reading 100 years ago. You wouldn’t be distracted by a phone call or a text message. You wouldn’t have the urge to check your email or facebook. But now, it’s very easy to get distracted.

How can we easily overcome these distractions? First, by eliminating those distractions (turning off the phone and/or computer). Second, you can use your hand to guide your eyes while reading. Better focus will not only improve your speed, but also your comprehension. This simple speed reading technique is a foundational concept in all speed reading courses.

What if I’m reading on the computer screen?

If you read a lot on the computer screen, chances are that you’d rather not put your hand on the screen to guide your eyes. Here are some work arounds for this kind of scenario. If you have an external mouse for your desktop computer, you can easily move the mouse pointer from the left to right as you are reading. This will still help you guide your eyes along the line. But if you’re using a laptop this strategy probably isn’t so useful since the mousepad will make it harder to move your pointer from left to right.

If you are reading on the computer screen, I highly recommend you use a free speed reading software program called AccelaReader. It’s very simple to use and allows you to read much faster on the screen. The underlying technology behind it is called Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP Reading). Studies have shown that RSVP Readers can help most people make an improvement in their reading speed with very little practice. RSVP Readers like AccelaReader are ideal if you do a lot of reading on the screen.

Here’s how the AccelaReader app works. First, you copy and paste any text you want to read into the textbox of the application. Then you set the speed at which you would like to read the text. Finally, you click the read button and the AccelaReader will flash the words on the screen at the speed that you set.

There are some other adjustments you can make. For example, you can set how many words you would like flashed at a time. I recommend flashing at least two words at a time. You can add more as you get used to using the application. You can also adjust the font to a size and color that’s best for you.

How do I read faster on the iPad?

Using your hand to guide your eyes while reading on the iPad can lead to issues because of the touch screen. One of the ways you can read faster on the iPad is by setting up a few points of fixation on a line. Try making two fixations per line with your eyes. For example, imagine the line is cut in half and you will fixate on each half as you read. When your eyes fixate on the first half of the line, try to read the words in groups as you see them.

If the lines are very long (more than 12 words per line), you may want to make three fixations per line. One at the beginning, one in the middle and one near the end. With practice, you’ll notice it gets easier and easier to read groups of words at a glance. Most people read words through a series of fixations, on each and every single word. Fixating on every word makes reading very tedious and leads to slow reading.

Summary

Going forward, try using your hand as a pacer when you read. You want to take advantage of the fact that your eyes are attracted to motion and this is an easy way to do it. You’ll find yourself reading faster with better focus and comprehension as you start reading with your hand.

Reading with your hand is a fundamental tenet of speed reading. The reason you want to read with your hand (or a pen) is because your eyes are naturally attracted to motion. If you are reading with your hand or pen, what you can do very easily to maximize your efficiency is adjust your reading speed. For example, if you are reading a long chapter or an article, you can adjust your reading speed by going faster through the easy parts and more slowly through the harder parts. There is no reason to read everything at the same speed. Reading is similar to driving in that you should not always go the same speed. You would slow down on turns and speed up if you were on the highway. You should try to apply a similar adjustment of speed when you are reading. There are certain parts of your material that are more important than others, so it’s important to know when to slow down and when to speed up.

When To Slow Down…

Here’s a rule of thumb to maximize your efficiency when you are reading. Slow down on the first sentence of a paragraph to read it carefully. After you read the first sentence, pick up your speed and read the rest of the paragraph faster.

Why would you slow down on the first sentence? It’s pretty obvious, right? The first sentence tends to be the main idea or the topic sentence. Think of it as the main point of the paragraph. After the first sentence you get your details. The first sentence is not always the main idea, but most of the time it is. In information or material, this happens 80 to 90 percent of the time.

The first sentence also tends to be very important when you read novels. Let’s see an example of this in the book Animal Farm, by George Orwell.  Let me give you some of the first sentences of the paragraphs from the book. One first sentence in a particular chapter of George Orwell’s Animal Farm is, “All that year the animals worked like slaves”. Think about how that first sentence sets the tone for the rest of the paragraph. It might not be a main idea per se but that first sentence really gives you a sense of the tone or gives you a sense of what is going on in this particular part of the novel. Here is another first sentence in Animal Farm, “Three nights later all major died peacefully in his sleep”. That first sentence is another very powerful way to open up a paragraph.

So whether the materials is fiction or non-fiction, that first sentence is going to give you a lot of information. So you need to slow down a little bit on it. Just go carefully.

When to Speed Up…

After you read the first sentence, you want to read the rest of the paragraph faster. The idea behind the strategy is that you take that first sentence and try to run with it. This kind of a technique of slowing down and the speeding up between the first sentence and then the details of a paragraph is a great way to improve your comprehension. But it is also a great way to read faster. One of the big mistakes most readers make is that they read everything at the same speed.

If you are using your hand to guide your eyes (recommended), you can change your reading speed very easily. Just move your hand a little faster when you need to and slow it down when you need to. It’s the easiest way to adjust your reading speed.

There are other points when you can speed up in your material. If the text starts getting really easy and I run into a few paragraphs which I am very familiar with, then I should speed up, and go confidently through that material because I know that I already understand this information pretty well.

Now let’s say I get to another part of the text gets a little difficult. Then, I am going to slow down a little more and go a more carefully on that material because it’s a little more technical and I need to know it for my test. Whatever the reason is, adjusting your reading speed can help you maximize your efficiency. And keep in mind that it’s much easier to adjust your reading speed if you are using your hand or a pen to guide your eyes as you read.

There are some variations to the strategy we mentioned earlier. What if you are  reading philosophy and you notice that the last sentence of the paragraph tends to be the main idea? We can adjust this strategy. We can go at a regular speed through the paragraph and as I get closer to the end of the paragraph, maybe that’s when I start slowing down. This way, you are still adjusting your speed on the most important parts of the paragraph.

Here’s another way that you can modify. Let’s say you read a lot of news related articles. News is usually written by reporters and journalists in a manner that is called an upside down pyramid or a reverse triangle. Articles that you are reading in the news are written in a manner where at the top of the article you have to give the reader the most important information such as who, what, where, when, and how. As you go down the article the information gets less important.

If you are changing your reading speed, how would you take advantage of the fact that you know that this is a news article? You should read the first paragraph carefully, because it gives you the most important information. Then, on the second paragraph, you speed up a little bit. In the third paragraph you speed up even more. With each additional paragraph you try to read faster and faster knowing that the information is getting less important. Think of yourself as accelerating little by little through the article. With practice, you’ll notice yourself getting the most important details while still retaining the less important ones.

To summarize, make sure that you are not reading at the same speed all the time. The  easiest way to do adjust your reading speed is to use your hand. A good rule of thumb is to slow down on the first sentence of the paragraph. After reading the first sentence, try to read the rest of the paragraph faster. This constant slowing down and speeding up is a great way to maximize your efficiency as a reader.

Most people have never measured their reading speed. And even when they do, they don’t always measure the reading speed accurately. This article will discuss the best way to measure your speed with accuracy. Measuring your reading speed this way will give you a better idea of where you are as a reader.

Choose 3 Types of Reading Material

If you’re trying to measure your reading speed accurately, you need to think about the various types of material that you normally read. Your reading speed fluctuates based on the type of material you are reading. So we need to measure it more than once.

If you’re like most people, you probably read between three different categories of material:

1. Easy material
2. Medium-level material
3. Difficult material.

Find those three types of material. For you this might mean a magazine (easy material), a novel (medium-level material), and a textbook (difficult material).  More …

Focus is a big part of what it takes to become a speed reader. If you can learn to focus better you’ll not only read faster, but you’ll do so with better comprehension. Learning to focus better will also help you become more productive in your professional or academic career.

This article discusses four tips to improve your focus while reading.

Tip #1: Use Your Hand to Guide Your Eyes While Reading

Your eyes are naturally attracted to motion. And if you use your hand to create motion on the page, your eyes will naturally follow.

Try using your hand (or a pen) and going smoothly from left to right. Adjust your speed to make sure you aren’t going too slow or too fast.

If it feels uncomfortable at first, this is only because you aren’t used to reading with your hand. The more you do it, the more natural it will feel.  More …

Once you start learning to read faster there are number of mistakes that you need to avoid. Learning to read faster can be a major time saver, and it can benefit your academic or professional career tremendously. However, there are some common speed reading mistakes that you need to keep in mind as you start learning. This article discusses three of the most common mistakes.

Mistake #1: Reading Everything at the Same Speed

Most people that learn speed-reading skills make the common mistake of reading everything at the same speed. This mistake is hard to avoid because most speed readers use their hand to guide their eyes. Because they’re using their hand, they end up going line-by-line at about the same speed, almost as if they’re following a rhythm.   More …

Before you start reading anything in the magazine you want to sift through the table of contents and determine what needs to be read. Circle the articles in the table of contents that you plan to read. You can cross out the article after it has been read.

Let’s start with this basic assumption: You can read something faster if you are familiar with it. Most people would agree with this statement. The problem is that most of the material you read is not familiar to you, which is obviously on of the reasons why you would want to read it.

So the idea here is to somehow get familiar with the material before actually reading it. Think of this as warming up before you read, just like you would before you exercise. The can easily familiarize yourself with an article and “speed read” it by following three simple steps.

Step #1 – Read the First and Last Paragraph

In well written material, the first paragraph is usually an introduction to what you are about to read in the article. Similarly, the last paragraph should summarize the article. So if we read the first and last paragraph we should, at the very least come away with a strong sense of what the main idea is in the article.  More …