How to Speed Read: Techniques

Speed reading can be very beneficial when attempting to read large quantities of text in a short period of time. It is a method of skimming over words to maximize efficiency. Here I will describe a few techniques to improve your speed reading abilities. Keep in mind that reading in this fashion will limit complete comprehension, so I do not recommend it if you need to think deeply about the content. This should only be used if you want to get the gist of what you are reading without spending excessive time.

The most important thing to remember about speed reading is that you are not really reading in the true sense. Instead you are actually skimming. This means that you should be brushing over the words and sentences instead of reading every word. It is typically best to focus more on the first and last sentence of a paragraph because these usually bring up or sum up a point.

When speed reading, pick out only the important words in a sentence, ignoring those that are unneccessary to general comprehension. This means you should focus on nouns and verbs, the most important parts of any sentence. You can quickly breeze over articles (a, an, the) without bothering to read them because they make little difference to the overall meaning. If you are reading text with special formatting, such as bold words and italics, make sure to focus on those aspects because they are often more significant.

When reading, the eyes move slowly in a straight line from left to right. Speed reading, on the other hand, is best approached by quickly flicking the eyes along in short intervals. This allows you to take snapshots of the text and absorb the important parts without wasting time with filler.