How To Read Faster - 7 Ways to Read Faster

How To Read Faster: 7 Ways To Improve Reading Speed

Edited By Shashwat Khatri | Updated on Feb 22, 2024 09:37 AM IST

Howard Berg, the world's fastest reader, can read about 25,000 words per minute. There are many video clips of him flipping through pages nonchalantly with nothing more than a fleeting glance at the page, all the while retaining more than ninety per cent of what he reads. For many of us, this is no less than a superpower that can redeem our last-minute study sessions, save precious minutes during work, or allow us, at the very least, to read more books in life.

How To Read Faster: 7 Ways To Improve Reading Speed

The Importance Of Reading

Reading is one of those activities that students and professionals have to contend with day after day with some courses and careers requiring more of it than others. Nevertheless, no matter what you are learning or how frequently you have to peruse textbooks, documents, or web articles, reading will invariably be involved and is one of the best skills that you can work on for wide-reaching benefits.

Knowing how to read faster has as much to do with discarding bad reading habits as it does with incorporating speed reading strategies. In this article, we take a look at how to read faster, how to increase reading speed and unlearn bad habits that slow us down and practice the right speedreading strategies.

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How To Read Faster - Unlearn Unhelpful Habits That Slow You Down

Learning how to increase reading speed goes hand in hand with improving your reading efficiency and removing the obstacles that slow you down. Many beginning readers tend to go through a text one word at a time, re-read chunks of text, or just remain too distracted to grasp how to read and understand faster. Here are a few examples of unwanted habits that you need to look out for and eliminate over time to get better at reading fast.

Reading every single word: This is one of the biggest hurdles to learning how to read a book fast. Most inexperienced readers will read a sentence like “every cloud has a silver lining” as “every” + “cloud” + “has” + “a” + “silver” + “lining”. This is a very narrow and inefficient way of reading that can also hamper comprehension because many a time, long sentence is understood only when they are read completely.

If one labours through each word, besides making it an excruciatingly slow endeavour, one also risks forgetting how the sentence began and thus finds it hard to extract any meaning from it.

Regression: The act of going back to a previous section of a text to read it again because you think you did not understand it well before is known as regression (in reading at least). Re-reading passages or entire pages does not help you gain any time, nor does it help you further your understanding of how to increase reading speed.

Distractions: Distractions are the bane of reading fast. Reading a book is like trying to make your way through the fog, guided only by the author's hand. The minute you become distracted, you let go of that hand, comprehend less, and have to reread over and over again.

Stop the inner monologue (subvocalisation): Even when we are not reading out loud, a common habit amongst readers is the act of subvocalisation or reading the words in their heads. This act of reading quietly in our heads is what many of us have been told to do since childhood, so it is not surprising that it is one of the more ingrained habits that readers have that slows them down.

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How To Read Faster - Ways To Increase Reading Speed

Learning how to increase reading speed is like learning any skill. You eliminate obstacles and build through practice. The methods described below seek to correct bad reading habits and aid in the development of new and efficient ones. Once you get a hang of them, a few can even make you a noticeably faster reader overnight.

1. Determine Your Baseline

The first step to learning how to increase reading speed is to know where you stand. The average reading speed is about 200-250 words, but reading speed can vary based on content. Nevertheless, you can get a fair estimate of your reading speed by choosing a text that is neither too easy nor too difficult for you.

Count the words in a sentence, multiply that by the number of lines on the page, and start your assessment. Turn on your stopwatch, read for a minute, and determine your words per minute. Once you have your baseline, you can try out the following methods and check your speed gains over time.

2. Text Scanning

Not everything needs to be read in full. In fact, most of the reading that we do does not require a whole lot of examination, cursory scanning is sufficient to get the gist. When you are scanning a text, look at the headline, quickly go over the introduction and the subheadings, and pick up on anything that sticks out, such as large fonts, words in italics or bold, images, bullet points and others. The context of the document and your reason for reading should decide which texts you should scan and which to give due attention to.

You should scan a text when:

You already know what it is generally about.
You are looking for specific information.
The text is not terribly relevant to you.
You are reading for revision purposes.

Scanning a text gives us relevant keywords while discarding unnecessary information. Our brains are quite capable of filling in the gaps and connecting the dots. In most daily-use cases, especially if you have to read a lot during the day, scanning and skimming through can inform you of all that you need to know.

3. Chunking

Chunking is the act of grouping and reading multiple words at once. This method helps put the inner monologue on mute and teaches one how to read faster. Even though we are trained in schools to not miss a single word or article, we all can take in many more words at any given time.

If you are just beginning to learn how to read and understand faster with chunking, try focusing on reading three words at a time, like reading a road sign. Group three words, read them together, and move forward. With practice, you can make the groupings larger and take in extra words, even whole sentences, at a glance.

4. Use Your Finger As A Pointer

Using a finger to direct your gaze at the text is an age-old technique that many of us remember doing in childhood. The only difference here is that we let our fingers sweep through the text and dictate our reading speed, instead of the other way around, thereby forcing us to take in information at a faster rate. Do not worry if you feel you do not understand everything. The idea is to get out of your comfort zone and practise reading fast.

Using a pen or a finger as a pointer will also keep you from getting distracted by things in your surroundings as well as by the impulse to stop in between. This is good practice to learn how to read books fast and effectively.

5. Read Phrases, Not Words

This method is similar to chunking in that you are taking in many more words at once and reading them in groups. When you read phrases, you also have the added benefit of reading meaningfully. This often allows us to read longer sentences and phrases faster as we are hurried along to see how the phrases join together to form a complete and meaningful clause or sentence.

Concentrating on reading phrases also means that you start looking at your reading speed in terms of how fast you are taking in information, rather than making gains in terms of words per minute only. This is perhaps the best and most meaningful way of learning how to read and understand faster.

6. Use Your Peripheral Vision

This is a technique that has been touted by many to increase ones reading speed by multiple factors. It leverages the fact that we can take in information with our peripheral vision just as well as our central vision.

To practice this, try reading one line at a time. But instead of reading from the first word till the last, read, for instance, from the third word till the third-last word. To ensure that you are practising the right way, draw two vertical lines and indent the first and last few words so that you do not focus on them. Rather, let your peripheral vision read the words outside this margin.

This way, your eyes do not have to move as much when you are going down the lines and you take in more information in less time. With practice, you will feel confident enough to bring the margins closer together and learn how to increase reading speed further.

7. Read More

Reading is a skill like any other and once you know the right techniques, it is only a matter of practice before you know intuitively how to read faster. Whether it is for leisure or research, the more you read, the better you will become at reading. You may even find your own ways of knowing how to increase reading speed when you need to.

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When it comes to learning how to read a book fast, or any other piece of literature, practice, and experimentation is key, even if it is at the cost of comprehension at first. Once the techniques and methods are firmly ingrained, our brains become better at chunking, using peripheral vision, connecting the dots, and filling in the gaps. As such, we come to learn how to read and understand faster as well.

Hopefully, you now know what all you can do to learn how to read a book fast or how to increase your reading speed on the whole. We wish you all the best in your efforts. Happy reading!

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. How can I improve my reading speed?

To improve reading speeds, start reading chunks of words together, scan the text rather than reading every single word, use your finger to guide you, and use your peripheral vision.

2. Why do I read so slow?

Slow reading can be ascribed to many bad habits, such as subvocalization, re-reading things you’ve already read, and going over every single word.

3. How do I stop subvocalizing when I read?

The best way to stop subvocalizing is to speed things up. This you can do by scanning the text or using your finger or a pen to go sweeping across the words and forcing yourself to keep up.

4. How fast can the average person read?

The average person can read between 200 to 250 words per minute.