Click here to read full series on How to Speed-Read

In this part, we learn more advanced topics in ’Speed Reading’. Make sure you have a good understanding of the material covered in Parts 1 and 2 before you move on to Part 3 as it is pretty mind tickling stuff!

In preparation for this article series, I went through almost 5-6 books on speed-reading,DVD programs, and audio CDs in addition to the information I already know from the speed-reading course I took.

Please bear in mind as you read this that the materials that I went through are huge in content, and include reading exercises and study drills. Since I want to present you with a condensed 3 part series on the topic, I have skipped many other good techniques we can use for speed-reading.

As I explain two key techniques below, please be aware that my intention is to introduce (with my limited writing space) – important speed-reading concepts to you, so you can be inspired to take this area of study forward. Use these materials as a foundation and starting point for your own study process.

Two Major Concepts: Managing Sub Vocalization, and Effective Vision Span

For each concept, I will give one specific technique you can apply that will give tremendous improvement in your reading bi’ithnillah.

1) Vocalization and Sub-Vocalization

Adapted from the best selling Speed-Reading book – “Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-Day Speed Reading & Learning Program “ by Stanley D. Frank.

Vocalization means to read out loudly. Sub-vocalization is to read aloud silently. Most of the time when we read, we subvocalize. The problem here is we read in normal speaking speed, and this hinders you from reading faster than your normal speaking speed.

When we see a person or a landscape, we don’t read out to ourselves every characteristic. Rather, we let our eye decide about it, and we internalize the data using pictures.

Our goal will be to move from sub vocalization to visual-vertical technique. ie. eliminating the silent sound and replacing it with visual perception. So we do a vertical sweep of the page, without reading line-by-line.

There are areas where sub-vocalization is helpful. For eg. reading poetry, dense text materials, proof-reading, dialogues, reading your favorite fiction novel etc. As I discussed in Part 1, you are not mean to speed-read any and all reading materials. For materials that are suitable to speed-read, we have to avoid sub-vocalization.

Exercise: Talk Out Loud

Take a book and spend about 2 to 4 seconds per page just looking at the content. When you look, say out loud some keywords that you notice, and again say some questions about the words. The reason of verbalizing this out loud is to keep your internal voice “busy” and prevent it from doing the reading for you. While you do the glance and read loudly, continue glancing at the page 2-4 sec per page. Do this for 6 pages, and then come back to this exercise.

[Do the exercise]

Welcome back. Now, you should notice that the content of material (however small) you have accumulated in the 6 pages you read now is because of your “visual reading” rather than your auditory facilities.

The more you practice this technique the more you will be trained to read using “visual” appearance of the words in the page, without any further testing or checking. Your speed and efficiency will leap forward significantly inshaAllah.

2) Vision Span Technique

Adapted from the Speed-Reading book “Triple Your Reading Speed, Fourth Edition by Wade E. Cutler”

Your eye movement decides your speed: the speed of your reading is based on the how you move your eyes over the words. If you move your eyes over every one-word you read, it will take more time than reading 4 or 5 words and then moving your eyes. A very fast reader reads one line with two-eye movements (for shorter lines, just one). This is what we should aim to achieve in speed-reading.

As you read this line, notice how your eyes move across the words. For an average reader, his eyes tends to move across the printed line in a series of short jerks, stopping approximately once per word. This is called fixations or eye stops per line. Any reduction in the number will increase the speeding rate.

To reduce the number of stops, we have to train our eyes to see a larger area of the page each time you stop – ie. “fixate”. This would require enough practice from your side, and the reward of this effort cannot be anything less that you becoming a speed-reader insha’Allah.

Exercise: Four Different Examples of “Eye Stops”:

• A very slow reader:
Yo u R e a d W o r d b y W o r d
1 2 3 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

• Slow word-by-word read:

You Read Word by Word
1 2 3 4 5

• Better than average reader

When You read word by word

1 2 3

• Accelerated Reader

When You read word by word

1 2

Exercise 2: Two-Step Process

This exercise is designed to help you learn a technique for reading with only two eye-stops or fixations, regardless of the number of words. If you wish to triple your reading speed, it is imperative that you master what follows.

Imagine the line you want to read vertically divided into 4 parts like below.

A test to read | with two-step pro | cess technique | World is good! A B C

Above is a line that I have split into 4 parts – using three vertical lines A, B, C.

Imagine your eyes are sponges. You are to set them firmly in line A. Try to expand your vision and read the maximum you can. Then, move your eyes to line C, and do the same (expanding the vision and reading the content around C).

Repeat the above drill line by line, several times. Make sure you expand your vision when reading from each point. Resist any temptation to stop more than twice on each line, or to scan or sweep visually. If you do more than two stops, you will see blurs as your eyes hurry along the words, in which case your comprehension will not be satisfactory.

This is the two-stop method. For each line, you move your eyes only twice. This needs practice, and then once you master it, you can just skim through the page quickly inshaAllah!

Speed-Reading Graduation

Find out how much time it will take for you to read an article of 900-1000 words. If you can finish such an article in less than a minute – well done! You have successfully completed the speed-reading course (and if not, don’t worry, there’s still time to practice!)

Conclusion

With this article series, my intention was to open the world of ‘Speed-Reading’ to you, give you some practical tips that you can apply immediately, extract the top advice from the 5-6 best-selling books on this topic as well as video materials, audio books and condense it into a 3-part series that will inspire you to become a great speed-reader in life. And I believe I have tried my best to achieve that goal. May He accept my efforts and for further information please refer to the material below if you want to learn more still after this series!

References

1. The Complete Idiots Guide to Speed Reading – Abby Marks Beale
2. Triple Your Reading Speed – 4th Edition – by Wade E Cutler
3. Speed Reading – by Tony Buzan
4. Remember Everything You Read: The Evelyn Wood 7-Day Speed Reading & Learning Program by Stanley D. Frank
5. Breakthrough Rapid Reading – Peter Kump
6. Speed Reader X: Speed Reading Made Easy [Cd-Rom]

About the Author

Click here to read full series on How to Speed-Read

We continue from where stopped on The Secret Tricks on How to Speed-Read Part 1, this part will introduce you to some basics on speed-reading, and we will expand on this information in our advanced study in Part 3.

What I present here is only a drop of the ocean; if you’re interested, I would encourage you to use these as a starting point of your own research into deep speed-reading because it can help in many spheres of your knowledge development.

How to Study the Material in ‘Bite-Sized Chunks’ (Especially if you feel overwhelmed with the information!)

It is not knowing lot of things that matter, it is applying them that matters most. When you learn speed-reading, what you need is to do is to learn ONE technique. Make sure you understand it well, and then go and practice that ONE skill you learned, like any skill practice makes mastery of the skill. Clock your timing and see how much you have improved over set intervals eg. weekly, fortnightly, monthly. And then move to learn the next technique, and repeat the process.

Find a study buddy

It can be difficult especially if you’re studying a subject which requires chunks of reading, and often we have to motivate ourselves to even read so I encourage you to have a study buddy for this. Ask your friend to join you today and make a commitment to finishing reading a set book together!

’Speed Reading Vs Photo Reading’

There is difference between speed-reading and photo reading, the distinction is that speed reading is about increasing your current speed with good comprehension of the material. There is not much emphasis placed on retaining the data for a long time, though there are techniques to help to remember information for an extended time frame.

In photo-reading, you learn about techniques to remember the things you read in a way you can recollect them anytime. You would need a different set of skills for it. Photo reading is out of scope of this article series, and I will cover it in detail in another future article series inshaAllah.

5 Strategies for Effective Speed-Reading

1) Carving out time to read:

To speed-read, you need to become a reader. Irrespective of how slow or fast you read, you should dedicate a minimum of 30 min of reading daily. Without step 1, you will not have practice time to put the speed reading techniques into practice. So commit yourself to 30 minutes of reading every day. Also commit to finish the book you have started.

However, do note that the amount of time to devote for the study cannot be determined by a rigid formula, you are the best person to decide on your reading time per day (just use 30 minutes as a minimum).

2) Prepare for Speed Reading:

Yes, there is some preparation we need to do!

1. Selecting a quiet and comfortable environment: This step is important. Make sure the place you choose for reading is quiet and comfortable. This is essential especially during the early stages of your study process.
2. Don’t regress as you read: One thing we do when we read is to go back to what we have read. Resist that. If you feel you missed something, don’t worry, you can read it later at another point in time (if the material is so important you can write it down as you go along). For now, try to continue reading without going backwards.
3. You should see the whole page: Make sure you hold the book in a way you can see the whole page. This helps to make sure you can easily master the next point.
4. Have your page ready to be turned: Make sure you have the page in a position that is ready to be turned. This creates a sense of movement for your mind to finish this page, and move onto the next!
5. Don’t let your mind wander when you read: You cannot remember or comprehend what you have covered visually when your mind wonders elsewhere. This might seem very simple, but many times your slow reading speed will be directly related to this.
6. Time-boxed reading: If you read with a specific time deadline – like: ‘I will finish this material by end of today’, then you will be more focused to go over the material before the deadline, and this will help to improve your speed.

3) To read any book using speed reading, you should have an answer to the “Why” and “What for?”

• Why did you pick this book to read?
• What for: is there anything you want to achieve by reading this material?

For example if you have a time management book that you are interested in reading:Why? You chose to read it because your friend recommended it maybe. What for? You want to find some ways to manage your time better. This gives clarity and a sense of motivation to read.

4) Get a Bird’s Eye View of the Book:

Whilst in your helicopter, look out for the information below:

1. Copyright date: To tell you how current the material is. This puts the information in historical perspective and can allow you to be more critical.
2. Table of contents: This gives you an outline of the book/magazine and which topic will be interesting to you, even helping you short-cut only to chapters you need!
3. About the author: This information gives you the whole backgrounds about his/her expertise, where he/she is coming from, and what you might expect to find in the material.
4. Front matter: This includes introduction, preface, foreword, etc which can add value to the book’s message.
5. Thumb through the book: Stop briefly for layouts and typography, maps, diagrams, charts etc.

5) The “Meat” of a Chapter:

This is what we all want when we read a book, only the best parts. Start with these areas:

1. Title: It’ll reflect the subject or theme of the material.
2. Introduction: Points you in the direction author wants to lead you.
3. Subheadings: Subheadings are the legs of the meat. When you come to a new subheading, you know you have entered a new subtopic area.
4. First sentence of every paragraph: Focus on the first line! By just reading the first line, you should know what that paragraph is about!
5. Conclusion: Typically the last paragraph or two that summarizes the ideas gives you an overview of the full chapter. Make sure you read the conclusion and understand it well.

Practising the above steps will only take few minutes of your time and it should come as the first approach to handle any book you want to read.

How to Implement what I’ve Learned Above?

My recommendation is to start working on the “Not to regress” step and reading for minimum 30 minutes every day.

You can choose which one best suits you. You need not implement everything suggested, rather write down the 3 best ideas you want to implement. Then, take One idea you want to implement this week.

Summary:

In this part, we continued from where we stopped on Part 1, and discussed some key strategies you could apply to improve your reading-speed. If you can do what I explained in this part, you should be able to dramatically improve your reading.

InshaAllah in the final part of this series, we will get into advanced techniques, and that part is for students who have mastered the contents in this part and can apply them in their daily reading.

Before you move to the next part, take time to practice what we learned in this part, and when you are ready to go to next level, read Part 3. Until then, practice, practice and practice because practice makes perfect (well, almost!)

To be continued soon..

About the Author