Saint Augustine

Poor reading habits are a major impediment to understanding. The reading habits are life long and are unlikely to change even in adulthood. There are logical and practical techniques that one can adopt in order to better reading skills. Most people who read faster cannot comprehend whatever they read while there are some who read very slowly which time is consuming. It is therefore, imperative for you to learn to read faster while retaining whatever information you read. Learning to read faster requires concerted efforts and insatiable desire to achieve the goals. It all depends on an individual and ones capacity to learn new techniques. Some will learn faster than the other but with determination and desire faster reading habit can be inculcated in an individual. This article helps to explain how to read faster while retaining the content read.

Find a quiet place

Distraction can inhibit the retention of the information read while lowering the reading speed. It is therefore, important for you to read from a quite environment that is free from any noise distractions. When something captures your attention, you will certainly slowdown in your reading. For you to ensure faster reading you have to remain focused on whatever you are reading least you fail to understand.

Focus on the information and not words

Avoid focusing on the individual words if you have to read faster and comprehend at the same time. Focusing on individual words is the main reason people read slowly. Although a combination of these words is what makes it a meaningful sentence, avoid the habit of concentrating on one word. Instead, pay attention to the information contained in that piece of writing. Word-by-word reading may lead to missing out the overall concept apart from slowing down the reading. Those who read each word separately have a tendency of understanding less than those who can read faster. You can expand the number of words you read at a time as the more words you are able to read at once the faster you can read.

Stop sub-vocational

This is a behavior where one pronounces each word in the head during reading process. If you sub-vocalize, the reading process will be slow as you easily understand the words faster than you can pronounce it. You have to accept that you have this problem if you have to change and stop it completely in the long run. Reading the block words will also help you eliminate this habit as it is harder to sub-vocalize the words in block. If you can prevent sub-vocation, then your reading speed will surely increase greatly. The problem of sub-vocation allows you to read at the same speed as you talk which lowers the reading speed.

Efficient eye motion

Those people who read slowly focus on each individual word separately and move their eyes across each line. Most readers fail to use their vision to see the words found at the margin of the line. To avoid this, ensure you relax your gaze by expanding your gaze while relaxing your face instead of looking at each word as a different entity. Good eye motion will allow your eyes to skip faster across the page which help ensure high reading speed. As you approach the end of the each line, allow your peripheral vision to see the set of last words. This enables you to scan faster down and across to the following line.

Avoid regression

Regression refers to the unwanted re-reading of the material. Do not skip back to the words you have already read or even jump to previous sentences or paragraphs to confirm anything. This habit makes you to lose structure and flow of sentences which in in turn leads to lack of understanding. Avoid re-reading materials unless you have a valid reason to. You can reduce the frequency of skipping back by running a pointer along the lines in course of reading. The speeding of reading using the pointer solely depends on the speed of moving the pointer along the lines.

Avoid approaching reading linearly

People are fond of reading across and then down taking every word, sentence, paragraph and page in a specific sequence. Doing this makes you to pay attention to the supplementary material. In order to get rid of this habit scan the page for headings by looking for the words in bold and bullet points. There is no conventional rule in reading hence read in a way you are comfortable and ensure faster reading.

Many people are struggling to read faster and retain most of the read information. The above mentioned points give insight into what you need to do in order to cultivate faster reading habit while retaining the read content.