Thread by @datdummydemon, How to Improve your Reading Speed 50-100% in the next 24 hours, [...]

How to Improve your Reading Speed 50-100% in the next 24 hours, A MINI THREAD -

We won’t waste time and we’ll hop right in. There are four cornerstones to effective reading: skimming, pacing, reducing subvocalization, and setting time limits. We’ll come back to this.

Let’s go over key terms:

The first one is a regression. Regressions happen essentially when you decide to re-read and move backwards in the reading. The average person regresses an average of 20 times per page while reading.

One of the main reasons regressions happen is so simple you wouldn’t believe it. The average person reads at about 200-250 wpm (words per minute) and the average brain races at about 400 wpm. Can you guess what the difference does? Yep! It causes your mind to wander!

The easiest way to fix regressions is...

TO READ FASTER! To keep it simple, reading faster will occupy your brain since it pretty much had to keep track.

Next we’ll talk about fixations. The definition of this one is obvious: keeping your eye fixated on a single word for too long. This happens all too often and can last from 1/10 of a second to 1/5 of a second.

Believe it or not, this time adds up as the average person fixates at a rate of 3-6 times a line! With proper training, you can get fixations down to 1-2 per line if anything. If we calculate BARE MINIMUM that saves you 9 SECONDS per page (novel manuscript 25 lines/pg).

Fixations can be reduced by expanding your field of vision and learning chunks of words, and working on pacing.

Speaking of chunks of words, learning words in chunks helps you read faster (obviously) and can give you a broader view and sentence structure. This comes in handy when we talk about trying to exorcise the Reading Devil- *Subvocalization.*

Subvocalization comes in two categories- auditory and articulatory. Subvocalization as a whole is saying the word(s), even if it’s not from your mouth! Auditory subvocalization is heading the words be it in your head or spoken, while articulatory subvocalization deals with saying

Believe it or not, your mouth doesn’t need to be moving for you to commit the crime of articulatory subvocalization! Your brain may also be sending signals to your esophagus, mouth and pharynx (not good at bio so fact check if you need) to make movements. Even this can stall you

Now why is subvocalization BAD? BECAUSE you can only read as fast as you talk, and that’s ONLY about 250 words a minute. As children we were taught phonics and the importance of being able to pronounce the word when in fact, it may actually be slowing your reading down.

This goes back to an old habit a lot of people never noticed: associating reading with SAYING. To be clear:

Reading ≠ Saying
Reading = Getting meaning

Some easy ways to get rid of subvocalization involve reading for ideas, and only subvocalizing keywords.

Another way to practice eliminating it is to make a sound while you’re reading- the two i reccomend are humming or saying a word like, “Focus” or “Concentrate”. The difference is noticeable, and over time your reading speed may no longer be capped by your speaking speed.

Now, the easiest way to boost your reading speed by up to 50% tonight is to learn how to pace yourself. Your teacher may have told you to not to read with your finger and he/she was right, but pacing with your hand/pen/object is moving under the line as a guide and not a pointer

Proper pacing to keep you on your toes should be brushing your hand 2-3 seconds per line while keeping your hands in your peripheral vision.

Boom. It’s that easy.

Reduces Regression

Reduces Fixation

There’s still more to do before you can double your speed.

With this you can also sub that for the tapping technique. This is tapping the left side of the line and tapping the right side in 2-3 seconds to pace. This works well for shorter lines but it’s good to find your happy medium. It allows you to take in big chunks as well.

There’s a difference between skipping, scanning, and skimming. Skipping is.. well, not reading. This usually occurs when you’re on a part that has relevance to you and that’s okay! You really don’t have to read everything.

Scanning occurs when you’re looking for key ideas. Let’s say you have a newspaper and you want to know who won last nights basketball game. You wouldn’t read the whole paper, not unless you’re a boomer. You’re going to scan the article and BOOM- Mavericks beat the Lakers?!

The next and most important of the three is skimming. Skimming before reading believe it or not will help you read faster. When skimming the best practice is to skim twice- the first time looking for negatives since they are one of the most common ways to trip up comprehension.

Negatives include, “can’t,” “not,” “havent,” and so on. The next slim will involve you looking for key ideas. A good skimming practice is the wave motion. Moving your hand down the pages diagonally spending 5 seconds for pages looking for ideas. While this may seem hard, practice

Makes perfect with this technique. To start, it may be a good rule of thumb to find an idea in each paragraph. The term idea is broad, but I’m sure you know what I mean. Keywords, verbs, and the like.

The cool thing about this is you’ll already know where to look. This is because statistically speaking, you’re more inclined to find main ideas at the beginning of paragraph. This happens 68% of the time, while 23% of the time the main idea is at the end. The other 9% is obvious.

It’s best to skim by chapter, section, or article. It’s mandatory to skim all work / study material prior to getting started.

I was gonna keep going in and talk about time limits and other shit but I can’t open more posts and my mini thread is becoming long. Part 2? Who knows. But definitely recommend Spreeder / 7 Speed Reading. Great platforms I currently am using. Good luck.

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