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Key points
- All readers can boost their speed in absorbing content by eliminating subvocalizations as they read.
- Fast readers have larger vocabularies that enable them to identify words rapidly and skip some words.
- Skimmers quadruple their reading speeds through focusing on titles and the beginnings of paragraphs.
Howard Berg claims to read 25,000 words a minute—the equivalent of an old-school airport paperback every four minutes. First, the good news: A skilled reader can actually tell you the plot of an airport paperback in four minutes and even correctly name its main characters. But now for a dose of reality: Howard Berg ain’t reading.
Instead, Berg is scanning, one of a series of strategies skilled readers use to consume content rapidly. These strategies also include skimming and eliminating sub-vocalizations, an aspect of reading that can include “hearing” individual words or even forming words silently with your lips.
Save yourself the fat charge to your credit card from the books and courses that claim to teach speed reading, which claim readers can take in an entire page in a single eye fixation. But in reality, any skilled and determined reader can reduce the amount of time they spend poring over scientific papers or even the latest news by following four proven practices.
1. Match your reading practice to your reading needs.
Evelyn Wood supposedly drew her inspiration to create speed reading after watching her thesis advisor flip through her master's thesis and ask her questions about her research with perfect comprehension. But her advisor’s rapid reading and excellent comprehension stemmed from three key factors that Wood either naively or deliberately ignored.
First, her advisor had likely read several thousand master's theses, all of which rely on rigid conventions for their organization: introduction and literature review, methods, results, and discussion, a format that applies equally to qualitative and quantitative studies.
Second, this highly predictable format thus enabled her advisor to scan and skim content.
And, third, the advisor had an expert’s knowledge of her thesis content. As a result, Wood’s role models for speed reading relied on scanning and skimming material—not close reading—to understand the material while still displaying good comprehension.
However, this same scanning and skimming strategy will give you a lousy grasp of a paper in physics or even a magazine article on philosophy. Most of us read for different purposes, which require changes in reading practices and speeds. Skimming is simply one of several variations of reading, rather than a departure from reading altogether.
Most of us would use one reading strategy and speed when we read for pleasure. But we rely on a much slower, more concentrated reading speed to understand, say, a paper on quantum mechanics—especially if you have only a basic understanding of physics. However, both of these reading speeds would yield reasonably good comprehension of the content.
In contrast, skim readers spend more time with sentences that contain important content and skip sentences with minimal relevant content. And, despite skim readers achieving speeds up to four times faster than close readers, they show similar comprehension of the content. But how is this outcome possible, since study after study equates faster reading rates with poorer comprehension?
Skim readers achieve these speeds by leveraging their knowledge of the subject and the content format to determine which lines they read. The next time you need to understand an article or document under time constraints, try skimming by looking first at some indicators of content, including article titles, abstracts, and subheadings. Then push yourself to get the gist of the content by skimming the first sentences of most paragraphs, which typically provide good overviews of the ideas contained in each paragraph.
2. Stop subvocalizing.
Few of us recall the days when we moved our fingers along a line and mouthed the words we read. Yet many readers unknowingly slow their reading speed to a crawl by articulating individual words, even just in their heads. Some reading experts argue that this subvocalization represents a necessary stage in reading comprehension. Nevertheless, all studies on subvocalization have relied on invasive methods to prevent readers from subvocalizing—methods that would derail any task that requires cognition and put a serious dent in reading comprehension.
Some subvocalization is useful. Even expert readers will “hear” individual words when they slow down to appreciate, dissect, or gain a deeper understanding of a text. And even problem-solvers like software developers, engineers, and physicists engage in silent self-talk when working out solutions. On the other hand, if you “hear” every word you read, even without any movement of your lips or tongue, your reading speed slows significantly.
3. Expand the amount of text you take in during each fixation or movement of your eyes.
Some speed reading programs claimed that readers can use a single eye fixation to take in several lines of text—or even an entire page. In reality, even expert readers see only the line they’re reading (Pollatsek, Raney, LaGasse, and Rayner, 1993). Nevertheless, you can expand the number of characters you see each time your eye rests on the page.
In English, the average reader takes in 7-9 characters with each fixation of eyes on a line. However, the fastest readers rely on a wider perceptual span when their eyes are fixed on a line. Usually, the center of our vision, the fovea, focuses on only seven letters. Yet faster readers use more of their parafoveal vision—outside our immediate focus—to identify words and spaces between them.
4. For important material, you absolutely should re-read some sentences.
Expert readers slow down when they encounter sentences that fail to fit with what they already understand in the text. These re-readings serve two purposes: enabling readers to correct misunderstandings in their reading or to arrive at a deeper understanding of the text. These re-readings also enable skim readers to strengthen their comprehension of content.
5. Spend more time reading—and expand your vocabulary.
Fast readers possess a larger vocabulary that enables them to rapidly identify words, the single largest challenge for readers, and most experienced readers also skip words. Furthermore, expert readers also perceive more letters with each movement of their eyes, a development common to older, more experienced readers.
Ironically, when we think about speed reading, many people confuse cause and effect. We might believe speed reading will enable us to consume vast amounts of content in minimal time through a series of reading tricks, a shortcut on the road to expertise. Instead, fast readers use their expertise to consume content more rapidly. Adjust your reading speed to your task and context and enjoy one further bonus: faster readers are also faster writers.
References
Pollatsek, A., Raney, G.E., LaGasse, L., & Rayner, K. (1993). The use of information below fixation in reading and visual search. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47, 179-200.
