Things to Know Before Attending a Speed Reading Course
Everyone who wants to learn how to speed read is having some misunderstandings at the beginning concerning what kind of program to choose. While most of the people realize that in order to assimilate some kind of information you are going to be required to learn from a teacher, others don’t. They pay attention to many free speed reading internet programs and claim these to be as effective as a live class. I thought that talking about these things can be really useful since people started to believe that the art of reading fast and improving your comprehension can be assimilated without any investment. I don’t really agree and consider that even if most online courses that promise you speed reading skills after reading a 50 pages eBook are quite useful in a way or another, they cannot be a substitute to the a live kind of work which is represented by practice. You can be very attentive and learn how to avoid paying high fees when going for speed reading classes or you can blindly continue to read all the useless materials that are available on the net.
The problem with reading fast starts in your early childhood, when due to many bad habits that you get accustomed in kindergarten, school, college and university you are basically kept away from improving your speed reading potential. Every skill that you have the chance to assimilate comes with practice. This is the secret that works with everything in this world. PRACTICE, PRACTICE & PRACTICE!!! However, no matter if you are following an online speed reading course VS following a class several times a week, you are still sooner or later be required to get rid of your old habits that are keeping you away from being able to proof read approximately 900 words per minute without losing the main idea of the story. I thought about mentioning some things in this particular article due to the fact that often people are required to complete the first steps on their own before assimilating and understanding any new traits or skills that have some to do with speed reading. So I suggest starting recognizing and slowly getting rid of everything that is holding you back from learning the art of reading fast right now!
Stop moving your mouth and lips along with the words on the page while reading. This is probably one of the first and the most effective tips that anyone who wishes to learn speed reading must take into consideration. The reason why you have to do this is quite simple. The movements that you produce with your tongue, mouth and lips are limiting your brain’s potential aka processing speed. Now let’s try to analyze this from a scientific point of view. The average speech rate for an American (native English speaking) is approximately 150 words per minute. However, your brain has the potential to process at least 7,000 words per minute. So now you should realize that in most of the cases we are creating our own physical barriers that make us read slowly and inefficiently.
One has to understand that no matter how hard he tries, attending seven thousand words in a single minute is not possible because your eyes cannot adapt to this volume of data. That’s why the fastest readers haven’t been able to get higher than 1,000 words per minute (and that is absolutely brilliant in my opinion). However, now imagine that there is no use talking or at least thinking about speed reading when you are reading out load every single word that you have written on that piece of paper. Speed reading is all about reading fast. We aren’t talking about poetry of any kind. When you speed read, you have to do it quickly and be able to profoundly comprehend everything. When trying to speed read “loudly” you are severely limiting the amount of words that can be pronounced and this is the reason why this kind of practice is not recommended at all.
When you pronounce your words under your breath, no magic online or live speed reading course will be able to help you read faster. You have to get rid of this on your own; otherwise you are going to have trouble finding ways to comprehend things better. If you want to improve your speed reading skills you need to surpass like ten times the number of words you can read, in comparison with the number of words you can speak out load when reading “in voice”. The above mentioned tip is one of the first things that you are going to be taught during your first several classes, no matter what type of program for fast reading you are following. I guess you realize how much time you can save when knowing all these aspects before actually deciding to enroll into a speed reading course, either live or online.
The next very important thing to perform before professionally following a speed reading program is to constantly train your eyes to entirely read large blocks of text instead of single words, sentences or phrases. Reading word by word requires constant refocusing on the information that you are trying to understand. If you are able to get the main block from a single glance, your speed reading abilities are simply going to skyrocket in a matter of days. When doing something like this you’ll be required to refocus less often than usual and thus you are not losing the main idea of the text. Usually, what I am telling you guys here is being secretly told during most speed reading courses out there. However, I really like most of you to actually be prepared and realize about certain things before moving on and going for any professional speed reading learning program.
The secret behind reading full chunks of text is going to be exposed in a future article her on our blog, However, even if we do it, it will still require a lot of practice and training. Most of the tips and things that I personally consider you guys need to know are just glimpses of information and should not be interpreted as professional advice. You need to find a specialized teacher and learn the basics from him. There might be changes or new techniques included.