Marco Guerrero - Become a Genius (2nd Edition): Secrets to Increase Your Brain Power, Speed Reading, Learning Efficiency, and Advanced Memory: Speed Reading, Memorization ... Power Techniques

I know reading can be tedious especially when you have to read volumes of books, hundreds/thousands of emails, blogs, letters and reports to get whatever information you might need. Can you imagine how much time you would use? I know that you would want to do it much faster so that you have time to do other things or read even more.

Most of our reading speed is appalling. For instance, you could be the kind of person who has to say every word in your mind, which means that your reading speed is almost at par with your speech, which is between 120-200 words per minute. Obviously, this speed wont make you read through piles of books and other reading material within a short time. This doesnt mean that you can never learn how to read faster. In fact, you can train yourself to read 25,000 words every minute. I know that is impressive because you can read at lightning speeds with high level of comprehension. So, how do you start reading faster? Before you begin, it is important to note that learning to speed read takes time; you shouldnt be expecting to move from reading 150 words per minute to 2000 words per minute in a day or two! As you get started, you should know that you should stop reading with your inner voice and start reading with your eyes. Before you get started, you should avoid keep in mind that you have to stop some of the bad reading habits that you may be having presently. Here are a few of them:

#1: Regression

Regression happens when you have to look back over text that you have already read. Most of us do this just to re-read the word so that we can get a clearer meaning. The truth is that this wastes time and makes you a slow reader whether you are re-reading a familiar phrase or unfamiliar one. You can stop regression by covering the text that you have read so that you wont feel the temptation to re-read it. You can also use software that display a single word or sentence at a time.

#2 Sub vocalization

This is where you read every word as though you are speaking to someone. This makes your reading speed to match your speaking speed, which means that you really cannot read volumes of books with that habit because you are a slow reader. Ending sub vocalization comes with practice and discipline. You can start creating pictures of what you are reading as opposed to seeing them as individual texts. In any case, do you hear words when someone speaks to you about his or her mansion or do you picture how the mansion looks like during the conversation? You should also learn to keep your mouth busy so that you can stop focusing too much on speaking what you are reading. Another important tip for dealing with sub vocalization is to concentrate 100% when reading.

#3 Slow fixation rate

If you have to move your eyes from one word to the next, you really cannot read much faster. Actually, do you know that you are likely to be slow when reading complex text than simple ones because your fixation rate is considerably low? If you fixate on one word at a time, your average reading speed will be the time you spend fixating multiplied by the total time. So, if you want to read faster, you have to work towards ensuring that the fixation rate is as low as possible. You can deal with fixation problems through expanding your vocabulary and familiarizing yourself with the subject matter. You can also start using photo-reading technique to increase your reading speed.

Now that you know what you shouldnt be doing when reading, lets get started on the techniques you should adopt in order to start reading through text at impressive speeds.