These days everyone wants to read fast, right. Why wouldn’t they if they can? It will save so much of time in our day to day lives, especially if we have reading involved in our profession.
Each individual has his own reading speed and that is completely natural too but wouldn’t it be helpful if it were possible to increase this speed?
Well, what if I told you, you can actually increase your reading speed by following some simple techniques
And when I say increasing the reading speed, I mean effective reading speed. For those who don’t know, reading can be of two types:
a) Effective Reading
b) In-effective reading
Effective Reading is the one in which you actually understand whatever you are reading. In-effective reading is the type of reading in which you just read and don’t actually understand the meaning of the sentence.
Increasing the reading speed for in-effective reading won’t do us any good, so we will try to increase our effective reading speed with the help of these techniques.
This post is solely dedicated to helping you read faster with 10 super effective techniques that are tried and tested. Aspirants those who are preparing for the civil services examination will get benefit by reading this article.
How to read faster
Just follow these techniques and you will definitely be able to read faster than you used to.
- Hold your imagination
Most of us have a habit to start imagining every word or sentence that we read. For example, if you read “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” people will actually start to imagine apples, doctors and what not.
So, if you want to increase your reading speed, you need to hold down your imagination.
Your reading speed will obviously go down if you start to imagine each word or sentence that you read.
- Skip unimportant parts.
By skipping unimportant parts I mean that you don’t have to go in complete depth of a sentence by focusing too much on small words like some prepositions.
While these may be important from the grammar point of view, these are not essential to be read every single time if you are planning to read faster. Most of the sentences won’t lose meaning even if you don’t use these “small” words.
- Focus on one word at a time
When reading many of us tend to jump to the next word even when we haven’t read the previous word. This confuses your brain and you won’t be able to read properly and you have to re-read that line.
So, instead of reading faster you have to re-read the line which definitely slows down your reading speed.
That is why it is important to focus on one word at a time and read that only. This will ensure you won’t have to re-read the sentence which will automatically increase your reading speed.
- Follow each letter
When reading we tend to get distracted by so many things, whether it is because of our mobile phones or our surroundings, so it is difficult to concentrate and read faster.
But if you follow each letter with a pencil your entire focus will be on that letter only and it will kill your distractions which will finally result in increased reading speed.
- Read out aloud
Again when reading something you might get distracted by a lot of things so to prevent that it is better to read out louder. Don’t let you get distracted and your reading speed will automatically increase.
- Keep practicing
“Practice makes a man perfect” we have been hearing this quote from as long as we can remember which is actually true also up to a great extent because having a skill is only a part of the game, practicing and polishing the skills makes you a winner. So, keep practicing and you will definitely see the benefits and be able to read much faster.
- Dividing into parts
Whenever you are reading, always divide the portion into small parts and try to read it as fast as possible. This will help you to stay focused and you won’t be missing anything important in an attempt to read faster.
- Understand and skip
Many times in a sentence it happens that we understand what it means just by reading a few words. In such cases, it is completely, okay to skip those lines and move forward to the next line.
There is no point of getting in too much detail of a sentence if you are trying to read faster. So, if you understood the line with some words jump to the next line without thinking twice.
- Ignore the adjectives
Most of the times adjectives are used in a sentence to put more focus on an already present word. It has no extra meaning and won’t change the sentence even if you ignore them.
So, if you want to read faster, start ignoring the adjectives.
Of course, it will be hard in the beginning because of all the years of habit but start with this as soon as you can and you will be easily able to ignore adjectives in a sentence and read faster.
- Note your reading speed
If you are trying to increase your reading speed then always use a timer to note down how many words were you able to read per minute. This will help you stay motivated and keep a track of your progress. You can also take the help of online apps to track your reading speed. There are plenty of them available online and that too free of charge.
So, these are the 10 tried and tested simple techniques that you can follow if you are looking forward to increasing your reading speed. Be it effective or in-effective reading these tips will help you to read faster.