Speed reading is the process of rapidly recognizing and absorbing phrases or sentences on a page all at once, rather than identifying individual words. refers to mechanisms involved in improving the quick reading skill of an individual. The techniques involved include chunking and reducing subvocalization. They are minimizing regression (re-reading). As your eyes scan across a line of text, they start and stop at what is called fixation points.

- "Experienced readers pace themselves according to their purpose, taking advantage of four basic reading speeds. –

 Very fast: Readers scan a text very quickly if they are looking only for a specific piece of information.

- Fast: Readers skim a text rapidly if they are trying to get just the general gist without worrying about details.

- Slow to moderate: Readers read carefully to get a complete understanding of an article. The more difficult the text, the slower they read. Often difficult texts require rereading.

 - Very slow: Experienced readers read very slowly if their purpose is to analyze a text. They take elaborate marginal notes and often pause to ponder over the construction of a paragraph or the meaning of an image or metaphor. Sometimes they reread the text dozens of times." (John C. Bean, Virginia Chappell, and Alice M. Gillam, Reading Rhetorically. Pearson Education, 2004)

20 Benefits of Speed Reading

• Increases average reading speeds.
•  Allows absorbing information much faster.
•  Increases overall comprehension.
• Increases knowledge in many fields of interest.
• Allows recalling information more effectively.
• Promotes visualization while reading.
•  Delivers reading strategies to handle today’s information overload.
•  Encourages unlearning some bad reading habits from school.
• Organizes the reading process more effectively.
• Promotes concentration and discipline.
•  Decide faster what is worth reading and what’s not.
• Allows reading more material at the same time.
• Allows reading material in less time.
• Open up new job opportunities and can be a boost for any career. Improves time management.
• Techniques are suitable for reading blogs or RSS feeds.
• Promotes a more efficient writing style.
• Encourages to learn memory techniques; all applicable in daily life.
• Beat any of your friends in remembering things in order.
• Actively create your future by learning new skills.

Techniques and Methods for Speed Reading

1. The Pointer Method Utah school teacher Evelyn Nielsen Wood, mother of Speed Reading claimed that she could read at up to 2,700 wpm if she swept a finger along the line as she read. This became known as the Pointer method, and is also sometimes called "hand pacing" or "meta guiding." Holding a card under each line and drawing it down the page as you read works just as well.

2. The Tracker-and-Pacer Method This is a variant of the Pointer method where you hold a pen, with its cap still on, and underline or track each line as you read it, keeping your eye above the tip of the pen. This will help to increase the pace at which you take in each line, and improve your focus on the words.

3. The Scanning (or Previewing) Method "Scanning" involves moving your eyes quickly down the page – often down the center – and identifying specific words and phrases as you go. These can be key sentences (often the first sentence of each paragraph), names, numbers, or trigger words and ideas. Learning to expand your peripheral vision can help with this.

Reading happens in three stages: Saccade Fixation and Cognitive processing Now, even though we have data about the average time saccades, fixations, and pauses for cognition last, it’s not as simple as adding them up to determine reading speed. Several other factors come into play. For one, we skip a lot of words when we read. Words can be separated into two types: Content words – the words that express the ideas you’re reading about Function words – words that exist to express the grammatical relationships of content words. These include words like a the, he, she, if, then, etc

When we read, though, our eyes move in quick, jerky movements called saccades. Here are some details about those: Average distance: 2 visual degrees – about the distance of 8 letters on a page Average duration: .3 seconds When your eye stops and focuses on the text, that’s called a fixation. To understand fixations, you need to know about the three ranges of vision your eyes have: Fovea – the area right at the center of the retina. Spans about 2 visual degrees. Parafovea – expands about 5 degrees on either side of a fixation Periphery – everything else.

Research has shown that readers fixate on about 85% of the content words when they read, but only about 35% of the function words. On the other hand, reading also involves a lot of regression – going back to read over previous read material. Some regressions are small corrections that happen when a saccade’s distance is too long, while longer regressions happen when the material wasn’t understood the first time. For skilled readers, about 15% of their reading time will involve regressions.

SPEED READING TOOLS

1. ZapReader ·

 2. iReadFast ·

 3. Accelareader ·

 4. Readability · 5. ReadSpeeder ·

 6. Word Groups ·

 7. Short-term visual training ·

 8. Random words

9. Memrise

10. Pocket

12. WSJ Reading Pace Test

11. Instapaper

REFERENCES

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-classification-of-reading-speed_tbl1_326480849 https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-31-mn-40830-story.html https://www.acereader.com/speed-reading https://www.thoughtco.com/reading-speed-1691898 https://www.mindtools.com/speedrd.html https://www.speedreadinglounge.com/benefits-of-seed-readinghttps://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/science-of-speed-readinghttps://collegeinfogeek.com/speed-reading-science/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPA-LAAMuHE https://www.widernet.org/pocketlibrary/mep/eGLibrary/hackmystudy.com/how-to-speed-read-and-comprehend-2-block-reading/index.html

Tuba Kızılkan is an ELT Professional who has taught English to all age levels for about 22 years. She graduated from Ege University, English Language and Literature Department in 2000. She also has another Bachelor’s degree in International Relations and a Master’s degree in English Language teaching. She is also a Mind Mapping, Speed Reading, and Memory techniques instructor and an NLP practitioner. She is focused on Linguistics, Neuroscience, and Languages and has been conducting academic research on Linguistics, ELT, Mindmapping, and Education. She has attended several webinars and international congresses as a presenter focusing on English Langıage Teaching Education, Linguistics, Speed Reading, and Mind Mapping.