Reading faster has many advantages (like taking half the time to prepare for an exam) and during vacations, we can practice effortlessly. Default readers
We spend the day reading. Even those people who say they don't like reading, read non-stop. We read movie subtitles, billboards, song lyrics. We read the leaflet of a medication and the advice from a magazine. We read the tweets of the people we follow, the comments on Facebook, and even read the shampoo label. Reading is something we do naturally, and it's impossible for us not to like it because we read without even realizing it. Maybe what happens is that we haven't found something to read that motivates or hooks us, but that has a solution: we just have to think about the genres of movies and series that we like and look for something similar to read.
And why do I need to read faster?
Well, basically, because life is only a limited amount of time, and it's better if we make the most of it. If we study a career, there are hundreds of texts to read, recommended books, notes, and more. That's why training our ability to read faster will be essential to get our university
eTítulo without stress. If we work, it's pretty much the same. There are reports, emails, studies, or academic articles, etc., that we will also have to read, and the faster, the better. Reading faster will not only save us a lot of time but will also help us concentrate, understand, and memorize what we read better. Achieving it is not difficult, but it requires some discipline and time to work on a series of exercises, so taking advantage of the free time we have in the summer will allow us to do it without even realizing it and without taking away time from other activities. With 20 minutes of practice per day, we will triple our reading speed in just two months. Isn't it fantastic?
The starting point for reading faster
The first thing we need to know is our reading speed before starting with the exercises. This way, we can calculate our progress as we train. The simplest way is to select a text in Word or another similar program that tells us how many words there are. Then, we set a minute with the mobile's stopwatch and read at a normal speed. When the stopwatch beeps, we just have to stop and see how many words we have read. There's no need to make an effort to go faster than normal or read over without understanding anything. It's about making a realistic calculation of our speed, not surpassing ourselves. Adults usually read at an average speed of 250 words per minute, but if we don't reach it at first, there's no need to despair, we'll soon get the hang of it.
We learned halfway
We have been taught to read well, first letters and then words. But since our thoughts go much faster, reading each word is exhausting, and we end up getting distracted and losing track. We have all experienced that after a while of reading, we realize that we haven't understood anything. That's why they should have taught us the next step, which is to read groups of words at a glance. In one go, we have to cover four or five words and not decipher them one by one. If at first, it takes us a bit more effort to understand, we will soon see that we perfectly comprehend the text.
The best exercise to read faster is...
Drumroll, please!!! Well, obviously, reading a little every day. In addition, acquiring a reading habit has many
benefits that will be very useful throughout our lives, such as having more general culture, better vocabulary, more empathy, greater concentration, less stress, etc. But since here the goal is to read faster, we not only have to read, but we must also do a series of exercises that will make us true speed demons.
The pointer that helps to read faster
Of course, to read faster, we have to leave out any habits we have, like moving our lips or murmuring (which, by the way, is very annoying for the people around us). Once we discard murmuring or vocalizing what we read, what will help us read faster is to create a pointer with our finger. We must practice this exercise for about 5 minutes, pointing with our finger the groups of words we are reading. The finger should point, not underline, so it only indicates at a glance.
Covering more words is reading faster
As we practice reading groups of words, we must expand them to train our peripheral vision. For that, we can practice by fixing our gaze on the tip of a pen that we place on the text and trying to read the words around it. The more we cover without moving our eyes, the better. Training our peripheral vision will make it much easier to acquire speed, but it will also prevent our eyes from getting tired and the annoying headaches associated with visual fatigue. After a week of practice, let's measure our speed again. We will be amazed at how much progress we have made in such a short time.
