A common question asked in speed reading circles is whether or not having the ability to speed read is suitable for everyone. A common enough remark is that speed reading takes the joy out of reading. Very often, when perusing materials relating to improving your speed reading skills, you’ll see comments to the effect that vocalization is the biggest hurdle in speed reading.

Even if you are only reading for pleasure, the mere fact you have more chance of comprehending that romance novel if you have the skills at-hand that allow you to speed read should be sufficient to convince you of the value of learning this essential skill. As speed reading skills enable you to comprehend what you are reading better, English language students are an often quoted group of people who benefit from the ability to be able to speed read.

Furthermore, as your retention rates are usually better with speed reading, it is often a good idea that you speed read at times when you have a special need to comprehend and retain the information you are reading. So, when you have a reading assignment and you want to practice your speed reading techniques, you should have a task, a purpose, a clear idea what you need and what you expect to get out of this text. Another key element in speed reading is learning to read several words, or units of meaning, at a glance while fully absorbing what is read and being able to automatically retain its essence for later recollection.

A major key in speed reading is the ability to filter out all the words that have nothing to do with the subject and naturally, there a lot of them. Traditional speed reading programs are based on something that we all do naturally - instead of reading a passage in detail, there are times when we just scan it, letting our eyes travel down the page quickly. Almost all successful speed readers will attest to the fact that they are successful because they have a form of peripheral vision that allows them to see large amount of data on a page and to “skim” what they are reading.

It is generally understood that the reader will glean enough information from the first sentence not to be overly concerned about the information contained in the remainder of the paragraph, where the writer will merely be reinforcing the notion set out in sentence one. While there is truth in the information presented in some speed reading guides about the various strategies of speed reading, these inherent factors can greatly affect anyone from successfully using those strategies or techniques. Lack of concentration or partial/impaired concentration is an obvious problem for speed reading, the effects of the environment on ones reading rhythm and the general tendency of some people to be able of acceptable reading rate only in ideal situations.

Hence, to improve reading speed is to increase the kind of knowledge that people learn in their culture and in everything around them. This means that a student of a speed reading course is going to need to maintain the motivation to learn how to improve their reading speed over a prolonged period. Remember that it is vital to improve your reading speed, but not at the cost to your reading comprehension.

To gain speed and comprehension while reading, it is important that you first consider the Title, subtitle (if any), main paragraph, charts, graphics, histograms, etc. The initial steps should be to test your present reading and comprehension speed using a stop watch.

Once you have mastered the art of reading fast with complete comprehension of any material as you continue to practice, then you can progress to higher grounds of unfamiliar subjects and take up challenges, eventually you will come up an expert speed reader all things being equal.

With practice you will improve both your reading speed and your comprehension.

David Odell
http://www.writing.knowhowpages.co.uk