Speed-Read Your Way to Success

So here I am, right in the middle of midterm season wondering what happened to the first five weeks of the semester. The pace of my classes has been steadily picking up and the lackadaisical attitude I’d been toting since my grudging return to Berkeley after winter break has been replaced with sheer panic as I realize exactly how much of a problem my procrastination has become. My biggest problem is the excessive amounts of class reading that I have not been keeping up with. With hundreds of pages assigned every few days and no immediate assignment due on it, it was easy to justify putting aside my copy of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and booting up my laptop to watch “just one more” episode of House of Cards. But now, reality is setting in because it’s February and I have a six-page paper to write on a book I have not actually read.

So, what did I do? In an attempt to work more efficiently (or maybe just a further attempt at procrastination) I started researching speed-reading techniques, a skill I had always wanted to cultivate. I think every Berkeley student could benefit from significantly increasing his or her reading speed and retention rate. However, I quickly learned that in the world of speed-reading there is a profusion of games, gimmicks, and confusion. So-called “experts” in the field make unbelievable claims about the effectiveness of their program to prey on weaker minds and make a quick buck. Here’s the science behind speed-reading as I separate fact from the fiction and share some helpful resources:

Establishing Base Speed:

The first step in training your brain to read faster is to determine your base reading speed. The easiest way to do this is to paste a block of text (1,000-1,500 words) into Word and time how long it takes you to read that chunk of text. Then divide your time by the number of words in the text to find your base speed. The average person reads around 250 words per minute with about 60% competency; good readers come in at 400 wpm with 80% competency, and accomplished readers with 1,000 wpm and 85% competency. During active reading I calculated my base speed at a comfortable 750 words per minute and challenged myself to increase this to 1,000 wpm within the next few weeks.

Sub-vocalization, Regression, and Fixation:

Now it’s time to address the specific habits that keep people from reading at their full potential. When the majority of people read there is an inner voice that is sub-consciously vocalizing the words on the page. This is the way many are taught to read from a very young age through programs like “Hooked on Phonics.” This “sub-vocalization” is a major deterrent from the ability to speed-read though because it limits us to how fast we can speak. However, it is completely possible to silence this inner voice by forcing the brain to view words faster than the inner voice can keep up. This can be achieved through a variety of programs, but the most effective one I found was at www.spreeder.com. Start by inserting a piece of text and setting your base speed. The program will flash the words of the text one by one at the speed you set. Easy. Once you’re done, double the speed. Don’t expect to understand everything. This is the part when you’re reprogramming your brain to process the text faster. Now go back to your base speed and read the text a third time. You should find that your original speed now seems a lot slower and you probably feel comfortable reading at a faster base speed. Repeat the process with different texts and play around with 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 word chunks. In addition to silencing your inner voice, this program is serving as a pacer to eliminate back skipping and regression (re-reading what you’ve already read) as well as reducing the duration of fixation (amount of time spent looking at a word after your brain has already processed it). Most regression and fixation is unnecessary because our minds have already processed what we’ve read unconsciously. We simply must force our brains to immediately and consciously absorb it. After using this program for just a few days my base reading speed has already increased from 750 wpm to 900 wpm.

*Keep in mind that your brain processes texts read from a screen differently from texts read on physical paper. Research shows that people typically read 25% slower on computer screens than on paper. The same technique that Spreeder employs can be replicated on a rudimentary level with paper texts simply by using your finger or a pen to follow the words on the page you’re reading.

Perceptual Expansion:

Peripheral vision also slows down our reading speed. When we read, our brain isn’t just processing the words on the page, but also the margins or the sides of the screen. If we eliminated this processing and were able to narrow our focus to just the words we would be able to read much more rapidly and proficiently. The way to train your brain to do this is to practice reading a text and skipping the words closest to edges. For instance, if I presented you with this sentence:

“Once upon a time, a beautiful princess lived in a castle surrounded by a giant moat.”

You would skip the two words at each end and read the sentence as “a time, a beautiful princess lived in a giant castle surrounded by a.” I know the sentence doesn’t make sense, but you’re not reading for competency. This is merely a technique to narrow your focus on the center of the text and remove distracting peripheral stimulus.

The PhotoReading Conjecture:

So far, I’ve discussed only free exercises and techniques backed up by neuroscience and several competency studies. I want to briefly discuss a popular theory in the world of rapid reading with more dubious origins. Paul Scheele invented the learning strategy program “PhotoReading” after he attended a Subliminal Dynamics course in 1985. He claims to be able to train anyone to read at a speed of 25,000 words per minute (that’s approximately 100 pages per minute). The three basic steps of PhotoReading are (1) taking mental snapshots of text, (2) briefly skimming key pages, and (3) mysterious sub-conscious activation techniques. These techniques of course are only disclosed in seminars costing upwards of $700. I won’t go into any more detail about the mechanics of the program because the science is mostly unsupported. In fact, NASA conducted a study titled ‘Preliminary Analysis of PhotoReading’ and released a statement saying that “the extremely rapid reading rates claimed by PhotoReaders were not observed.” In my experience, if something sounds too good to be true (like being able to read a hundred pages in a minute), it usually is, but if you want to check out PhotoReading yourself, click here.

To wrap things up, everyone can drastically increase their reading speed using proven science-backed techniques, but be wary of those who try and sell you their “speed-reading” secrets. Increasing my base speed has already upped my productivity and reduced the amount of time I am forced to spend reading those dry academic texts that we all love. Although this does nothing to solve my procrastination habit, I managed to finish The Road in just a couple hours and now have no more excuses to avoid writing that essay. I hope these techniques also help some of you alleviate the stress attached to the copious amounts of reading we are expected to comfortably digest each week as Cal students. Speed-read on!