Although these tips won’t have you reading like Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting, they will help you get an immediate boost in speed. Speed reading does take practice, but these are the simplest things you can do to start.

Tip #1 – Start Using Your Hand to Read

Your hand is the most useful tool you have when it comes to speed reading. Because your eyes are naturally attracted to motion, using your hand helps to guide your eyes. This makes concentration a little easier because anytime you are pointing to something, you are calling attention to it. It’s probably happened to every reader at one point or another where you just start staring at a paragraph. Using your hand forces your eyes to keep up and your brain to pay attention.

Of course you don’t have to specifically use your hand. If it is more comfortable, you can use your finger instead of your entire hand. And if you have fat, cheesestick fingers like me, you can just use a pen or pencil to guide your eyes along the page.

Although using your hand is always mentioned as a basic speed reading tip, some people make the mistake in trying to use their hand by moving it down each page. Since it is nearly impossible to read this way with very wide margins, it’s a better idea to move your hand across the page, from left to right, line by line.

If you’re uncomfortable using your hand, it’s probably just because you don’t normally do it. The more you start doing it, the more comfortable it will feel. Once you get used to using your hand you’ll wonder why you didn’t do it before.

Tip #2 – Change Your Speed

Although using your hand will help you tremendously, you need to make sure you learn how to regulate your speed. Obviously, if you go too fast you won’t get any comprehension. And if you go too slow, you’re not being efficient.

Some people believe that all words are created equal. But if you’ve read George Orwell’s, Animal Farm, you’ll probably believe that all words are created equal, but some are more equal than others. The same is true for sentences and paragraphs.

Most people read everything at the same speed, reading word-by-word, as if each word is just as important as the next. The truth is they aren’t. Have you ever added a few pointless paragraphs to a paper in high school just so you could make the 2 page minimum? Many other people do the same.

When the material starts getting easy, or you feel there is some fluff that you’re reading, go a little faster with your hand. When the material gets hard, or when you sense a very important point is coming, you need to slow down. This is exactly what you do when you drive. You might go 90 miles per hour on a straight road, but you don’t do it on a sharp turn.

The easiest way to start doing changing your speed is by slowing down at the beginning of a paragraph and speeding up through the rest of it. This is because the main idea is in many cases (but not always) the first sentence. If you get used to doing this, you’ll eventually get into a nice flow when reading, speeding up sometimes and slowing down at others.

Tip #3 – Preview Your Material

Before doing any kind of strenuous exercise, it would probably make sense to warm up. The same goes for reading. Previewing your material is like warming up. If you’re reading a textbook chapter, flip through and look at all the headings and sub-headings. Read the introduction. Read the conclusion. Then read the chapter beginning to end.

Why is this helpful? If you’re reading informational material, previewing what you’re about to read will give you an idea of where you are going. It’s like traveling with a map. It helps to have one to avoid getting lost.

Previewing can also help you read through the material quicker and with better comprehension. This is because you’ve prepared your brain for what you were about to read. And if you’ve gotten used to changing up your speed with your hand as you read, you’ll know exactly where you need to slow down and speed up.

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Tags: comprehension, evelyn wood, rapid reading, speed reading

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 at 7:15 pm and is filed under Speed Reading Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.