Speed reading is an ability that we all have use for. Imagine being able to absorb the contents of a book in a matter of minutes - the contents of ten books in an hour… If you were a student then cramming would be a cinch and it could begin ten minutes before the exam. If you were a business man you could stay up to date with the current market trends, the competition and any topics relevant to your business on the commute. Fancy learning HTML in an evening? Even you’re not a student or a business man, being able to learn so much so quickly would be fascinating and you’d be everyone’s favourite in a pub quiz.

But does speed reading actually work and how do you do it? Well in answer to the first question - yes and no. Those hoping to read a novel in an evening (unless it’s Goosebumps) aren’t going to get any help from speed reading and those hoping to learn HTML… well it just may be a bit too wordy and complex. To understand the applications where speed reading will work, you really need to first understand the mechanisms by which it works.

The central idea around speed reading is one from psychology that dictates that our language dictates the way we think as well as some of our cognitive ability. In some cultures there are fewer words for different colours and therefore most studies have so far found that they actually see fewer colours and can not distinguish between red and orange for example. This makes logical sense when you think that in order to think of ideas or memories you often sound out a narrative - the ‘inner voice’ - in your head. So powerful is this effect that some psychologists have even postulated that thought is language, and that without developing language we would act like animals. This obviously raises several interesting philosophical questions that we won’t go into here, but studies with ‘feral’ children raised without language suggest this may be the case despite many confounding factors while the thought processes of deaf-dumb patients suggest that other mechanisms are at least possible. In other studies it was found that where the corresponding were words shorter to pronounce, people from those countries were able to recall more numbers due to having fewer syllables to recall. This obviously lead to greater short term storage and better maths skills.

But how does all this relate to speed reading? Well the same thing applies when reading - that when we’re understanding the words we read we actually ‘sound them out’ in our heads which takes time in itself thus making it slower for us to read. The idea behind speed reading then is to bypass this process so that there’s no need for us to make the sounds. This means simply scanning our eyes over the text and then hoping to retain that information simply by having seen it and by it seeping into our subconscious minds.

This is an unusual process for our brains which are used to sounding out words and so requires practice to perfect. So in order to go about learning the skill you need to become accustomed to this way of learning by attempting to speed read on a regular basis. To do so, grab a book you want to learn and scan your eyes over one of the pages. As you do, look at the words but be careful not to sound them out. Now test yourself on the content - what was the story or description about? Do this regularly and as you do you should start getting the hang of picking up information simply by looking at words and encoding straight from the visual to the semantic.

But does it really work? Well to an extent and as you improve you will notice that you can retain more information from a page, but it will always have holes in it. Apart from anything else the words won’t be as clearly defined and ordered and those you don’t recognise will have no context to help them. There will be none of the emotion of the phrasing either that normally makes text engaging and memorable and as a result only some of it will be properly maintained. For fictional stories it’s completely un-enjoyable and there will be big gaps in your knowledge. For non fiction you may as well just skim and pick out the bits you need in detail if you’re in a rush. So yes it works a bit, but not as well as many people promise and you certainly shouldn’t pay any money to be taught this ‘skill’.

And yet speed reading still has a certain allure and the concept is sound in theory. Fortunately then if you take the principles you can make it a lot more effective and practical. The first take home lesson here is practice - practice reading and you do get quicker. If you want to read a book really quickly well then just read lots of books and you’ll get better. Secondly though consciously force yourself to sound out the individual words quicker and don’t ‘dramatise’ it quite so much when you’re in a hurry. In fact one way to potentially speed up your reading would be to read out in an abbreviated manner. Read in text speak or in slang and you’ll find it actually improves your speed reading. This makes me question often why school systems are so adverse to the idea of the language being shortened - it’s actually the natural evolution and would lead to quicker-witted kids with better short term memories.

If all this fails you then you may be interested in a website called ‘spreeder.com’ which flashes individual words up at a speed you define. It forces you to read at a set pace and you’ll find as you do you can gradually increase the rate it shows the words. Incrementally train yourself faster and faster on a regular basis and you may find that you begin to read words out quicker regularly.

Mack LeMouse

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