The need of the hour is not just reading but also understanding faster.
If you are a 90s kid like us, you must have “The small wonder”, where Vicki, the robot, could read the entire book in an instant. We all so wished for that power of quick reading in our childhood. That kind of speed reading can be life-saver during the examination. Now, with time and a bit more awareness and love for books, we still wish for that kind of superpower. Because there are so many books to read and so little time, no matter how far are we to achieving that dream, but we can still guide you on certain tips to read and understand better.
This has been talking about over and over again, and we can’t stress more on it. If you want to get across a text quickly and efficiently, then remember these two words, skimp and scan. If you are familiar with the central idea of the text, then you can skip the unimportant and repetitive parts. This technique works best with non-fiction, but if you want, you can also use it for fiction too. Try to skim through key plot structure, character development and major plot twist and voila! You are reading faster than before.
Fun fact for you, your eyes have a span reading 1.5 inches long, and 1.5 inches means you can read up to nine words at a single time. So, your brain and eyes have that ability, so why not use it. You can do that by a simple practice of looking at every fourth or fifth word, and slowly, you would start focusing on sentences than words.
Reading the words in your mind or subvocalization is the main culprit for slowing down our reading speed. Just know for a fact that your brain and eyes can process the text much faster. We completely understand that it may seem difficult and impossible but then what is impossible if you try.
Another practice that hampers our reading prowess is re-reading the text. Though we do that when we want to have a better understanding of the text, we end up slowing down our reading speed. Trust us; you don’t need to do that. You don’t need to understand each and every word; the text would eventually start making sense.
In the end, read and read more, because that is the only way you can learn and master the art of reading as well as understanding faster.
