How many words do you read per minute? In general this amount averages 120-180 words per minute (wpm). Would you like to read three times faster? And not just look through the text but also understand its meaning. If so, it’s high time to develop a super skill – Speed-Reading that will help you to read 20 books per month.




What is reading, speed-readings and the point of “saccades”

Reading is a cognitive process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from them. Speed-reading is the set of techniques that are used to improve one’s ability to read quickly and to memorize more information from the text. It is important to understand the process of reading in order to learn these techniques better. In the 19th century French ophthalmologist Louis Emile Javal mentioned that our eye does not move smoothly along the line while reading, but makes fast jumps – “saccades” and short pauses – “fixations”.


When we read our eyes’ work can be described like this: leap and stop, leap and stop. Those readers who are experienced enough in reading make 4-6 stops per line of text and each such “fixation” last 0.2 seconds. A well-trained peripheral vision and a good vocabulary will help the reader to recognize several words at once.

Considering the above-mentioned facts, it is clear that reading a single line will require fewer stops, and thus the overall reading speed will increase.


How to develop a speed-reading?

These simple tips will help you to find your own reading traditions.

· Morning is the best time for reading since your brain works at its full capacity.


· Find your “reading place” with enough light and that will make you feel comfortable.

· Use a pencil or a point while reading, it increases the visual focus and concentration.


· Read silently and avoid regressions (returns) in the text.

· Don’t waste time while waiting in lines or being in the transport, read wherever it’s possible. Let the paper book or e-book always be with you.


· One of the literature aims is to bring pleasure. Read what you love and share it with others. Entering a book club will add a little life. The participants discuss and exchange books.

Spice your reading up with some speed-reading exercises. They will help you to get into the “flowing” state while reading and feel the ultimate high from the reading process.


· Train working memory. Memory is an integral part while reading. The reader needs to keep the words and phrases already read in mind to combine them into more complex constructions for a whole understanding of the text.

· Block subvocalization. There is great exercise - read any text visually and count in voice from 9 to 1, this one trains two hemispheres of brain and train blocking subvocalization while you reading, don’t worry about speed and comprehension, it’s just 5 min training for daily using.


· Improve your vocabulary. The more you read – especially different literature genres – the more words you’ll be exposed to. As you read and uncover new words look up their definition in a dictionary. Even though it sounds a little bit boring, keep a dictionary and thesaurus handy.

· Expand your field of vision. It means that you have to train the peripheral vision. The investigations have come to the conclusion that human eyesight has a narrow focus of recognizing the letters (80-90%). This field is a few letters, and then we take the letters blurred. It isn’t necessary to recognize all the letters in a word to find out a word. Our brain is such a powerful biological computer that can detect the word by knowing only a few letters in it. Therefore, experienced readers with a broad vocabulary can catch sight of 2-3 or even 5-7 words. And some readers need only one fixation to decode and understand a whole line of text at once. In general, such super readers make 1-2 fixations per line.


· Let modern technology improve your brain. Readlax specialists have developed an online and mobile platform that will train your brain for speed-reading. This includes the most effective brain games, online tests, and news-gathering service. Speed-reading games have exercises to train all the above-mentioned tips for obtaining the best results. Online tests determine the speed of reading in different languages. And finally, a news-gathering service is a good way to practice your speed-reading knowledge. So becoming a super reader is just around the corner.

Click here to try Readlax.



