It has recently come to my attention that most people read at the ability of a kindergartener. This is not the fault of people; the way you are taught to read is to blame on how you read.
When you are in kindergarten, you learn to read by learning how to pronounce each word individually. This causes two problems; 1) you end up subvocalizing, and 2) you read word by word.
Subvocalizing is the conscious pronunciation of words in your head. This limits your reading speed down to your speaking speed, which is just 200 words per minute. Furthermore, every time your eyes move, they spend time adjusting to the new position of your eyes. Since we learn to read texts word by word, we end up spending too much time moving our eyes and thus reading slower than we can.
Yeah, I didn’t think this would become science class either.
So. How does one read faster? Well, try using some kind pointer to drag your eyes along the text faster. You’ll find yourself reading faster than you can subvocalize while still retaining as much, if not more, information from the text. As you drag your eyes, count from one to ten, over and over, to minimize subvocalization.
As the old saying goes, practice makes perfect. If you keep going forward with these habits, you’ll read faster and faster until you’re reading at the freakin’ speed of light.
WHY ISN’T THIS TAUGHT IN SCHOOL?!
No wonder American students are reading at the levels of second grade students. They’re using the habits of second grade students!
I say we begin to teach short speed reading units in every school of the United States of Americ-uh. Our productivity will skyrocket!
Who knows, we might just take over China again.
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