Speed Reading Techniques: Which Ones Actually Work?

What are speed reading techniques?

Speed reading techniques are habits and drills meant to get you through text faster. Below, each popular one is graded against the research, mainly a 2016 review led by Keith Rayner (Rayner et al., 2016). One finding from that review explains most of the grades: what limits reading speed is how fast you recognise words, not how your eyes move.

Which speed reading techniques actually work?

Does previewing or skimming first help?

Previewing means looking over the part you are about to read for a few seconds; Speed Readingo’s course calls it pre-reading. Previews improved low-ability junior-high students’ comprehension and recall of difficult stories (Graves et al., 1983). See the pre-reading lesson.

Skimming, reading selectively instead of fully, can be two to four times faster than reading, with less comprehension (Rayner et al., 2016). Under time pressure, it caught more main ideas than reading half a text, but not more details (Duggan & Payne, 2009).

Does a pacer or your finger help?

A pacer is a guide your eyes follow, such as a finger, a pen or a moving highlight (sometimes called meta-guiding). It keeps your place and sets a rhythm, but we found no controlled test showing that it raises reading speed. Use it for practice at a pace you understand, and still glance back when you need to: blocking look-backs lowers comprehension (Schotter et al., 2014). Try the drill above or the exercises page.

Can you read word groups or a whole line at a glance?

Chunking means resting your eyes on a few points per line and taking in the words around each; the course calls those stops pit words. From each stop you identify only about one word beyond the one you look at, so fewer stops means more guessing (Rayner et al., 2016).

Taking in a whole line at a glance is another matter. Peripheral vision is what you see outside the point you look at, and it is blurry: you identify words only about seven letters to the right of that point, and nothing from the lines above or below (Rayner et al., 2016). See the peripheral vision lesson.

Should you stop subvocalizing?

Subvocalization is the inner voice that says words as you read silently. Turning it down works; switching it off does not. When researchers blocked inner speech, comprehension of difficult text fell, while easy text was unaffected (Rayner et al., 2016). See the subvocalization lesson.

Does word-by-word reading (RSVP) work?

RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation) flashes words one at a time in the same spot. It matched normal reading at about 200 words per minute, and recall of details fell at 400 and 600 (Rayner et al., 2016). At 700 and 1,000, people understood ordinary text better (Acklin & Papesh, 2017), and the Spritz app gave no speed gain over paper, plus more eye fatigue (Benedetto et al., 2015). Use the RSVP reader for short drills, as the speed stages lesson does.

Should you never go back?

A regression is a look back at words you have already read. Skilled readers make them on about 10–15% of their eye movements (Rayner, 2009), and taking away the chance to look back lowered comprehension (Schotter et al., 2014). See the common mistakes lesson.

Do Schulte tables, eye exercises or PhotoReading work?

A Schulte table is a grid of the numbers 1 to 25 in random order, found in sequence. The course uses it to train peripheral vision; researchers use it to measure attention. In a nine-week trial with 28 college soccer players, a similar grid exercise improved concentration no more than no training (Greenlees et al., 2006). We found no good evidence that it, or eye-muscle exercise, speeds up reading: play the Schulte table as an attention game.

PhotoReading promises to “photograph” pages at 25,000 words per minute; a small NASA-funded evaluation found no speed gain and lower comprehension (McNamara, 2000).

What actually makes you read faster?

• Reading more. Across 99 studies, people who read more had stronger language skills, and the link grew with age (Mol & Bus, 2011).
• A bigger vocabulary. Familiar words get shorter looks (Rayner et al., 2016).
• Knowing the topic. Students who knew more about a topic recalled more of a text on it (Recht & Leslie, 1988).

These gains come slowly: doubling or tripling your speed with the same understanding is unlikely (Rayner et al., 2016). Our evidence review has the details.

Speed reading techniques for beginners

Take the reading speed test: a speed counts only if you get at least 70% of the questions right. Then play the pacer above at 250 words per minute, the course’s first practice stage and close to the adult silent-reading average of about 238 (Brysbaert, 2019). If the meaning slips, lower it by 25.

Next: how to read faster, or the lessons.

Read next: How to remember what you read · How to choose a speed reading app.