Increase Your Reading Speed by Quieting Subvocalization

A recent newsgroup post asked for suggestions on how to eliminate subvocalization in order to increase reading speed. One person responded that repeating a single word in his mind while he read for 6 months did the trick for him. I couldn't help but wonder if there was a quicker way to achieve this, so the next time I read and found myself subvocalizing. I observed what I did to stop: I increased the rate at which my eyes moved across the page to the point where it was impossible to subvocalize. I changed into a reading method whereby I noticed gulps of words at each eye resting point. These gulps involved pulling words from multiple lines. I noticed that I was still understanding what I was reading but in a different way. I caught myself thinking: "But now I'm not really reading." In other words, part of my mind still believed that reading was to look at every word and sound it out in my mind. A better way to look at subvocalization is that you are wise to develop multiple reading strategies. You wouldn't want a car that only has one speed. You want to have multiple gears that can be applied in each situation. "See – Understand" seems much more efficient than "See – Say –Understand".

A convenient way to increase your reading rate is to adjust the focus of your eyes (or attention). When you look at something, first you take a close look at a particular aspect, like the button on a shirt. Then adjust the focus of your eyes so you can see the entire shirt. That's the process you can use to increase your reading speed by increasing the number of words you take in at each eye stop. In his book, Use Both Sides of Your Brain, Tony Buzan points out that our eyes only take in information when they are stopped. You can easily prove this by holding a book up in front of someone and watch their eyes as they read. Don't tell them what you are observing. What feels like continuous movement is actually "move-stop-read", "move – stop - read", etc. Fast readers minimize the number of stops by maximizing the number of words taken in at each stop.

　　Here's an exercise that will help you do this. Try looking at the following sentence in three ways:

　　Success depends on hard work.
　　
　　First, focus your attention/eyes on the first "S" in success.
　　
　　Second, adjust your focus/attention so you can see the entire world, "success".
　　
　　Third, adjust your focus so you are seeing all five words at the same time.

　　Because you can't say five words at the same time, you can't subvocalize if you are reading five words at a time.