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How To Read Faster: Easy Tips to Improve Your English Reading Skill

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How to read faster – Everyone who can read often finds themselves wanting to be able to read faster, and for good reason. The quicker you can read, the quicker you can get on with enjoying the books you love or working through work that might require a great deal of reading.

Reading is one of those things that gets taken for granted, once you get past school reading age, you often aren’t taught anything beyond that point that might help you to improve your reading speed and efficiency. The average adult can read around 200 words per minute, which might sound like a lot, but that speed is considered relatively slow in more efficient reading circles.

How To Read Faster

There are a couple of ways you can start practicing to read faster that will help you develop your overall skill as a reader. We’ll list our best tips here:

Stop Talking To Yourself

A common pitfall most readers fall into is reading the words in their own head to try and help them with the comprehension as they go. It’s a good idea to get out of this habit if you’re serious about reading faster. You don’t need to read each word individually to understand the text in front of you.

Group Words Together

This is a much harder feat to achieve than the one above. It follows the same general rule, in that you don’t need to read each word on a page to make sense of it, but it takes a little more skill to start chunking them together and still understand them. The aim is to be able to comprehend about three or four words at a time, making it much easier for you to skim through the page at a record pace.

Stop Re-Reading Words

A classic habit most people fall into when they’re reading is going back to re-read words they think they might have missed or simply didn’t grasp on the first go around. Some people do this without even intending to or realizing it. It’s actually the most common cause for slower reading speeds, and you need to actively think about getting out of this habit before you want to progress.

Use Your Peripheral Vision

A great way to increase your reading speed that works hand-in-hand with point 3, is to use your peripheral vision to start comprehending words you haven’t even got to yet. It’s the trickiest step to achieve here and requires a great deal of practice and patience, but everyone is capable of doing this to an advanced level if they give themselves the chance.

Conclusion

These are only a handful of ways to help increase your reading speed but if you follow them thoroughly, you should begin to notice some truly rapid results! They complement each other quite well in the sense that you can’t really do one without the other, so make sure you try them all and work through them as a checklist if you want to improve on your reading. We wish you the best of luck!

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How To Read Faster: Ways to Increase Reading Speed

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B1 Knowledge Check · 5 questions

How To Read Faster: Easy Tips to Improve Your English Reading Skill — Practice Quiz

1 / 5
Q1

Question 1: Which tip from the article is described as the most common cause of slower reading speeds?

Question 1 options
The article states that re-reading words is 'actually the most common cause for slower reading speeds.' The other options are valid tips but are not identified as the most common cause of slow reading.
Q2

Question 2: According to the article, the average adult reads around 300 words per minute.

Question 2 options
This is false. The article states that the average adult can read around 200 words per minute, not 300.
Q3

Question 3: A: I keep going back to re-read sentences. It really slows me down. B: ___

Question 3 options
"You need to actively stop that habit" aligns with the article's advice to stop re-reading words and actively think about getting out of this habit. The other responses either give irrelevant advice or contradict the article's tips.
Q4

Question 4: Match each reading tip to what it involves.

Question 4 options
Stop Talking To Yourself
Group Words Together
Stop Re-Reading Words
Use Your Peripheral Vision
Comprehending three or four words at a time
Not reading words in your own head
Seeing words before your eyes reach them directly
Resisting the urge to go back to earlier text

Select an item on the left, then tap its match on the right.

Stop Talking To Yourself means not reading words in your head. Group Words Together means comprehending three or four words at a time. Stop Re-Reading Words means resisting the urge to go back to earlier text. Use Your Peripheral Vision means seeing words before your eyes reach them.
Q5

Question 5: According to the article, which tip is described as the trickiest step to achieve?

Question 5 options
The article describes using your peripheral vision as 'the trickiest step to achieve here' and notes it 'requires a great deal of practice and patience.' The other tips are presented as easier to begin practicing.

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