How To Eliminate Vocalization With Exercises For Speed Reading

In speed reading, you should not subvocalize. The purpose of this test is not to test your literacy but to get rid of vocalization from thought.

Here's an exercise that will help you develop effective eye movements. Try looking at the following sentence in three ways:

1. Focus your attention: look only at the first "S" in success.
2. Adjust your focus: look to be able to see at the entire word, "success".
3. Adjust your focus so you are seeing three or more words at the same time.

If you can't say three words at the same time, then you can't subvocalize if you are reading three words at a time.

You may assume that verbalization is important in linking words with concepts but common experience shows otherwise. For example, Ask your mechanic how a car works. Definitely he knows the answer but he will have a problem in how to respond. The subject of his thought is too complex and multi-dimensional to be expressed in linear forms. He may be able to visualize and manipulate concepts and find answers to mechanical problems in his mind without ever putting those thoughts into words.

The same is possible with abstract ideas (which are also often highly complex and multi-dimensional), though it takes practice because there are no definite "images" to fall back on. In some cases, especially when the thought involved is quite complex, removing the verbal component not only speeds up the thinking process, but can even lead to intuitive leaps that verbal thinking might have prevented.

How do you read this text? A majority of people think that they read the way young children do – either letter-by-letter, or at best word-by-word. The truth is, we do not read letter-by-letter or word-by-word. Notice the way your eye muscles actually move when reading a printed text. You are fixing your eyes on block of words. Try to move your eyes to the next block of words, and go on. Effectively you are not reading words, but blocks of words at a time. The period of time during which the eye rests on one word is called a fixation.

You may also notice that you don't always proceed from one block of words to the next. Sometimes, you may move back to a preceding block of words if you are unsure about something or if you don't understand what it meant. These disruptions to the forward flow of reading are called skip-backs.

Fast readers have undergone many training and practices to create mini eye-movements. Many people still get by reading with micro eye-movements. The former produces speed reading because they engage their peripheral-vision to chunk words simultaneously instead of just one-word at a time. The latter is automatic, and keep following the words they read with their eyes. This is to make sure that their foveal centralis, the sharpest focusing area of their retina, are focused on the words they read.

I hope these simple exercises for speed reading can help you to eliminate vocalization from thought. They can improve your reading speed. Continue to practice until you can read by chunking a few words at a time.

Where To Get Speed Reading Courses

Is Speed Reading Course A Scam
Get the Edge, Read Better & Faster with RocketReader
Download Free Demo