• Reading all material at the same speed.

A lot of people try to read all material at the same speed. This is a bad habit. Quite simply, some stuff is harder to read than other stuff. Your reading speed should relate directly with the difficulty of the text you’re reading. Most people know that they should slow down for difficult text, but VERY FEW will speed up for easy text.

Try this out: the next time you find something that’s very easy to read, start out reading at your normal speed, but accelerate until you reach your REAL reading speed for the text. You’ll find that you’re able to read text quite a bit faster if it’s easy.

• Reading when tired.
  

It is common for people, especially students, to read their books late at night. This time of day is actually the LEAST effective for reading. Trying to read in bed is even worse.

As a rule, being productive with your reading requires you to be in a productive state of mind. If you’re thinking just as much about sleeping as you are about the text, your comprehension will suffer. So read with an ACTIVE mind — when you’ve got lots of energy, and you’re feeling motivated.

• Trying to comprehend 100% right away.

Another bad habit is to just jump right into the text — starting from ZERO comprehension and aiming straight
for 100% comprehension. Doing this will almost surely result in failure. What you really need to do is work your way up to 100%, using a gradual process.

The process doesn’t have to be that complicated — it can be as simple as just scanning the material once or twice before reading, to get a general idea of what’s going on in the text. For textbooks, it might mean skimming through the pages just reading the headers and titles. Once you get that LITTLE BIT of comprehension to start with, that first 10%, then the other 90% will be MUCH easier to understand. Don’t go for the full 100% right away — work up to it gradually.

These tips will definitely help you to improve your reading ability. Just avoid these bad habits, and your reading speed and comprehension will advance significantly. For more information on how to increase your reading speed, and how to finally start speed reading, check out the Speed Reading Newsletter. It’s free to join, and you’ll discover secrets that most people will never know about speed reading.

Keep a dictionary close by, so you can look up a word that you have difficulty understanding while reading. Write the new words down with their definitions next to them. Note any synonyms that come to mind, and read the paragraph again making sure you understand it completely.

If you’re reading a textbook with lots of unfamiliar vocabulary, you might want to try skimming through the whole thing before actually reading, and underlining all of the words you don’t know. If you look up these words in the dictionary before you read, you’ll be able to save a lot of time while reading. Presuming you understand the words well, you’ll be able to read through the whole thing without stopping your flow.

Learn a word or two each day. Write them down and put them up where you can see them. Try constructing good sentences using the words. Use them in daily conversations or essays and assignments. This will help you familiarize with the words, so that the next time you come across them in an article, you won’t have to run for a dictionary.

Familiarize yourself with words used frequently in a particular type of writing. Non-fiction books often include many technical terms. If you read a lot of textbooks, it might help to make several lists of keywords, based on topics. Then, before you go into reading a new chapter on microeconomics, you can check the appropriate keyword-sheet and be reminded of all of the difficult words you may encounter. This will dramatically improve your comprehension, and it will also save time, since you won’t have to re-read things as often.

Read a lot! Read both fiction and non-fiction, and several subjects within each.
Don’t stick to one particular genre – you should constantly be in the middle of a wide variety of books.

With time you will see a great improvement in your ability to comprehend what you read. You will also be saving time in the long run by not having to stop as frequently to make sure you understand what the words mean. Make it a habit to follow these tips – you’ll thank yourself later!