The reason for this is obvious. “Natural fast reading” takes years and years to develop, whereas “speed reading” only takes a few hours. Based on this, one can deduce that “natural fast reading” is MORE REAL, and MORE VALID.

If it takes one group of people their whole life to develop a skill, and it takes the second group only a few hours, then surely the second group is lying, cheating, and deceitful!

These sorts of irrational arguments are simply caused by ignorance. The people that make these claims simply do not understand what speed reading really is.

The truth is, there is no practical difference between the way “speed readers” read and the way “naturally fast readers” read. So really, “naturally fast readers” are speed reading without even realizing it.

The difference is in the way the two groups learned the techniques. One group spent years and years unconsciously progressing their reading ability and slowly adopting efficient reading techniques… while the other group simply learned the techniques from something like the Speed Reading Manual, and adopted them right away.

One group slowly got better at reading through countless hours of practice, while the other group took the shortcut and learned the techniques from a reliable resource.

A lot of people see “speed reading” as a type of cheating. They think it’s not entirely REAL, or VALID. They see it as a cheap workaround to actually developing a skill. Well, that’s PARTLY true! Speed reading is a cheap, fast, and effective way to learn how to read quickly – but that doesn’t make it any less real, or any less useful than “the natural way”.

Speed reading is a shortcut. It’s a cost-effective solution. You don’t have to spend years of your life slowly increasing your reading speed through practice. With the Speed Reading Manual, you can learn the best techniques NOW, and start using them RIGHT AWAY.

Click here to learn more about the Speed Reading Manual, so that you can start speed reading today!

• 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.

I’m going to prove to you just how useful it is in the long run, and hopefully you’ll be smart enough to take action on the information right away.

So here are the facts: if your reading speed was 200WPM (a full 50WPM below the average reading speed), and if you read for 15 minutes every day 350 days a year (taking 15 days off for whatever reason), by the end of the year you will have read FIFTEEN BOOKS.

That means that every minute you spend reading equals a whole book finished by the end of a year. If you read 20 minutes a day, you’ll read 20 books. If you read 30 minutes a day, you’ll read 30 books.

And don’t forget, that’s at the meager reading speed of 200WPM. The average reading speed is 250WPM, and the fact that you’re reading this probably means that your reading speed is faster than that.

So think about it: how many books did you read last year? More than 15? If so, great. For most people, that’s not the answer. But either way, you should be ADDING these 15 minutes onto your current reading schedule. You should always be reading more and more.

P.S.: If you haven’t gotten the Speed Reading Manual yet, I recommend you get it soon. As time goes on, I’m going to be getting into more and more advanced techniques, and you might not know what I’m talking about unless you read the Manual first.

The Speed Reading Manual is here: http://www.speedreadingisreal.com/speed-reading-manual/

Speed Reading and Information Overload
By Adam Harley

Information is abundant. Sources are many. Sometimes it’s too much. The people at the top, middle as well as the bottom all suffer from information overload.

What is information overload? The most common way to define it is when there is too much information on any given topic at once.

Go to a search engine on the internet and type in your favorite sport, and you will find tons and tons of information about it, millions of sources that you didn’t even know existed.

But not all of these sources can be trusted or cannot be taken seriously. So finding valuable information can be like finding a needle in a hay stack.

Many resort to simply skimming and scanning through whatever they find, and reading only that which looks most appealing. But if you really want to learn something, if you really want to do some research, then skimming doesn’t cut it.

This is where speed reading comes in. Speed reading can enable you to read through countless books and internet articles in a minimum amount of time, and help you gain a massive advantage over everyone else. (Unless they speed read too!)

With the amount of responsibilities that are loaded on people these days, it’s hard to find enough time to finish all the work that’s to be done, and even if you do finish your work, there probably won’t be any time left to relax and have fun.

This can lead to higher health risks such as heart problems and high blood pressure. Speed reading can help bring the madness down a notch or two. If you learn to speed read, you’ll be able to spend less time on reading, and more time on decision-making and other important work tasks. You’ll be able to do your work in less time, and you’ll have more time to spend with your family or friends.

Reading fast and understanding fast can slow down the world around you, and let you live your life the way you want to.

Learn speed reading right now, and you’ll double your reading speed within the next 30 minutes. Check out this site, and you’ll get a free look at how speed reading works, and how you can learn to read as fast as possible while IMPROVING your comprehension. Here’s the link: http://www.speedreadingisreal.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Harley
http://EzineArticles.com/?Speed-Reading-and-Information-Overload&id=2153523

Thanks, Adam! We’re glad you noticed us!

Short History of Speed Reading

By Adam Harley

How did speed reading come about? When did it start? All this and more in today’s article!

It all began with the invention of the tachistoscope – a machine that could flash a series of images at varying speeds on a screen. With the use of the tachistoscope it was found that an average person could correctly identify minute images flashed on the screen, even if the image only appeared for one-five-hundredth of a second!

The U.S Air Force recognized the implication of this discovery, and wanted to be able to use this knowledge to make their fighter pilots more efficient. Receiving orders by a quick flash on a screen would be much faster than listening to the orders on the radio. A series of experiments were conducted using words instead of images, to test whether or not this was possible. The results clearly demonstrated the potential of the human eye to read at speeds that were previously unthinkable. Sadly for the military, they did not have the proper technology to put their ideas into use.

In the years that followed, much interest was generated on this subject and many courses were developed that claimed to increase the reading speeds of participants. These mostly relied on training eye movements with a variety of exercises using the tachistoscope in an attempt to increase reading speed. However the results were short lived as reading speeds rapidly diminished when reading without the machine.

It was not until the 1950s that a reliable technique for speed reading was developed. The inventor was a school teacher named Evelyn Wood. She made her remarkable breakthrough almost by accident, when she noticed how her eyes smoothly followed the movement of her hand as she moved it across the page. She then wrote a whole book about how you can read faster by simply guiding your eye with your hand. It became known as the “Evelyn Wood method”.

Since then, speed reading has gained widespread recognition, partly due to some famous users of speed reading, such as President John F Kennedy. But in today’s world, speed reading is becoming more and more important; the benefits of mastering the skill in today’s hectic environment are probably ten times what they were 50 years ago. With the boom in demand for individuals with high education, people need to read more than they ever had to before.

Luckily, there’s no shortage of information for learning how to speed read. One popular site, for example, is called “Speed Reading Is Real.” New articles are posted almost every day, giving new tips and techniques for improving your reading speed without harming your comprehension. Click here to go to that site now: http://www.speedreadingisreal.com/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adam_Harley
http://EzineArticles.com/?Short-History-of-Speed-Reading&id=2153495

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!

It’s simply the natural step up from regular reading.


It is accepted knowledge that the average person reads at a rate of 250 words per minute. If you’re a top-notch speed reader, that speed will come to about 1000 words per minute. Yes, as high as that, Sometimes more. But just reading fast is not enough. The reader has to have good comprehension of what he or she reads. An average reader like you and me has a comprehension rate of about 50 to 60 percent, while an advanced reader will have something around 85 percent.

The advocates of speed reading have always commended it as a massive time saver. This is absolutely true, considering how much time people usually spend reading, and how much faster they’re able to get through the text they have to read… From a top executive to a high school student, speed reading can help immensely.

But there’s one thing they don’t usually point out: once you learn speed reading, you’ll want to read more.

You won’t spend any less time reading – you’ll read more and more and more, just because you’ll love it so much. You’ll go to the library and pick out 10 books you think look interesting, and you’ll sit at home and charge right through them.

Speed reading will completely change the way you think about non-fiction books. At a regular reading speed, they’ll seem boring and not worth your time. But when you learn how to speed read, they’ll be the best thing on earth. You’ll be amazed at how much you read. You’ll feel like there’s a whole world of information just waiting to be consumed – and indeed, that world is out there.

It’s up to you if you want to take advantage of it. The only thing that’s holding you back is your reading ability.

And you’re in luck, too, because it’s never been easier to learn speed reading. You can get yourself started now with the Speed Reading Manual – you’ll be speed reading within an hour.

The important thing to figure out here is your purpose for reading. Be it an article in a magazine or a book, you should always ask yourself the question “Why am I reading this?”

If you’re reading just to pass time, or if you’re reading something before you go to sleep, you probably don’t need to read quickly, as your main aim for reading is to feel relaxed. In a situation like this, you should take your time while reading. Why hurry? For many books, you’ll want to extend the experience for as long as you can!

On the other hand reading up on various topics for your school assignment, or a set of reports for work, you’re probably going to have to absorb what you read and keep in mind facts, figures and all the important points. This is where speed reading comes in handy. You need to maximize your reading speed and comprehension if you want to understand the material as best as possible.

Speed reading will especially be useful if you are in the middle of an exam where a lot of reading is involved. In situations like that, then speed reading is key! Whenever time is limited, that’s your hint to “turn on your speed reading.”

Therefore, identifying the purpose for reading is what is important. You should only speed read when the situation calls for it. More often than not, for most of us, speed reading will be called on more often than regular reading. But it’s important to pay attention to the situation. If you try to speed read just before going to bed, you either won’t be able to (because you won’t be alert enough), or it’ll completely wake you up, and make it difficult to fall asleep.

But the main point is this: don’t speed read everything. When you’re reading a really good novel, just take it slow. Enjoy every last second you spend reading it. Speed reading is for consuming information – so use the skill accordingly.

This is why speed is just as important as comprehension. This fact is being acknowledged all over the world. What most people believe is that “the slower you read, the better you’ll understand the text.” This is in fact false. The truth is, when you learn a proper speed reading technique, your comprehension will improve along with your reading speed.

An average person can read about 250 words per minute, while a speed reading expert can read about 1000 words in the same amount of time. But that’s not what’s really important. The important thing is the comprehension level of each reader. The average person will have about 50%-60% comprehension while an expert can knock it up to about 85%. This is a phenomenal increase in comprehension.

So the next time you find yourself reading through the same passage for the fourth time in a row, remember that there is something you can do about it. Simply learn to speed read.

Evelyn Wood was the one to coin the term “speed reading“, and she helped develop one of the earliest speed reading books, called “Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics”, published in 1959.

She spent 2 years touring around the world finding people who knew how to speed read, and she studied the tactics of all of them. She even managed to find some people who could read over 1500 words per minute – keep in mind that the average reading speed is 250 words per minute. Evelyn wood once wrote: “The purpose of reading is to get the information, feeling, and understanding the author is trying to convey.” If you’re able to grasp that from a text, then you’re taking in everything the author could ever want you to take in.

Although Evelyn Wood passed away in 1995, her speed reading program “Reading Dynamics” is still up and running. If I’m not mistaken, that program still teaches in a classroom-type environment. It might be difficult to schedule a lesson with them, but if you’re in the USA and you’ve got some free time, you might want to check it out!

There is also a program you can order online, but it’s preposterously expensive. There are different versions of it, but the cheapest one I found cost $199.95. (Not a good price!)

I really respect Evelyn Wood and what she’s done for the world. Her research gave a jumpstart to the credibility and to the popularity of speed reading all over the world. If it weren’t for her, this website might not exist!

So now you know some history on speed reading, and if anyone ever asks you who Evelyn Wood was, you’ll have the answer!