Speedreading and Related Skills

Jon Roland

1998 Jan 13



Speedreading is well-known as a highly useful skill. Many books have been 

written about it, but the basic training methods can be summarized in a 

short article. It should also be taught together with related skills that 

might be called speedlearning and speedspelling.



Speedreading is not to be learned until the person has achieved a good 

foundation of reading at ordinary speeds, which are typically about 200 

words per minute (wpm). For this purpose methods like phonics are useful, 

but this article will not discuss those methods.



The two basic things that you must do to learn to speedread are to measure 

your speed and to keep pushing that speed higher and higher. How high? The 

best rates, for materials like newspaper articles, are around 20,000 wpm, 

and that may be about the highest the human optical system can handle.



First, however, it is important to realize that speedreading is done 

differently for different kinds of materials, and there are different 

objectives for different materials that involve different methods. You 

should not try to read poetry at high speeds, as the sounds of the words are 

part of the poetic experience. There are other kinds of reading skills, such 

as proofreading, where one is just looking for errors, that are done 

differently, and can be done at higher speeds, than one would normally use 

in reading for content. One may also choose to read prose or educational 

material at higher rates than fiction. There is a natural rate appropriate 

to each kind of reading matter and to the purposes of the reader.



And this leads us to speedspelling. It is important to develop this skill 

first, before going on to speedreading as such. The best way to develop this 

skill is to have the subject practice spelling a word or arbitrary string of 

characters after seeing it for a brief period of, or time, one after 

another. One can use flashcards, but a better way is to use a computer, 

running a program that flashes random words or strings of characters on the 

screen at random positions on the screen. One begins with shorter words or 

strings, and leaving them on the screen for longer periods of time, then 

progressively lengthening the words or strings and shortening the time they 

are displayed. The computer program tests the subject on the accuracy of the 

response, and automatically moves on to longer strings and shorter display 

times, or backs up to shorter strings and longer display times if the 

subject makes errors.



This skill can, of course, be practiced without a computer, by just reading 

a passage, then be shown a word in the passage that has been misspelled, and 

be asked to correct the misspelling. The objective is to learn how to spell 

any word after seeing it only once, and that means learning to quickly see 

all the characters in a word.



Now the above method only puts the word or string in short-term memory, so 

it must be followed by moving the information into long-term memory. The 

best way to do this is to show the same words at progressively later times, 

with one or two-character errors in them, and asking the subject to make the 

correction. The eventual result for the subject is the ability to recognize 

that a misspelled word "doesn't look right", then guess at possible correct 

spellings until the one that "looks right" is the correct spelling of the 

word.



Speedspelling means learning to read words by looking at the center of the 

word and taking it in with a single glance. Speedreading is moving on to 

taking in more than one word with a single glance.



The best single tool for learning to speedread is a 4x6 card with a slot cut 

in it about the length of a column of the print you want to practice on. 

Place your first (index) and last finger on opposite ends of the card, 

position the slot over a line of print, then angle the slot so that as you 

move the slot down to the next line, the beginning of the next line begins 

to appear as the end of the previous line disappears. Now practice sliding 

the card and its slot down the column of print at a steady pace, forcing 

yourself to maintain the pace and not get stuck on a point in the text or 

have to go back.



Now learn to quickly count the average number of words in a line and the 

number of lines in a column, and time the pace of your movement of the card, 

so that you get a measure of your reading rate.



As you proceed, start by moving your eye from the center of one word to the 

center of the next, then move on to taking in groups of two, three or more 

words, and finally, to taking in an entire line at a time, by just glancing 

at the center of the line.



The next stage is to widen the slot in the card, and learn to take in two, 

three, or more lines in a single glance.



Before going on to speedlearning, it is useful to mention speed 

memorization, another useful skill, similar to speedspelling. Practice 

reciting lines, sentences, and finally entire paragraphs, word for word, 

after reading them once. Practice memorizing entire one-page poems, allowing 

yourself only four minutes, then reciting them with no errors. After getting 

good with poems, especially those with a regular rhyme and meter, move on to 

fiction and prose writing. Memorize entire documents, such as the 

Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and others that are useful 

to keep in memory, and periodically recite them without errors to keep them 

in long-term memory.



Now for speedlearning. It is a large subject that a short article cannot 

cover completely, but a few highlights can be mentioned. It is often 

discussed in terms like those of Mortimer Adler's book, How to Read a Book, 

in which he presents his method of reading prose material in three passes, 

the first for structure, the second for content, and the third for 

evaluation. His idea is to first quickly discern an outline of the parts of 

the work, then the key propositions it makes, and finally determining how 

well its propositions follow logically from the premises and the evidence 

presented. Adler emphasizes the need to develop the art of suspending 

judgement on the content before completing the analysis of it.



Another method often taught is the SQ3R method, where SQ3R stands for 

Survey, Question, Read, Recite, Review. It is a method of reading the kinds 

of textbook or reading materials one typically gets in schools. The first 

step, as with Adler, is to get an overview of the work or section of the 

work to be studied during that session, then ask questions about it, then 

read it looking for the answers to those questions, then restate the key 

points of the work in one's own words, and finally go back a few days or 

weeks later and repeating the first four steps quickly. Speedreading is 

particularly useful for that final review stage.



The key to speedlearning is that second stage, questioning. There is a real 

art to asking the right questions of any material, and there is no quick way 

to teach or learn it. You start by asking as many questions about it as you 

can think of, and over a period of time learn how to ask the most important 

questions first, and many questions quickly.



It is important, however, not to make the mistake of not moving on to the 

next material until you have mastered the previous material, a common 

mistake made in public school teaching, and even taught to teachers as a 

pedagogic doctrine. People don't learn that way. No one ever fully masters 

anything, in the sense of answering all the questions he might ask about it. 

Nor should one expect to be able to answer all one's questions in the work 

currently being read. One should not hesitate to tackle advanced material 

that one is not fully prepared to understand, or know the meanings of all 

the words or symbols. Just try to get out of it what you can, answering such 

questions as you can, and move on, leaving the answers to the unanswered 

questions to later. What one then moves on to are materials that might have 

answers to some of those unanswered questions, and, of course, lead one to 

ask more questions. Later, one should go back to the material one did not 

fully understand and try to answer some more questions about it, doing this 

repeatedly until you have answered most of the questions and can repeat the 

author's line of reasoning without looking at the material.



The best way to practice recitation is to practice teaching the material to 

someone else, or at least mentally rehearsing how you might do that. Few 

things do more to help you learn material than having to teach it to someone 

else, especially one who may not be as talented as you are. It is a 

particularly useful method of teaching youngsters to have more advanced ones 

teach less advanced ones. This is the method of the old one-room 

schoolhouses of an earlier era, and there is evidence that it produced 

better-educated persons than modern schools in which students are grouped by 

age and taught by the lecture method.



No discussion of reading or learning would be complete without some 

discussion of writing. In one sense, it is an extension of recitation, but 

more than that, it is getting the student to answer his own questions and 

present the answers in his own work, organized in a way that suits him and 

is likely to suit others.



Of course, there are different kinds of writing, just as there are different 

kinds of reading material. One should practice writing all of the various 

kinds. Each involves different skills, and employs somewhat different 

methods of learning.



Students are often taught the outline method, first producing an outline, 

then filling in the details. This can be useful at a later stage, but it can 

also stifle creativity. In this age of computer word processors, there is a 

better way, and that is to dash out all the things you can think of to say, 

without being too critical of how you do it, then go back, organize the 

points in outline order, rework the wording, and stitch the parts together 

into a whole that has brevity, clarity, and emphasis, as Strunk and White 

would say in their book, Elements of Style. It is also useful to have a 

standard style reference handy, such as the Chicago Manual of Style.



For writing there is no substitute for lots of practice. People used to do 

that by writing letters. Now we write email. It is important to always write 

everything to the highest standards of spelling, grammar, and style. Revise, 

revise, and revise again until you get it right, and you will eventually 

find yourself getting it right the first time, and becoming able to go with 

your first drafts of things, with perhaps only minor revisions. That is the 

key to productivity in writing.



In writing it is useful to get the reactions of others to it. Few people are 

able to look at their own writing product objectively, so this is a phase of 

learning in which it is useful to have editors and critics. Writing 

workshops are useful for this, and the Internet can function as a kind of 

giant writing workshop.



In writing one of the key questions one must constantly ask, and try to 

answer, is "What are all the ways what I am saying might be misunderstood?" 

You understand what you are trying to say, but your reader doesn't, so 

writing is akin to teaching. Different audiences require different writing, 

and it is useful to practice writing for a variety of different kinds of 

audiences, from elementary to advanced, and having quite different cultures 

and backgrounds. 



A final word is on handwriting and typing. In today's world everyone needs 

to learn how to type, and the earlier the better. There is no secret to it. 

Just learn which fingers to use for each key, then practice hitting the 

right key without looking at the keyboard, until you become accurate, and 

then practice doing it faster and faster, without losing accuracy. But don't 

neglect handwriting. One of the best ways to reinforce the skills discussed 

above is to recite by writing out the word or answer by hand, and it helps 

move material from short to long term memory. Make sure your writing is at 

least legible. It is too much to expect fine penmanship in today's world, 

but it is a good idea to practice it before allowing it to deteriorate, and 

it is also useful to practice the careful printing done on mechanical 

drawings. This kind of practice is important for developing fine motor 

skills that are useful for other things.