Speed reading is seeing

First and foremost, speed reading is seeing; the first step in read-

ing anything is seeing the words. But how do you see words on the

page when you read?

Prior to 1920 or so, researchers and educators believed that

people read one word at a time. To read, they thought, you moved

your eyes left to right across the page, taking in one word after the

other. Under this theory, fast readers were people who could iden-

tify and recognize the words faster.

However, all but beginning readers have the ability to see and read

more than one word at a time. As you move your eyes left to right

across the page, you jump ahead in fits and starts, taking in any-

where between one and five words at a time in quick glances.

These quick glances, when your eyes stop moving at different

points in a sentence as you read it, are called eye fixations. I get

into more detail on how eye fixations work in Chapter 3, but for

now, the important points to know about speed reading are

 ✓ You read several words in a single glance. Unless you’re

encountering words you don’t know or haven’t read before,

you don’t read words one at a time.

 ✓ You expand your vision so that you can read and understand

many words in a single glance. A very good speed reader can

read, see, and process 10 to 14 words in a single eye fixation.

 ✓ You expand your vision to read vertically as well as horizon-

tally on the page. As well as taking in more than one word on a

line of text, speed readers can also, in a single glance, read and

understand words on two or three different lines. Check out

Chapter 6 for more on expanding your reading vision, and head

to Chapter 15 for some exercises that help you do just that.