Speed reading is silent reading

When you read, do you sometimes hear a faint whispering in your

ear that belongs not to you, but to another person? Don’t fret,

because you aren’t alone. Most people hear words when they read.

The words speak to them from the page.

When you read, you speak words to yourself because you learned

to read with the sound-it-out method. In school, your teacher told

you that each letter makes a sound (sometimes more than one

sound), that certain letter combinations also make sounds, and

that you can always read a word by sounding out the letters and

letter combinations:

su-per-cal-i-frag-il-ist-ic-ex-pi-al-i-do-cious

Your teacher was absolutely right. Being able to sound out words

is an essential skill for beginning readers. Knowing the sounds

each letter makes and knowing what sounds letter combinations

make enables you to pronounce and read any word you encounter

in your reading.

The problem with the sound-it-out approach to reading is that it

slows you down. You read not at the speed you think but rather

at the speed you talk. Sounding it out is fine for beginning readers,

but at some point you have to dispense with sound if you want

to be a speed reader. Saying the words, even if you only whisper

them inside the confines of your skull, takes time.

In speed-reading terminology, saying and hearing words as you

read them is called vocalizing (Chapter 2 gives you the lowdown

on vocalizing and how to stop it). For now you need to remember

that

 ✓ Vocalizing is a throwback to your early reading education;

you must abandon it to be a speed reader.

 ✓ Training yourself not to vocalize when you read is one of the

most important speed-reading skills you can acquire.