A question often asked is why people would want to read faster? Without wishing to be flippant,
answer to this question is essentially two-fold:(a) because they want to; and
(b) because they need to.
Below we will examine some of reasons why someone may want to read faster and, more pertinently, why they may need to read faster. To conclude, we'll also look at some of practices that can be adopted so that you can actually read faster.
(a) Why you would want to read faster
When we are children, adults try to relay to us that reading is a pleasure that we should take care and time over. We might also be told that in order to fully understand what we are reading, we need to take time over written word - save we may misconstrue what author intended. When we reach adolescence, however, we find we're in for a rude awakening!
Reading is for educational purposes: and if we want to improve our minds, we had better be prepared to do a lot of it!
The need to read lots of information and data is probably biggest reason why we want to have skills to read faster. There are simply not enough hours in a day for us to have luxury of reading everything at a leisurely pace; we must push frontiers of our reading speed and ever increase this as we get older. To do otherwise means that we have to spend copious amounts of time reading text that could have been utilized in ways (possibly) more enjoyable than reading - such as spending time with family, or watching television.
(b) Why people need to read faster
The reason why people need to read faster is actually tied-up with reason why people want to read faster - sheer amount of information that we need to read these days.
Although sales of novels have fallen year-on-year for over a generation now, various different mediums we have for reading have increased. Indeed, Internet alone provides us with a reading medium that we would unlikely be able to complete even if we spend rest of our life trying to do it!
Moreover, today, more and more of us are required to read very in-depth, complex, reports as part of our day-to-day work: for which we simply do not have luxury of a couple of days. Work related reading material generally means having to turnaround reading time as quickly as possible. It is usually for this reason that those of us who have not undertaken a speed reading course by time we enter workforce rush out shortly thereafter to do so.
(c) Methods of reading faster
If you find that you are one of those people who would like to be able to read faster, following are some useful tips that you can adopt in your pursuit of speed reading:
(i) Preparation
A large part of being able to read faster lies on your preparation. Here, before you start to read that thick business report, give it once over (i.e., skim read it), see how long report is, try to grasp main points being conveyed in report - you can usually do this by looking at headings, subheadings and index - then take a deep breath and plunge into your speed reading mode. When you adopt some of other methods listed below, you'll usually find that knowing a little of what to expect next will greatly enhance your ability to read faster.
