1. Measure first, with questions
Without a starting number you can’t tell a real gain from a fast skim. Time a reading, then answer questions about it: your speed times the share you got right is your words understood per minute. Adults read non-fiction at about 238 words a minute (Brysbaert, 2019). Take the reading speed test.
2. Practise recognising words at a glance
Skilled readers get a word’s meaning straight from its spelling, and that route gets faster with practice and vocabulary (Share, 1995; Ehri, 2005). Practice works best near your limit: brief flashes that adapt so you get about 7 in 10 right, hard but not hopeless (Levitt, 1971).
3. Read at a steady pace, just above your own
A pacer, such as a guide moving through the text, stops drifting and habitual re-reading. It doesn’t make the eyes faster, and understanding falls when the pace runs far ahead of it (Rayner et al., 2016). Gulp’s training pace starts about 10% above your latest speed test, rises 5% after a reading you understood well (80% or more), and drops 10% when understanding falls under 60%.
4. Look back when you lose the thread
Going back over a sentence isn’t a flaw to train away. It’s how readers repair misunderstandings, and blocking it costs understanding (Schotter et al., 2014). Go back to the start of the sentence, then carry on.
5. Skim on purpose, not by accident
Skimming is a real skill with a known trade-off: moderate understanding, when deep understanding isn’t the goal (Rayner et al., 2016). Good skimmers read until a paragraph stops paying off, then move on, and keep more of what matters than readers going line by line at the same speed (Duggan & Payne, 2009). Decide before you start which kind of reading this is.
6. Predict your score, then check it
Readers are poor judges of their own understanding (Glenberg & Epstein, 1985; Dunlosky & Lipko, 2007). That’s what makes speed reading feel like it works. Guess how many questions you’ll get right before you answer: seeing the gap, again and again, is how the judgement improves.
7. Recall it later, and practise little and often
Recalling a text beats re-reading it for remembering it a week later, and spaced recalls help more (Roediger & Karpicke, 2006; Cepeda et al., 2006). Short daily sessions beat long rare ones (Cepeda et al., 2006), and a small routine at the same time each day is what turns practice into a habit (Lally et al., 2010).
What to skip
Trying to silence the voice in your head, eye and peripheral-vision exercises, and Bionic Reading: none has evidence behind it, and some cost understanding. Does speed reading work? goes through each one, and Subvocalization explains why the inner voice stays.
Sources
- Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047.
- Cepeda, N. J., Pashler, H., Vul, E., Wixted, J. T., & Rohrer, D. (2006). Distributed practice in verbal recall tasks: A review and quantitative synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(3), 354-380.
- Duggan, G. B., & Payne, S. J. (2009). Text skimming: The process and effectiveness of foraging through text under time pressure. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 15(3), 228-242.
- Dunlosky, J., & Lipko, A. R. (2007). Metacomprehension: A brief history and how to improve its accuracy. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 16(4), 228-232.
- Ehri, L. C. (2005). Learning to read words: Theory, findings, and issues. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9(2), 167-188.
- Glenberg, A. M., & Epstein, W. (1985). Calibration of comprehension. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11(4), 702-718.
- Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998-1009.
- Levitt, H. (1971). Transformed up-down methods in psychoacoustics. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 49, 467-477.
- Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help? Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4-34.
- Roediger, H. L., & Karpicke, J. D. (2006). Test-enhanced learning: Taking memory tests improves long-term retention. Psychological Science, 17(3), 249-255.
- Schotter, E. R., Tran, R., & Rayner, K. (2014). Don’t believe what you read (only once): Comprehension is supported by regressions during reading. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1218-1226.
- Share, D. L. (1995). Phonological recoding and self-teaching: Sine qua non of reading acquisition. Cognition, 55(2), 151-218.