Where speed reading entails maximizing existing reading skills and picking up new techniques, it also includes avoiding certain habits. Shaking off these bad practices or “speed reading demons” is essential to increasing your reading speed.

So what are these bad habits? There are a number of factors that adversely affect your reading speed but none of them are as potent as two of the biggest speed reading obstacles: Subvocalization and Regression. Let’s take a look at what they are and how you can work on effectively reducing them.

SUBVOCALIZATION

The ‘subvocal’ is that tiny little voice in your head that reads out the words in front of you. It’s the ‘inner voice’ that most people don’t even realize the presence of. However now that you know what it is, try to look out for it. You will soon realize that you are in the (bad) habit of mouthing/vocalizing what you read. If you want to examine your subvocalizing right now, try the little test in the text box below. The popular “Ding Dong Bell” nursery rhyme was chosen for this test because it is well known and has rhythm- too qualities that bring out the “sing-a-long” in us the most.

If you are still adamant after reading that nursery rhyme that you don’t subvocalize, you aren’t being honest. Even excellent speed-readers are not able to avoid subvocalizing completely.

Why does subvocalization reduce reading speed?

Okay- so you DO tend to sound out what you read a little- doesn’t seem too terrible, does it? While it’s a nice feeling to roll words around in your mouth and hear what they sound like as you pronounce them, subvocalizing stops you from being a speed reader. There are a number of reasons for this:

How to resist subvocalizing?

So subvocalizing is inevitable and it deters from speed reading. What can you do to reduce it? The first step is to, of course, identify this habit and make a conscious effort towards stopping it. You can do this by opting for “visualizing” instead of “subvocalizing”. We subvocalize because English, as a language, was structured in a way that it is written on paper in a manner that almost invariably corresponds to the way it’s meant to be spoken. Even as kids in elementary school, we were all taught to string one letter to another and vocalize the sound they made together. Learning big words through subvocalizing (aided by their syllables) has long been a practice for English language learning.

While all of this was useful, and even essential, when we were kids (or learning the language), it does not help us in improving reading speeds when we are mature and have to deal with the immense information intake our professional lives entail. This is where “visualizing” comes in. ‘Visualizing’ basically means that you engage just your eyes when reading- and not your larynx, mouths and ears. Speed readers are visualizing effectively when they are absorbing meaning of what they read because they follow ideas when they read- not how the words sound.

Here is a simple example of comprehending through “meaning” and not “sound”: when a friend relates their experience of an interesting trip to an exotic place, you don’t focus on how they mouth or vocalize their words. Instead, you are able to take in their account as it is through the meanings, ideas and messages conveyed in it.
Here is a small exercise that you could learn from and apply to your reading:

Take the word ‘honest’.

It’s just one word and you probably didn’t subvocalize- meaning you did not read its syllables, ‘hon’ and ‘est’ to yourself before understanding what it meant. You just looked at it and you understood its meaning.

Now take this sentence: “He is an honest man”.

If you subvocalize, you probably read the above sentence word by word: He— is— an— honest — man.
Now what you have to do is to work yourself up to the level where you can just look at that complete sentence and comprehend its meaning like you comprehended that single word. Essentially, you are eliminating the interim phase of sounding out the words and just applying your elementary visual reading skills to bigger targets.

Visualizing is not only the solution to subvocalizing, it is also the basis for the popular speed reading technique “clumping” which you will read about later. There, you are able to look at a large number of words and instantly interpret their meaning. You will also read more about vision expansion, in the next lesson, which assists visualizing.

If you are a subvocalizer who has difficulty in making your lips stop moving and mouthing the words you read, try engaging them in something else: for instance, you could place a pencil between your lips when you read. Or you could just chew gum. This will be awkward at the beginning but will surely make you desist from subvocalizing eventually. And remember, the best way to stop subvocalizing is to make a conscious effort to read without it. So practice regularly.

REGRESSION

Regression is the term used by educators for ‘rereading’. When we read quickly, we rush past words, phrases and sentences. And when we are reading the next blocks of text, we tend to get confused by what we’ve just read before them (usually because of unfamiliar words, technical jargon or bad writing on the author’s part). However, the reason for moving our eyes backwards to reread can also be our lack of confidence in our reading abilities.

The solution lies in making ourselves believe that we really did read it right the first time and there’s no need to reread (which reduces your reading speed). If you find yourself unable to resist the ‘Regression’ temptation, try this little trick: Cut out a piece of paper that is as thick as the line size in your reading material. As you read, move the paper in synchronization to cover the line you have just read. This will stop you from rereading incessantly because you know you won’t be able to see the previous line. The lesson on meta-guiding will teach you more on using a ‘placer’ to improve focus and comprehension.