The Importance of Reading Skills

According to one credible international survey, it is said that the world’s top 500 most powerful professionals have one thing common; their reading speed is more than 500 words per minute. Proof that reading is an essential skill in this present day and age. Your reading skill is a very critical factor responsible for increasing your ability to learn and master large volumes of information. Thus, your ability to read fast gives you an edge over others by making it possible for you to go through piles of papers quickly.

The most important factor about fast reading is that you should be clear in your objective. You should have knowledge on what information you are looking for in text, books or documents before you start reading them.

Let us consider the following situation:

Example:

If you want only an outline of the total issue discussed in a text then you need to skim the document and only extract the essential facts out of it. If you want to get the detail in your mind then you read it slowly enough to catch the meaning by going through the important part and leaving out irrelevant details.

What is the reading ability of a common man?

The reading ability of a common man is not more than 130 words per minute. This is because most of us read word by word and silently pronounce these words. This is called sub-vocalization. But if you want to increase up your reading ability you will have to give up this habit of sub-vocalization.

First of all you should stop reading word by word and then pronouncing them silently. To enhance your reading skills, you should look at groups of words instead of reading word by word. Then try to take out meaning from it. It's not easy at first, but if you continue to practice you will master this art quickly. Then, you will be capable of reading a block of words instead of individual words and if the meaning of any previous block is not clear go back to the previous block.

However, skilled readers become habitual at reading many words in a block and repeating blocks seldom occurs with skilled readers. Skilled readers also require only a fraction of second to go through a block.

Thus main guidelines to improve your reading skills are:

1. You should concentrate on a block of words rather than any single word and then try to cover several words in each block.
2. You should minimize the time spent on each block. 
3. You should reduce frequency of moving your eyes backwards to cover the previous block.