One of the major factors in slowing your reading speed down is that your eye is going to do something called, ‘Visual Regression’. This means that when you read a sentence your eye will go back and read words that you have already read. Your mind/eye does this very fast that you are not fully aware of it but it still dramatically slows down your reading speed.
For example, if you were reading the sentence, ‘The boy ran with the dog.’ It wouldn’t read it straight through. Instead your mind would read:
The
The boy
The boy ran
The boy ran with
The boy ran with the
The boy ran with the dog.
So in this scenario you read the word, ‘the’ six times! In order to prevent this visual regression we can use our hand to force our eye along the page.
Try this the next time that you read. Place your hand under the words and move your hand along the page. When you do your eye will follow your finger and since your hand is not moving backwards to look at words a second time you will find that there is no regression and your reading speed is going to dramatically increase!
This lesson was excerpted from my speed reading program. For more information on this program click here