Background

Recently, I’ve been getting into speed reading.

I used to dismiss this as mumbo jumbo until I realised that visualising words certain ways increased my reading speed from 200-300 wpm to over 500 wpm retaining comprehension.

I’m still experimenting with various patterns. My sister can read at around 1000 words a minute ever since she was a kid.

The idea behind speed reading is that certain factors reduce our reading speed that are not required to read properly. These include subvocalization (the voices in our heads pronouncing words as we read – you’re probably doing it now), backtracing (reading bits over and over), etc. All these slow us down.

A friend told me about this awesome application today, called Spreeder. This web app
trains you to increase your reading speed by displaying single words in
succession at a high rate. You can copy and paste text into it. It
does the rest.

Spreeder falls into the category of apps called “Rapid Serial Visual Representation” software. By having a steady input of text, we erase our dependency on backtracing, and by increasing our reading speed, subvocals can’t keep up.

How to use Spreeder

Copy and paste any huge block of text and spreeder will do the rest. It will flash
the words depending on the words per minute speed you set
it amongst other settings, allowing you to speed read big chunks of text.

With the general settings (1 word at a time) I found that I can process around 350-400 wpm.

Then I discovered some settings to tweak that’s brought my speed up to around 500 wpm.

Optimizing Spreeder Settings

Go to the advanced menu and activate the first
and third checkbox… That will increase comprehension A LOT…

Just let your eyes rest in the center and let the words flash into your brain, it will do the rest for you itself… :)

I manage to do around 500-600 with this. Not too bad with basically NO training whatsoever…

Final Comments

This is an excellent tool to learn how to read faster. I highly recommend it.

Check Spreeder out here.

Do post your comments on how fast you read and if you think this is a useful or useless tool to speed reading!

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