Stop Reading This -- One Word at a Time

It is a common habit to vocalize while reading, even if only internally. This practice will prevent you from reading any faster than you can say the words. But vocalizing isn’t really just a habit. It does serve a purpose.  It actually does help you understand what you read.  That's why it's so hard to stop.  Sentences are usually made of multiple phrases. Each phrase is an idea, or separate thought. When you hear a sentence spoken, there are sound clues that indicate where these phrases are. You may not be aware of it because it's as subconscious as walking.

Listen carefully - to the first word - of each phrase.

The first word is usually spoken in a slightly lower tone.  This tells the listener that this is the beginning of a new thought or "phrase."  This lower tone tells the listener that a new part of the sentence is coming. But these audio clues are not available in written text, so we have a tendency to sound out the words to listen for them ourselves to better understand the whole sentence.  The solution is to read whole phrases at a time.  If you could read and grasp a phrase in a single glance, you would no more need to say each word in the phrase than you would need to say each letter in a word.

To practice reading by phrases, there is a free web app which will automatically divide any text into its 'natural' phrases, and then present those phrases sequentially.  It's at www.readspeeder.com.  Try reading with this app and see if you no longer feel like vocalizing.  You will grasp the meaning of each phrase at a glance.  This will make it easier to understand what you read.

Faster understanding will lead to faster reading. In fact, this process is really the opposite of most attempts to learn to read faster. The usual advice is to push your reading speed, with the hope that with practice, the comprehension will catch up.  With ReadSpeeder, you understand faster to begin with.  When you learn to read by phrases, you will no longer  be restricted to reading at the speed of speech. You will be reading at the speed of thought.