Table of content
Start of Chapter : Develop your fluency
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Develop your fluency
Now it's time to look at some ways to improve your fluency. These exercises and techniques take time to work; however, even with 10-15 minutes a day of practice you will start seeing differences within a week. These exercises help do two things:
- Improve your eye movements. Recall from the introduction that your eyes do not smoothly progress across each line of words. They make small jumps, or "fixations". Good readers' eyes jump about one inch between each fixation. Slower readers "fix" on each word (and parts of the word). The exercises below will help your eyes jump to the right place each time, and not remain too long on particular words. Note: It's not a matter of learning to make two or three fixations on each line. Some lines need more fixations because they have uncommon words on them, whereas others may have common words that need fewer fixations. Your eyes will learn to adjust with practice.
- Reduce subvocalization. You may recall from above I discussed vocalizing – or reading words aloud. Subvocalizing is pronouncing the words in your head. This is another limit that slows down reading; however, you will always subvocalize to a certain extent. Some speed reading references tell you to stop doing this, but they don't provide guidance on how! You can reduce subvocalization simply by doing the drills and exercise below. You don't give your brain enough time to vocalize each word, and it learns to adapt.
Next : Learn the Regulator Technique
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