Chunking and Peripheral vision - Speed Reading

Our eyes cannot focus in a continuous linear motion reading each letter of the text; they read a text in blocks of letters i.e. words. It is like the focus of old video cameras, if you mount them on a moving vehicle, they cannot focus well. While reading we focus on the first word, then second word and so on. But our eyes can focus well on an area bigger than a usual word. We can focus on 2-3 words at a time and this fact alone gives us a way to triple or quadruple our reading speed. So you should read in chunks of 2 or 3 words. Initially start with 2 words chunks and gradually move to 3 words chunks. Reading in chunks larger than 3 words can reduce your comprehension of the text. So you should aim for 3 words chunks. Also, we can increase our reading speed by not focusing on first and last 3 words in each line. Start reading each line by focusing on the fourth word from starting of a line and then read in chunks of 3 words until you reach the fourth word from the end of that line. Focus on that word and move to the fourth word from the starting of next line. Repeat this process for the whole text.

You can learn reading texts in the way described in the previous paragraph gradually. First practice reading texts by skipping only the first and last words of each line. Don’t worry about comprehension now; your peripheral vision can register these skipped words in your short-term memory easily. After you feel comfortable with skipping one word, start skipping first and last 2 words in each line. Practice skipping first and last two words in at least 50 pages of a book. Only after you have done practice on 50 pages, start skipping first and last three words in each line. In this, way you can achieve 3 words skip reading without frustration.