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[AllThingsLive]

I have a ton of books to read, books on art, books on programming languages, books for English, books for Chemistry, and even books on Spanish! My high school loves to assign books, and I like to read books, but I'm slow as hell. I spend a lot of time daily, just reading, but I spend a few minutes per page reading. So, if I could just learn to speed read then I think I could clear up an hour of time each day that I spent reading.
Now here comes the tricky part; how do I speed read?
I've read and heard a lot about it, that you aren't supposed to subvocalize and that you're supposed to "look" at the words, not reproduce them in your head, stuff like that, but what's missing in most of these books are exercises that cause you to do these things. So, do any speed readers out there have exercises I can do that will make me read faster? I have plenty of time to do these exercises, so I think learning to speed read shouldn't be too hard, as long as I know how to learn it.
Thanks in advance for any help you may provide.

[alway]

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4229

Here's the problem with that. You can't read without subvocalization. Carver and Rayner have both found that even the fastest readers all subvocalize. Even skimmers subvocalize key words. This is detectable, even among speed readers who think they don't do it, by the placement of electromagnetic sensors on the throat which pick up the faint nerve impulses sent to the muscles.

Summary of the link, you really can't speed-read without losing information unless you happen to have a very unusual sort of neurological oddity.

[Stargrasper]

Didn't read alway's link.

The skill pretty much is dependent on your ability to glance over a sentence and pick out the key words.  You're going to lose a fair bit of meaning, though.

Personally, I don't attempt to speed read anything I might be examined about later.  Unless I've already read it normally and am speed reading to refresh.

If you speed read too quickly, you'll may have to read the clause multiple times to get a usable meaning.  How many times do you have to re-read it before it's faster to read slowly?  Practice makes perfect, though.  You'll always lose meaning when speed reading, but you can learn to lose less.

For practice, speed read something and then paraphrase it.  Normal read it after that and paraphrase it.  Did you find the same meaning both times?

[optimumtact]

The relevant parts of the text

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In fact, scientists have a term for reading in this way. They call it rauding, a combination of the words read and audio. To truly comprehend what your brain is seeing, nearly all of us must raud the words, fastest speed readers included. Fast readers need not be fast speakers; they simply have what's called a larger "recognition vocabulary". Rauding an unfamiliar word is subvocalized more slowly than a word already stored in our recognition vocabulary. We've learned that your recognition vocabulary, and thus your reading speed, can actually be improved; but the real technique is the opposite of what's taught in speed reading courses. Focus instead on reading comprehension. This will improve your recognition vocabulary, and you will probably begin to read faster.

In short the easiest way to get faster at reading is to simply read a lot, I've been reading since a young age (had no TV till about age 15) and I have a reasonably quick reading speed, alongside a vastly greater vocabulary.

[Max White]

I watched a lot of subbed anime. Sometimes you gotta read fast as hell to keep up and still keep your eyes on what is going on. Now I can read very quickly and don't miss much.

[Funk]

the text can have a massive change on the speed of reading, some text is a lot denser.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Read, and read, and read. Don't think about it, think about what you are reading. Eventually you will fall into a reading trance and the rest of the world will cease to exist, allowing you to quickly read the book uninterrupted by your own mind.

[Vector]

Yeah, just read.

I read at a rate of about 10< pages per hour, much of the time, often at a rate of 1 page per hour.  There's no shame in reading slowly.  Just read.

[Max White]

I read at a rate of about 10< pages per hour, much of the time, often at a rate of 1 page per hour.  There's no shame in reading slowly.  Just read.

...
 
I don't know how you can read that slowly. Not that it is bad, but I just can not comprehend spending an hour on a single page. The only time when I have done that is when reading dense textbooks and had to sit down with a pencil and paper, or check something on the internet, or some other auxiliary work, but never one page an hour.

[Vector]

I used to read (novels) at the rate of 100-150 pages/hour without skimming, but then I started thinking about what I read, fairly extensively.

I am a very slow thinker.

Usually, I say "Do I know all the words?" and then "what is being said, here?" and then I say "and how is it being said?" and I ask "what are the references?  What are the metaphors?  Why these references?  Why these metaphors?  What are the literary devices being employed, and why?" and I ask "are they right?" and I say "where are the holes, and why would this person in particular commit these errors?" and then I say "and what is the next question to ask?" and "is there any way I am committing any errors in my own judgment?" and "how does this fit with other texts I have read in the period?" and "are there any interesting interactions with other texts I know?"

The right page can certainly take many hours to be fully absorbed.  That's one of the hallmarks of good writing.

[Max White]

Thank god I don't have that going through my head every time I read a book. As a programmer, every time I use a computer and notice small things done badly that nobody else sees it drives me insane, so I think having to go through that kind of process while reading would turn me off the fine sport.

[Vector]

See, mathematics and rhetoric both require such extraordinarily fine nitpicks and tweaking of language that this result was effectively inevitable.

[ChairmanPoo]

I was suddenly reminded of the short story "The Billiard Ball"

[Yoink]

I'm a speed reader, I'm not really sure how it works, though.
I sometimes have to actively slow down, to make $20- $30 books last more than a couple of days.

[lordcooper]

Just...read faster?  At what point is someone actually 'speed reading'?