Do You Vocalize Words in your Mind as you Read?

Or sometimes, when you’re reading a book, can you hear your voice as if you’re like the narrator of the story? If not, then good for you that you don’t have to undergo a process of eliminating the voice within the inner you that silently pronounces the words you’re reading.

But for those who habitually talk or pronounces words as they read, how is it really not to vocalize?
When you're learning to read, you try to tell yourself to cut out subvocalization to improve your reading speeds, but that's wrong. Subvocalization actually improves your reading speed as most people can speak faster than they can read. Only, when you speed-read you should just subvocalize the necessary words and take the rest as given.

Isn’t it that when you are reading something that you’ve already read before, or have been reading very often, so that you already know what it says, you just see the words and know what they say, instead of hearing them?

Eliminate the Habit of Pronouncing Words as you Speed Read

One key to reading at a much faster rate is learning not to mouth the words while trying to read. It is important to develop the habit of seeing the words but not reading them to yourself. The rate in which you speak is a lot slower than the rate in which you are capable of reading. Try to see the words instead of mouthing each individual word.

Instead of seeing a book during reading, your brain hears a voice that pronounces the word sounds printed on the page. Quite simply, you don't see a book - you hear it. This is what happens to most of us when reading; but it shouldn’t be the case. Vision is faster and more powerful than hearing. By becoming a more visual reader you will instantly increase your reading speed. Let's begin this process together.

Eliminate the habit of pronouncing words as you read. If you sound out words in your throat or whisper them, you can read slightly only as fast as you can read aloud. You should be able to read most materials at least two or three times faster silently than orally. If you are aware of sounding or "hearing" words as you read, try to concentrate on key words and meaningful ideas as you force yourself to read faster.

The eyes move across the written page in a series of quick jumps, or what we have defined earlier as fixation. By speeding up the eye movements, the eyes make fewer fixations and take in more words per fixation. This helps break the habit of subvocalization, since your eyes will be moving faster than you can possibly subvocalize.

Stop Talking to Yourself when you Speed Read

Don't read aloud to yourself. Generally, reading aloud to yourself does not help you study more effectively. If you move your lips while you read, you're not reading efficiently. If you read aloud or move your lips while you're reading, you are reading slowly, so stop moving your lips. Try putting a finger over your lips. Your finger will remind you not to move your lips. Make an effort to read faster and retain more - after a while, you'll be surprised how little effort it will take.

Getting back to reading and how we learn, one of the biggest reasons why we learned to read incredibly slowly in the first place is that as a child in school, we learned to read by sounding out the words. When you pronounce the words you have to read with your tongue. And you know our tongue can only pronounce about 200 to 400 words a minute. According to the 'latest' research, our memory is not stored in our tongue.
People talk to themselves in 2 ways, by:

• Vocalizing, which is the actual moving of your lips as you read,
• Subvocalizing, which is talking to yourself in your head as you silently read.

Both of these will slow you down to the point in which you find that you can't read any faster than you can speak. Speech is a relatively slow activity; for most, the average speed is about 250 wpm.

Next Page Reading Tip - Chunk Four Words and Use Pen and Finger