WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Grammar Minute: How to Speed Read

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

A common tip for speed reading is suppressing your internal narrator. Learn why this might work for you on today's episode of Grammar Minute!

Welcome to the Grammar Minute, where we're saving the English language 60 seconds at a time. I'm Lauren Smith, and recently I was asked for tips on speed reading. For the record, I can read about 1 to 200 pages an hour, which is about 1,000 words per minute, and I can still retain most of the information. The key to doing this, as best I can tell, is turning off your internal narrator. Many people hear a voice inside their head as they read, which limits them to reading internally at about the same speed as they would read out loud. And turning off that internal voice involves seeing words as shapes rather than sounds.

So basically you run your eyes across a sentence and determine from the contour of the letters the content of that sentence. Then you run it through a little process in your brain that summarizes the sentence and turns it into a picture or a single combined thought. Basically the key to speed reading is seeing a page as a picture and making a visual summary in your head as you go. That's your Grammar Minute. Visit thegrammer Minute.com for more tips and tricks. Thank you.