5 Practical Tips to Improve Your Reading Speed Today

Want to read faster but not sure where to begin? Plenty of people know speed reading exists, then feel buried under the techniques before they've even started. Here are five practical tips, each grounded in research, that you can put to work today.

1. Find Your Baseline and Start Just Above It

Before you can improve, you need to know where you're starting from. Most adults read somewhere between 200 and 250 words per minute. Here's how to find your baseline:

Choose a passage of about 500 words on a familiar topic
Time yourself reading it normally
Divide the word count by your time in minutes

Once you have that number, set your RSVP speed about 25-50 words per minute above it. This "stretch" speed should feel slightly challenging, but not so fast that you lose the thread. For most beginners, 300 WPM is a good place to start. You can try it right now at speedread.life, which lets you adjust speed in real-time.

Why this works: Starting too fast just breeds frustration and poor comprehension. Starting too slow gives your brain no reason to adapt. A slight stretch nudges it to keep up without overwhelming it.

2. Practice Reducing Subvocalization

Subvocalization is the habit of "hearing" words in your head as you read, and it's the single biggest thing holding most people back. Your inner voice can only speak at about 150-250 words per minute, so as long as you're sounding words out internally, that's your ceiling. To go faster, you have to loosen the link between reading and internal speech.

A few techniques help:

Hum or count while reading: This sounds strange, but humming a single note or counting "1, 2, 3" on a loop ties up your vocal processing and makes subvocalization hard to keep going. It feels awkward at first. It also works.

Use background music: Instrumental music works well here (classical or lo-fi beats). It occupies the part of your brain that wants to sound words out, and without lyrics, it won't pull your attention away from the page.

Read faster than you can speak: Push your speed past talking pace and subvocalization becomes physically impossible to maintain. RSVP apps are ideal for this, since they set the pace for you.

Important note: You probably won't kill subvocalization off completely, and that's fine. Even a partial reduction can give your speed a real lift. The aim is just to lean on it less.

3. Practice Chunking (Reading Word Groups)

Instead of reading word-by-word, train yourself to take in groups of words at once. This widens your visual span and cuts down the number of times your eyes have to stop and fixate.

How to start chunking:

Week 1-2: Focus on reading two words together as a single unit
Week 3-4: Expand to three words at a time
Week 5+: Work toward four or five word chunks

A practical exercise:

Take a passage of text
Use a pen or your finger to mark off word groups
Practice reading each group as a single unit
Spend 10-15 minutes daily on this exercise

Most readers settle into comfortable three-word chunks within 4-6 weeks of daily practice. Getting fluent with dynamic 3-5 word chunks tends to take longer, closer to 8-12 weeks.

Pro tip: Start with simple, familiar content. Once the skill runs on autopilot, you can point it at tougher material.

4. Use a Pointer or Pacer

This technique goes all the way back to Evelyn Wood's original speed reading courses, and it still holds up. Using your finger, a pen, or your cursor to guide your eyes does a few things at once:

Maintains focus: Your eyes naturally follow movement
Sets pace: Moving the pointer faster encourages faster reading
Reduces regression: Following a pointer makes it harder to unconsciously re-read
Increases engagement: The physical involvement keeps you present in the reading

How to use a pointer effectively:

Start by running your finger under each line as you read
Gradually increase the speed of your finger movement
Experiment with moving diagonally across paragraphs instead of line-by-line
With RSVP apps, the technology handles this for you by controlling word presentation

Research suggests a pointer helps beginners improve faster than trying to overhaul their eye movements directly, which is a much harder thing to control on purpose.

5. Build Consistency Over Intensity

The biggest mistake beginners make is a marathon practice session followed by weeks of nothing. Your brain adapts to faster reading through regular, moderate practice. The occasional binge doesn't stick, and worse, it usually leaves you sore-eyed enough to skip the next week.

The ideal practice schedule:

Duration: 15-20 minutes per session
Frequency: Daily, or at least 5 days per week
Progression: Increase speed by 25 WPM every few days as comfort grows
Variety: Mix your practice content (news, articles, book excerpts)

Why short sessions work better:

Your eyes and brain fatigue during speed reading practice
Short sessions keep your focus sharp the whole way through
Daily repetition builds stronger neural pathways than the occasional long haul
You're far more likely to stick with a habit that doesn't feel like a chore

Track your progress: Keep a simple log of your practice dates, speeds, and how each session felt. Watching the numbers climb over a few weeks is motivating, and it helps you judge when to push the pace.

Putting It All Together

Here's a practical first-week plan for a beginner using SpeedRead:

Days 1-3:

Find your baseline reading speed
Start RSVP practice at 300 WPM (or 50 above your baseline)
Practice for 15 minutes with familiar content
Focus on comprehension, not speed

Days 4-7:

If you're comfortable at your current speed, bump it up 25 WPM
Begin chunking exercises for 5 minutes before RSVP practice
Try the humming technique during some sessions

Week 2 onward:

Continue daily practice
Increase speed as each level starts to feel easy
Experiment with different content types
Notice which techniques work best for you

Common Beginner Challenges

"I can't understand anything at faster speeds." Slow down. Speed without comprehension is pointless. Build the speed back up gradually as your understanding catches up.

"My eyes hurt after practice." Shorten your sessions and take breaks. Check your lighting and screen distance too. For most people this discomfort fades as their eyes adapt.

"I keep forgetting to practice." Attach it to something you already do: right after your morning coffee, during lunch, or before bed. Consistent timing is what turns it into a habit.

"I don't see improvement." First, make sure you're actually testing comprehension and not just clocking speed. And remember that progress here often arrives in jumps rather than a smooth climb, so a flat stretch doesn't mean it's not working.

The Path Forward

Speed reading is a skill, and like any skill, it rewards steady, deliberate practice. You won't become a different reader overnight. But put in consistent effort with these techniques and you'll likely notice real improvement within a few weeks.

So start today. Find your baseline, head to speedread.life, set it to 300 WPM, paste in an article, and read for 15 minutes. Then do it again tomorrow.

The only bad practice session is the one you skip.

Sources

Stop Subvocalization - Speed Reading Lounge - Techniques for reducing subvocalization
Tips to Minimize Subvocalization - Iris Reading - Comprehensive guide to overcoming inner speech