This has frustrated my efforts to read for years. I learned to read at an insanely young age. By the time I was two I was halfway through the Hrdy Boys books and blasting my way through comics. Mom did a hell of a job with us and she was told by my Catholic school princpal to to put me into third grade when I was five. Instead, fearing that it would do a job on me socially, she consented to sticking me in with the first graders, and letting me work with the eighth graders when the material would be too boring for me. I wound up being bored anyway, and still had all the nasty social issues that being even a single grade ahead of my age cohort caused without any of the benefit of skipping a grade. But mental verbalization of the text always frusttrated my efforts to increase my reading comprehenson, so I am grateful for the advice and I'll shut up now.
Thankyou very much I think the tapping technique indeed allows me to have the benefits of speed reading while losing less comprehension than the standard 1-2-3 stuff I've been taught so far. Kudos to you!
Subvocalisation is a natural process. So, the goal is not to stop it, just to tone it down slightly, so that your flow and rhythm of reading are lighter. Hope that helps.
I usually read technologies related books so i have to comprehend while reading, so i formed a habit of fast reading with subvocalization. By doing this i am quite fast when reading the books and also able to comprehend clearly. But before doing that I try to skim through chapters which makes it much more comprehensive later.
My question isn't rlly how to supress it, it is how to understand anything at all when supressing or just scanning words. Because I don't lose 10-20% as mentioned. I lose 100%
Do you think it's effective if I study a subject, do an active recall test after a few days and after about 6 months re-study the subject again in the same way? Read and do an active recall to correct my mistakes? What do you think about doing a second rereading of the complete material like I said? Do you think our brain picks up more things on the second reread?
I'm a hard no on notes in most situations. I simply can't focus on taking notes and paying attention to a lecture at the same time. I do organize my thoughts in a thorough outline though. In some cases I actively categorize information as not important and focus on other things I want to remember. Realistically, I think I'd prefer recording the lecture and listening back to it at increased speed a few times... but that seems like a lot of effort for a lecture. I'd rather use that time to listen to different lectures or other information from a slightly different perspective on the same topic.
Something relevant now is that you can essentially replace subvocalization with text-to-speech software. You don't need to subvocalize if your computer is vocalizing words for you. You can increase the speed and my pdf reader (pfd xchange editor) also highlights sentences and words as they are read to help with focus. I discovered this recently and it has dramatically increased my reading speed for grad school with minimal impact on comprehension. My understanding is that comprehension is usually improved by reading and hearing things at the same time (like subtitles on videos). Previous to that I heard that subvocalization was bad, but was never able to reduce it without dramatic losses in comprehension. Many of the people in the speed reading space are just scammers trying to get your money while giving you tips with similar quality to fitness influencers.
Growing up I had a a speech impediment and during the reading literacy tests, they had portions where you read out loud. I failed so many times and was put into remedial reading classes in elementary. I never hated reading, I loved it. By 7th grade I was reading at a 12th grade level
I wonder if the finger tapping helps reading faster is because of the rythm. When I tried the tapping out, i rad slower when I used a slower rythm, but faster when I tapped faster. I still "thought" the words i read though.
A sincere thank you to the creator for sharing valuable insights about subvocalization and how to eliminate it while reading. The video provides a clear explanation of how subvocalization affects reading speed and comprehension. I also appreciate the two different methods offered for reducing subvocalization, especially the use of fingers to minimize comprehension loss. I hope this video will help many people improve their reading skills effectively.
I think re reading is effective if you do it more than once and frequently not the day before an exam. some people use flashcards to learn stuff that seems to be better than re reading
When I was in my lower classes I used to visualise while reading in my head but then my teacher was like u need to use the voice in your head to study and after 5 years I can't read without my inner voice. 😭
I totally agree with you. When I started taking studying seriously, no other technique was working for me. So, I decided to start re-reading my textbooks again and again. I think I read each one of my 6 textbooks atleast 6 times. And each time I went over the material, I started understanding it more. Re-reading is not for memorization, it is for better understanding. Experts in any field aren't making flashcards or doing spaced retrival. They are reading many books on their subject of interest. We can replicate the same thing by re-reading our study materials. Idk if I recommend re-reading a textbook 6 times but it worked for me cause I got good grades 😂. Maybe re-reading can be a tool in our studying toolkit but at that time, I felt like I couldn't apply any other study techniques because of the learning curve
Yep definitely agree. I study medicine and i used a lot of those " active recall" strategies and not only was making me hate studying ( it is so demanding to study with flashcards or repeating everything your read in your mind. ) , it also doent help me that much. I was unable to keep up with the material and at times i didnt manage to go through the topics for an exam only once! So i personally found those techniques extremely time consuming and demanding. Then i decided to end it and just read books for my exams and i will never go back. It dont study to force myself to remember anymore, i just read and re read books and the important stuff will stick from itself. My grades are good and i enjoy studying again. And i think i know have a way better understanding. On of my professors also said to me , we as med students rely to much on remembering and the best way to learn medicine is to understand and make connections
Great video made me subscribe your channel instantly! Sad to see you stopped making videos. Your content is amazing! Please continue your work. This platform requires consistency and tons of patience.
I'm unable to read without subvocalizing. I feel like I understand how I read, but I don't understand how to fix the problem. For example: - When I look at a car outside, I right away understand what it is, solely relying on vision. I just see it and right away understand what it is. the end. - When I read the word "car," the visual of it means nothing to me. It has no meaning what so ever. BUT my subconscious understands it, and reads it aloud for me. And the sound of the word has meaning again. When I hear it, I understand it. So I basically I have to hear the word. I for the life of me cannot understand a word without hearing it. So my brain has to go through this process for every word, before I can visualize it or do anything with it. So if I were to visualize a word the process goes as follows: 1. Look at word. 2. Hear the word in my head. 3. Understand the word from hearing it. 4. Then visualize it. But I've come to understand that some people can get the meaning straight from the visual of the word, like I can also do with everyday objects (just not with words). I just for the life of me cannot figure out how to do it, it just seems impossible to look at a word and to understand what it is before hearing it in your mind first.
i know this sounds weird but it actually works for me if i just keep saying "1, 2, 3" in my mind repeatedly as i read i dont say the word in my mind and actually read at like 17x speed its a life changer for me
Your videos on how to improve reading skills are excellent. The best I have found on the subject so far. Thank you very much, and please keep up the great work!
I guess my issue is different. I’ve always tended to mentally subvocalize but I’m such a slow reader. I also can never pay attention while reading therefore my comprehension is relatively low. I often reread the same paragraph several times before moving on because I would let my mind wander, or I’d be focusing too much on getting through it without my mind wandering that I basically have the words go through my head but my imagination stays be blank. This really sucks because I love stories and would love to write stories myself but my lack of reading skills gets in the way.
re reading for me is more effective tbh cause I don’t get distracted and I stay engaged to the material. I can't stay focused when I use the other methods, I really wanted someone to reassure me that re-reading could be my way to go and I could depend on it * I did few times and got good grades*
Bro you are amezing I don't know why you are so underrated you deserve 100 time more then this don't worry keep going your hard work will definitely pay you off😊❤❤
Thank you. I think subvocalisation adds up to immersion and overall enjoyment. Though the world is so big and theres so much information, that I wish I could just scan through some stuff with sufficient comprehension.
Excellent video! I'll never understand why average people want to speed read books, I assume it's because they want to be able to say "I read 100 books this year" or "I read Meditations in 20 minutes", but in reality, I feel you're cheating yourself. I'd rather read 30 books in a year and be able to talk about all of them than read 100 books and not be able to name 5 of them.
My reason for finding this was due to the very strict requirements of Pearson's proctored exams. If they see your lips moving (and mine always do), they kick you out of the exam and lose your money. Why do they do this? They claim that it stops cheaters who read the question to someone else in the room, or some other way (?). Anyway, if I can control this urge, which I've had most of my 55 years, I can take the online exams. I've been told I can get around that if I go to one of their physical testing centers. If I can't untrain this behavior, I'll have to opt for that. Thanks for this.
