Selecting Speed Reading Software   by Robert Kokoska

If you are interested in speed reading, it usually means that you are pressed for time. After all, who isn't? Students as well as professionals are sometimes overwhelmed by their work load, and it's easy to see why. Every year, it seems that more and more written information comes our way. This accounts for the current interest in speed reading, and more specifically, in speed reading software. If you don't have time to keep up with your reading, you probably don't have time to take a regular course. Speed reading books are great, but many of us need something more interactive in order to learn speed reading methods. Speed reading software seems to be the solution - it allows you to participate in a virtual course, but at your own speed.

Speed reading is not a new idea. In fact, it was popular in the 1960s and 70s, and invented decades before that. However, the concept of speed reading is evolving. In the past, the speed of about 100 words per minute was considered the maximum speed that the common person could hope to acheive. This is relatively fast - it would allow you to read a 300-page book in about an hour and a half. Nowadays, however, there are new speed reading claims - ones that seem incredible. One individual claims that he read Tolstoy's War and Peace (a book of about a thousand pages) in fifteen minutes. A speed reading teacher claims that he can teach some adults, and virtually all children (who seem to have a greater natural ability) to read up to 18,000 words per minute. Speed reading software may not allow you to reach those dizzying speeds, but it probably will allow you to substantially increase your natural reading time all the same.

Treat your speed reading software as you would any course. Set aside a time and place, preferably every day, for working on it. Follow the instructions carefully. One drawback of speed reading software as opposed to an actual class is that people are a bit more likely to get discouraged in the early stages. Speed reading is not necessarily a skill that you can pick up at high speed - more often, it takes some painstaking practice at first, followed by a 'breakthrough' of sorts. Because you are working on your own with speed reading software, you aren't able to observe the progress of others, as in a classroom. Rest assured, though, that if you are having problems, you aren't alone. At the early stages, the trick is just to stick with it, doing all the speed reading exercises. In the longrun, chances are excellent that you will successfully decrease your reading time.

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