One advantage of using a program like Ultimate Vocabulary is that it helps you keep track of what you’ve already learned, what you need to review, what would be the best thing to focus on next, and what you’ve accomplished. Of course, you can track all of these details yourself in your own study program, but it’s handy to have the tools right there – especially if they do the work on their own.

For example, one feature of the Ultimate Vocabulary software system is that as you thoroughly master words, those words are taken off your to-do lists (unless you’ve flagged them for later review). If you’ve made your own flash cards, you can do the same thing. When you’re confident that you know a word, take it out of your working file of cards, and put in a new one to learn. However, don’t throw away the old cards right away. Instead, store them in a “review” box and wait a few months, then pull them out again and test yourself to make sure you truly have the word memorized and stored in your mental database.

Another great feature is the Learning Curve™ which plots your success in chart form so you can track your improvement. If you’re a spreadsheet guru, you can set up something like that for yourself, or just keep count of the number of words you learn. In vocabulary building, quantity is just as important as quality!

If the vocabulary words you’re learning are grouped by level from easy/common to difficult/uncommon, make sure you’re selecting words to learn from all categories. As we’ve mentioned before, vocabulary building is a cumulative process, and it’s important to raise the overall quality of your vocabulary, not just throw in a handful of “ten-dollar” words.

Above all, remember to celebrate your achievement! You’ll be reaping the rewards of a large and flexible vocabulary in your professional successes and personal improvement, but when you achieve a milestone – your five thousandth word, perhaps, or when you get a high score on the SAT or GRE test – then take some time to congratulate yourself. Your accomplishments deserve an immediate reward, as well as the long-term benefit you’ll gain from your improved and expanded vocabulary.

Learning how to improve your outlook is key to increasing your reading speed. That doesn’t mean that you need to have a cheerful and optimistic attitude towards your speed-reading goals (though of course that helps!) but rather that you need to work on what you see when you look out of your eyes at a page of printed material.

When you read, your eyes constantly jump from word to word. Each jump ends with your eyes fixed at one spot (a “fixation”) while you focus on what you’re seeing. If you’re reading individual words, this fixation/focus process is happening for every single word. This leads to greater fatigue and eyestrain, and greatly reduces your reading speed.

Learning to fixate on “chunks” of words instead of individual words will eliminate a significant percentage of the number of fixation/focus events you experience when reading. In most cases, many of the words in a specific block of text aren’t important. That is, you don’t bother to mentally define the words and or the, or simple concepts and terms, so why waste time focusing on them? Learn to target the important words in each block of text, and let your brain – which does see every word, even though you might not consciously realize it – fill in the basic meanings for you. Here’s a visual image for you: imagine you’re crossing a broad shallow stream by stepping on large flat stones that stick up above the water. In order to get to the other side of the stream, you only need to use the large stones, though the stream bed is full of smaller stones, which you could also walk on, of course, but which aren’t necessary for your passage.

Continuing this analogy, think of vocabulary words as those large useful stones. The more words you know, the more stones are available to use in crossing any stream of words, no matter how wide. Not only that, but as your vocabulary increases with the addition of words that encapsulate multiple meanings and ideas, the number of “stones” you need will decrease, which means you’ll have larger groups of words and fewer fixation/focus events as you read. Improving and expanding your vocabulary will help you build bridges to new levels of comprehension and faster reading speeds.

Cross-posted at The Speed Reading Blog.

When you learned to read, it was probably a guided process, in a group of other young children, all of you carefully sounding out letters and syllables until you could say each word out loud correctly. That may have been the right way for you to learn at the time, but if you’re still using that method to read, you’re slowing yourself down. If the habit of vocalization (saying words out loud) or subvocalization (saying words to yourself) is one that you’ve kept since you first learned to read, then your reading speed might not be much faster than it was back then.

Most people don’t actually read out loud to themselves, but many people unconsciously move their lips while they read. Many more people actually take the time – again, unconsciously – to pronounce the words in their head as they read. By doing this, they limit their reading speed to what how fast they can pronounce words, whether in their heads or out of their mouths. The process slows down even further when some words are unfamiliar, whether in meaning or in pronunciation.

By eliminating the focus on individual words and relying on the brain’s instinctive ability to fill in meaning by context, you can break the habit of subvocalization, especially if you’re only creating a purely internal word-by-word echo of what you’re reading. There are two things you can do to help eliminate this habit: first, work on expanding the number of words you focus on at one time by reading in “chunks” of words; and second, practice visualizing what you’re reading. By letting your eyes and brain absorb words in groups, rather than one by one, you’ll automatically bypass your mouth, because it’s impossible to say all words in a group at once. By visualizing and creating mental images of what you’re reading, you’ll involve the right side of your brain as well as the left, which will increase the activity across your cortex and speed up all of your mental functions.

Cross-posted at The Speed Reading Blog.

All of the knowledge you’ve gained from your reading and study remains in your brain, even though you might not keep those facts in your consciousness at all time. In many ways your brain is like a huge database, with millions of stored ideas and details and answers that wait to be retrieved or recalled when they’re needed. This recall doesn’t have to be like a computer command, though. One mistake people make while reading is thinking that they have to stop and make a specific and deliberate “request” to themselves to remember a word or its meaning, and this slows down their reading speed – or brings it to a complete stop.

Learning how to read through unfamiliar words is a skill that will help you to increase your reading speed. Many people think that in order to understand the meaning of a sentence, they need to know the exact definition of every word. In many cases, though, your comprehension of what the author is trying to communicate will not be greatly affected by the use of unfamiliar words, if the context of the phrase makes the overall sense of the sentences clear. Here’s an example:

Julianna ate a large spoonful of the porkolt and immediately reached for a glass of water. The dish was so fuszeres that her tongue felt scorched and drops of sweat rolled down her face.

Now, unless you speak Hungarian, there were at least two words in that passage that you didn’t know. However, you probably had a mental image of the scene, and perhaps a memory of being in the same situation, when you’d accidentally eaten something that was extremely hot or spicy. You didn’t need to know that porkolt is the word for “stew” and fuszeres means “spicy.” In fact, it could have just meant “hot” (as in temperature) and the sense of the passage would have been the same.

Your brain works behind the scenes, as it were, to fill in the missing meanings with information you have stored in your mental database. This allows you to skim over what you might think of as potholes in your personal information highway, so you don’t have to stop and fill each of them in in order to make progress.

Remember, the more you add to your personal database, the better able your brain will be in filling in these gaps as you read, and the faster your reading speed will increase. Read as much as you can, on a wide range of topics, and your stored knowledge will support you in your speed-reading goals.

Cross-posted at The Speed Reading Blog.

One of the big stumbling blocks for people when they’re trying to increase and improve their reading speed is a lack of adequate vocabulary. In fact, your eyes literally “stumble” over words you’re not familiar with, and your smooth reading flow comes to a sudden stop as you have to pause, look up a word (or try to guess its meaning), apply the right meaning to the context of the sentence, and pick up where you’ve left off.

You’ve probably noticed that it’s easier to quickly read and comprehend material on a familiar subject – you have most of the vocabulary firmly in your brain, and any less-familiar words are often either related to words you already know, or easy to define based on how they’re used. While no one can be an expert on everything, it’s a fact that the more you know about different topics, the more words you’ll know, because every topic, subject, and field has its own specific set of useful words. By expanding the quantity and variety of what you read (essays, articles, reviews and summaries, novels, research publications, etc.) you will also make it easier to increase your reading speed, by smoothing out the “new word” bumps in the road.

You’ve heard the phrase “vicious circle” no doubt; by contrast, this is a helpful and creative circle, an endless loop of progress rolling forward, as the more you read, the more knowledge you gain, making it easier for you to read works on diverse topics, which gives you an even greater knowledge base to build on. Your ability to quickly assimilate and comprehend information will increase as your reading skills and speed increase, giving you the competitive edge you need to succeed in today’s information-based economy.

Taking the time to read a variety of materials will not only give you valuable knowledge and insight that will help you succeed at work, but will make you a sought-after conversational partner in both professional and casual settings. Your wide range of knowledge will help you participate in discussions on many topics.

Take the time today to pick out something new to read, and the speed of your improvement will soon become apparent.

Cross-posted at The Speed Reading Blog.

What’s the first image that comes to your mind when you think vocabulary study session? Is it a picture of a person sitting alone at a library cubicle or small table, a single lamp shining down on the book open in front of them? Is it a classroom scene, with one or two dozen people listening to a lecture? Maybe the first thing you think of is a group of laughing, chattering people all working on their words together. Each of these can be effective study environments, and you’ll benefit from trying them all out.

If your habit is to study alone, you’ll find that the give-and-take of group study will stimulate you to learn faster, and having other people to trade ideas with can quickly increase your comprehension of associated words and phrases. Or try a formal class, which will challenge you with tests and quizzes, but also provide you the expert support of a professor or teacher’s aide.

If you’ve only studied vocabulary in a class, you might not feel like study can be fun. Joining a language discussion group will help you relax and enjoy yourself, and you’ll find that the better you feel about the way you spend your time, the easier it will be to learn. You’ll also benefit from some solo study sessions, to help you develop your sense of purpose and priorities, rather than relying on an outside influence.

If you’ve been in a group study program, you’ve probably been learning a lot, but perhaps not at the depth that you’d hoped. Signing up for an English class, especially one that includes discussions about word origins and language development, will give you a firmer base for your vocabulary-building exercises, and the assigned homework will give you the opportunity for regular, concentrated study on your own.

Those of you using the Ultimate Vocabulary software know what a benefit it is to have the resource of a support system. Whether it’s a local ESL group, a tutor at a nearby college or university, or a friend who’s also focused on improving their professional or academic vocabulary, don’t be afraid to take advantage of the help and knowledge of other people. And remember, one of the best ways to learn something is to teach it to someone else – support other people in their vocabulary study, and you’ll all come out ahead.