Which Texts You Can Apply Speed Reading?

Speed reading is a skill that will allow you to read much faster than the average reader is capable of. Still many people ask a question: what kinds of texts are suitable for speed reading .

For increasing you reading speed you have to learn speed reading techniques and these skills can be more or less applied to different types of texts. These skills will help you in your professional career, but also for academic activities such as studying in high school or college. Still, speed reading techniques can be best applied to the texts, which are written with the aim of delivering information from the author to the reader. At the same time speed reading methods are not so good for getting feelings or emotions from the text. For keeping fast reading pace you have to keep your emotions down or otherwise the emotions will decrease your reading speed. Therefore speed reading cannot be so successfully applied to the texts which are written in emotional style.

Fortunately most of the texts we have to read in relation to our work are about delivering information and not emotions. All kinds of job related documentation is all about information, no matter if it is about production plans, market research, business processes, legal cases or infectious diseases. In a similar way, speed reading can be applied to your daily mail no matter if it is electronic or on paper. All the messages you receive are in most cases sent with the purpose of delivering information.

In case you are a high school or university student then you have to obtain a lot of information for passing the exams. You have to study different subjects and you have to work through many books for that. Again, as the aim of reading is acquiring information without emotions here, speed reading techniques can be applied.

If you are reading for your hobbies then you are again searching for new information. For example, you are keen on fishing and you want to get some tips about choosing fishing equipment. When reading a fishing handbook for that purpose then you are again looking for information.

So we see that speed reading techniques can be applied to many different texts, which among other include
• Reports
• Handbooks
• Manuals
• Newspapers
• Professional journals
• Legal texts
• E-mails
• Textbooks
• Essays

A clear and logical structure of a text makes it much easier to speed read. Some of the speed reading methods include selective reading and it is easier to make choice about what to read and what to leave out, if the text is logically constructed. In that case the most important parts of the text can be easily found. It will help if the text is divided into chapters or some other type of sections and these sections have headings. If the text includes introduction and conclusion then it makes it also easier to read fast.

On the contrary, if the text is poorly organized, then it becomes more difficult to read at fast speed. If the author does not emphasize his central ideas, but instead of that just tells you many thoughts which are loosely connected, then it is not easy to get the most important information from this text in short time.

I will not recommend you to use speed reading for fiction or poetry. Although it is possible to read those fast, you enjoy that kind of literature much more if you read it at slow pace. But even if you want to read a novel just for getting the plot and you are not looking for the pleasure and emotions, then it will be in many cases more difficult to speed read it as novels do not have so organized structure as the non-fiction texts do usually. Of course, it depends on the author and his style, but in case of fiction there is usually just a storyline and there is the author is not emphasizing of the main ideas repetitively, which is a case for many non-fiction text.