Remember when your reading lists contained nothing but a school assignment, or a note to look for more books by an author you just loved reading? Well, forget all about that. This is the Internet era where reading online never seems to end – strangely, it seems like the more you read, the more links you find to still more articles. Sounds pessimistic? We’d rather call it fascinating.

Of course you can’t read every single post and article you find on line. You need to learn to be selective, especially since there’s a lot of content out there that gets reused and recycled on dozens of sites at once. But being picky with what you read might not seem enough, because even after a rigorous selection process there’s so much to read on the internet that you could spend years just going from site to site. Unless you have the reading speed of Howard Berge, who allegedly reads 25,000 words per minute, you obviously need a reading speed increase to handle this potentially overwhelming amount of information.

Multitasking and Distractions Begone!

When you’re reading, whether it’s a work report or an ebook, you need to do only that. In other words, shut down other computer windows, turn off your phone, and focus. It might feel weird, as if you might be missing out on something, since you won’t be allowed to read your email, or flip over to see what’s new on Pinterest (a never-ending source of distraction).

If you block distractions and focus on your reading, you’ll soon realize how much faster you can read.

Go Beyond Your Comfort Zone

Try increasing your reading pace. Consciously accelerate your pace and try maintaining it until you read through the whole thing. You can achieve this by:

• Using your computer cursor to direct your eyes at a faster-than-usual pace. Your brain can be trained into directing your eyes to the next chunk of words, while you’re still processing the previous sentence.

• Timing yourself. Measure how much content you can read under one minute. Now work towards increasing the word number as you practice more.

• Play it smart. Scan through the whole post checking for relevance or originality before settling down to read it top to bottom. You might only need to read a few paragraphs to get what you want, so why spend time to read it all?

People don’t seem to realize it, but you can instantly increase your reading speed simply by forcing yourself to.

Avoid Common Pitfalls

Naturally, to learn to speed read you first need to know what is stopping you from speed reading. Two of the biggest culprits are subvocalization and regression.

You know that habit you have mentally hearing the words you read, or silently enunciating them with your mouth or lips alone? That’s subvocalization.

You used subvocalization when you first started learning to read and it’s possible you never really stopped doing it. (Which is bad, since you limit yourself to reading as fast as you can pronounce a word.)

The other common hindrance to speed reading is regression. When you go back to read a word, or re-read a whole sentence, that’s regression – and it can as much as double your reading time when used repetitively.

The trick to improving reading speed is to consciously force yourself to go on reading, no matter what. Focus on what you’re reading and cut out any distractions before they even appear. And stay focused on what you need from the internet before allowing yourself to explore the fun-but-trivial parts – after all, that YouTube video will still be there after you’re done with your work!

Learning how to speak and read a foreign language can both be very exciting and challenging. The good news, though, is that with a good set of resources and a little work, you’ll soon be on your way to fluency. What’s more, you can also apply speed reading techniques to your study even if the language is not native to you.

Reading is the same activity, no matter what language you’re working with. It’s logical then that the concept of speed reading should not be considered as something applicable to the English language only.

The truth is that you can apply certain speed reading techniques in many contexts, even when you’re reading in a foreign language. As Marc Slater of 7 Speed Reading said, “The skill of speed reading is universally important. It doesn’t matter what form the language takes or what media you’re using to read; what’s important is that the material is understood properly.”

Here are some tips you can use to help you apply speed reading techniques to any text, even if it’s in a language that you’re not entirely fluent in.

1.    Make note of commonly used words

This is actually a very efficient technique, and one that eliminates a good deal of your reading time. Comprehension of the text as a whole requires you to be aware of and familiar with the meaning of the words. When you’re able to note and skip over common words, you’ll be able to shift your focus and concentrate on other terms that are less familiar to you. This way, you’re expediting the reading process and improving your comprehension by focusing on words that are otherwise unfamiliar to you.

2.    Listen to audio books

Some people may find this redundant – or even not related to speed reading at all – but listening to audio books does have its own advantages, especially when you’re trying to improve your fluency and practice your speed reading in a foreign language. What makes this technique important is that reading in any language is based first on phonetics and then on word comprehension.

Studies have found that the very basic foundation of reading is more of an auditory experience than anything else. By becoming familiar with the phonetics of the word and how it sounds to your ear, it becomes easy to identify the word with your eyes in a visual medium. To increase the usefulness of this technique, get a print copy of the book and read along with the narration.

3.    Practice speed reading

Of course, there can be no development in any skill without constant and consistent practice. Fortunately, there are a lot of speed reading courses available now, such as the 7 Speed Reading program. The advantage of this software is that you can import texts in your target language and use those for practice and speed reading exercises. There’s still no better way to learn than to put these lessons into good use.

If you’ve been working on improving your reading speed, you’ll know about the bad habits that you need to overcome, like subvocalization and sounding words out letter by letter. These are habits that you probably learned (like many people did) when you first started reading in school. You were taught to sound out words, and to read aloud, and if you never learned any other way to read then you’d probably continue to read at that same slow speed.

The habits we pick up when we first learn something are hard to break. If you learn to type by using the “hunt and peck” method, for example, you’re used to looking at the computer or typewriter keyboard and picking out each letter individually using just two fingers. This isn’t the fastest way to type, and in order to type faster you’ll have to get over your habit of looking down at the keys. You’ll have to train your fingers to reach those keys quickly and automatically, just like you train your eyes to move quickly and automatically down the page when you’re speed reading.

The newest software product by eReflect is designed to do just that. Ultimate Typing uses the latest in video and interactive technology to help you reprogram your typing habits and develop the touch typing skill you need to advance in your career, find a new job, communicate with people, and get the most out of the internet technology we all depend on these days. If you’re a student, you’ll benefit from the time saved by your improved typing speed and accuracy when you’re preparing research reports and writing essays. In fact, even students in primary school will get a boost from learning to touch type – they’ll improve their spelling and reading skills at the same time as they’re learning to work on a computer keyboard, and computers are the tools used in most schools these days. If a young child learns good typing habits, they’ll have that advantage for the rest of their school years and get a head start in the job market as well.

Because one of the standard exercises for increasing typing speed involves quick word recognition, you’ll find that simply by going through the games and exercises in Ultimate Typing, your ability to speed read will improve automatically. In addition, you can use the text import feature in Ultimate Typing to include any material you want to read and incorporate it into the typing exercises. That will provide you with the opportunity to improve your vocabulary and your reading skills while you’re focused on honing your skills as a typist. Find out more about what Ultimate Typing can do for you today!

The race is getting tighter now. With downloadable music already set to completely replace CDs, the next round of the format battle begins. Who will come out on top: ebooks or printed books?

There are many factors to consider when discussing the matter of ebooks vs. printed books, but ultimately, it boils down to the reader’s preference. Avid fans of printed books claim that there’s still nothing like the smell of paper and the rustle of the pages as the reader flips gently through the book with their fingers. There’s something intimately rustic about the entire experience, they claim, and it’s one that cannot be derived from the cold, electronic ebook version.

On the other hand, those who prefer the ebook often say that the device takes a whole lot of weight from their shoulders – literally. Packing for trips is bad enough as it is, but it becomes doubly so when confronted with the task of choosing which book to bring. With the ebook, however, a reader can take hundreds of books with them on the journey, and only take up a few square inches in their carry-on bag.

Apart from these physical considerations, however, studies have shown that when it comes to reading comprehension, printed books are still a better choice. One such study was recently conducted by the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop. The study found that literacy building in children is more effective with a printed book than with an ebook because of the centralized focus on the story and the opportunities for interaction between the child and the parent reading the book with the child. While ebooks also deliver the story, and encourage children to participate with interactive add-ons, there is no conversation and nothing to encourage the child to verbalize or explore using language. In fact, the research concluded that sometimes “click-through” added features can actually detract from the reading experience because of all the interruptions.

Of course, for other people – especially adults, who are more able to comprehend the overall story or meaning in the text – these interactive features such as linking, bookmarking, highlighting, and others provide a huge benefit and meet many of their needs. By and large, however, some devices tend to overdo it, and so end up creating more distractions than necessary.

There’s also the matter of production cost. Obviously, printed books cost more because of the resources needed. Ebook reader manufacturers, though, spend the bulk of their production cost on the device itself, and from then on everything is digital and a fraction of the cost per book, compared to printed books.

Marc Slater, director of 7 Speed Reading, weighs in on the debate. “Clearly, the winner in this round is none other than the person doing the reading, no matter which method they choose. With all of the options available in the market, there simply is no way to not enjoy reading. If anything, what people should be focused on is learning how to read faster. After all, there are so many books to pick up and read out there – both in printed form or ebook version – that we should be concentrating on reading as many as we can, in whatever format suits us best.”

It’s time to get serious about your work if you’re hoping for advancement. Keep distractions at bay with these 5 simple tips for guaranteed productivity.

The Internet can indeed be considered as both a boon and a bane in the workplace. On the one hand, it does help you move along smoothly through your workload, since all of the invaluable and formerly hard-to-find information is always available and right at your fingertips. On the other hand, however, it’s just this easy access to information – the not-so-valuable kind we get from “surfing the Web” – that keeps people from doing what it is they really have to do each day.

To help you maximize your time, therefore, here are the 5 top productivity techniques that let you get the most out of your computer connection:

1. Rearrange Your Internet Windows

If you’re one of those people who need to be ever-present on social media sites, you need to find a way to do so without falling into the trap of getting irretrievably distracted from work. To do this, open one window specifically for work-related tabs, and another for the social media tabs.

The key here is in tricking the mind into thinking that you are actively logged in to you social network sites, while at the same time keeping them out of view under your work window. It’s a mind game, yes, but you need all the tricks at your disposal to counteract the appeal of these entertaining sites.

2. Learn How To Speed Read

Speed reading is one good technique for productivity. Whether it be in school or at work, you’ll undoubtedly need to do a lot of readings. Sometimes you can set it aside for later, but sometimes it simply can’t be avoided. The thing about this type of work, unfortunately, is that it often ends up at the top of your to-do list – especially if you’ve been putting it off. You can’t write a paper and then do the research about your topic after the fact. For any written work, reading usually comes first. As such, most people find their work progress stalled because of the fact that they read too slowly.

3. Create A Rewards Program For Yourself

Set a time limit and a goal for each task. For every one item you finish on your to-do list, give yourself (for example) five minutes of online browsing time as a reward. If you finish the task before your set time limit expires, you can even give yourself an extra 5 minutes. By giving yourself something to look forward to, you also give yourself the impetus to work faster.

4. Go Analog

If the Internet is distracting you, and you don’t need access to it for a specific task, shut it down. By switching off the modem and staying away from online distractions, you’re able to concentrate on the task on hand. It’s a situation that forces you to think of nothing else but work, thereby allowing you to finish it faster.

5. Schedule Your Work Online

You might be able to resist the temptation to chat online, but what do you do when your friends keep pinging and emailing and IM-ing you? Go online for work when most of your peers aren’t active. If you’re not being drawn into the social network sites by others, it will be easier to avoid going there yourself. What’s more, without these distractions, by the time your friends do get online, you’ll already have accomplished a lot and completed so many tasks, you’ll enjoy having the time to chat, rather than feeling guilty and stressed out.