With all the different methods of speed reading out there, whose to say which one is best. I’d say that the best method of speed reading is the one that works best for you. Because every person is really unique, and the way different people’s minds work is different. This means that what works well for someone else need not necessarily work well for you, and vice versa.

Some people favor photo reading, where you intuitively grasp the gist of book, simply by flicking through the pages, using hypnosis and certain special training techniques to optimize your absorption of the printer matter. This technique works extremely well for some people, and there are experts who can absorb enormous amounts of printed matter at incredible speeds of over twenty five thousand words per minute using this technique.

But it doesn’t work for everyone – one needs a certain kind of mental setup to make photo reading truly work for you. Then there are those who believe that photo reading shouldn’t be used at all, because you don’t truly read the words of the author, and cannot appreciate subtleties of the work, such as style.

One important thing you should know is that it really matters what you’re going to be using photo reading for. If you’re a literature student hoping to get through your assignments faster, photo reading is probably not for you – speed reading would help you better. On the other hand, if your job involves you scanning lots of reports, emails, and the minutes for meetings, and you want to process all this information quickly but selectively, selecting only what is important while nevertheless going through everything reasonably carefully, then photo reading is the technique for you.

So why would speed reading work better than photo reading for someone who wanted to appreciate the actual words of the text, and the style of the author? Simply because speed reading is far closer to actual reading. Yes, you read several words or even an entire line at a glance. Yes, you scan through the matter rapidly. But the simple fact is that even though it’s so much faster, it’s still basically conventional reading, only perhaps three or four times as efficient. So it obviously works better when you need a more in-depth comprehension of the text that you’re reading.

So which method of learning speed reading is best for you? As I said at the beginning, different things work best for different people, but speed reading software has been found by studies to be the most effective, because it employed multiple-sensory techniques. Unlike an audio recording, or even a teaching video, interactive software is an immersive sensory experience, and so is much more effective than even listening to an instructor, or watching teaching videos.

The best part is that there are lots of speed reading teaching softwares available in stores and on the Internet, and most of them have free trials as well, so that if you spend a little time going through them you can choose a software that is just right for you.