How to Use the Word Grouping Technique to Speed up your reading.
In this post, I explain how to use the Word Grouping reading technique to increase your reading speed no matter the type of material.
Did you know that our eyes don't move smoothly when we read a line? Instead, they jump from section to section. Ask a friend to look at your eyes when you move it from left to right and they will tell you the same.
Some people think this is a bad thing and that it hinders their reading speed. They even try to overcome it. You might notice that some people read with a pen or their finger and make an underlining motion when reading a line (ironically, I used to do this). This does in fact reduce eye jumping but our reading speed still stays the same. So, what's the point?
Instead, why don't we use this eye jumping thing to our advantage? In fact, there is already a speed reading technique that utilizes it. It's called word grouping. Word grouping also uses another feature of our eyes which is peripheral vision. When you look at something, you don't just see that one thing and nothing else. You see what's around that thing as well. This is known as your peripheral vision. So, how does word grouping work?
When you read a sentence, don't look at each word and read it. Instead, just look at one word for every 3-5 words in a line. When you look at just that one word, you will be able to see the surroundings words using your peripheral vision. After that, just keep jumping to different word groups and repeating this process For example:
"The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog"
The word groups for this sentence would be: "The quick brown fox", "jumped over" and lastly "the lazy dog". For the first group, "the quick brown fox", just look at 'quick' or 'brown' in the example sentence above. Can you see the rest of the words in the group? Now try the same with "jumped over", this time looking at 'jumped' only. You might also recognize the word 'fox' on the left. Finally, look at the word 'lazy' and you'd be able to see the final words. Now read the example sentence again, but this time, just look at the middle word for every group. And that’s it for how word grouping works.
Personally, I like using a stylus or pen when using this technique to read. However, I don't use it to overcome eye jumping, I use it for better focus and so that I don't get lost. Basically, I point the tip of the stylus or pen on the middle word in a word group. Then when I move to another group, I just jump the pen to the middle word there. I find it really useful, and would definitely recommend doing so. You can just use your finger too if you don't have a stylus or pen in hand.
The more you practice word grouping, the better you'll become at it. So, even if it doesn't work for you now, give it a few more tries and see what happens. Overall, word grouping is a very effective speed reading method and has nearly doubled my reading speed after I've tried and got used to it. I recommend using word grouping whenever you’re reading anything. But, I don't think it works well in terms of skimming. If you don't know what that is, check out How this Simple Method can Majorly Boost your Reading Speed for more context on what skimming is.
Thanks for reading!
This has been Arjun, a writer from the blog Not Too Young. If you liked this post, please consider checking out our other posts. Don’t forget to like, share and subscribe too, it would mean a lot! See you around next time!