Subvocalizing is a natural habit shared by nearly everyone. The process involves reading words on a page and then reciting the words in your mind or vocally. The reciting of the word precedes a visualization of the word in your mind. With practice, you can eliminate the reciting of the word and learn to visualize words at the moment of reading. This greatly increases your reading speed. As an exercise, practice reading while counting from one to five in your mind. You will have difficulty initially, but the technique requires practice in order for you to break the habit.
Readers tend to reread information they just read. While this technique is important for complicated reading, it is unnecessary. The primary reason for regressive reading is a distracting reading environment. As an exercise, practice filtering out environment noise until you can direct more of your focus toward your reading material. After you can filter out the environment, force yourself to continue reading and purposefully avoid regression.
Your eyes are capable of processing multiple words simultaneously. Increase the distance of your reading material from your face. Let your eyes move across the page and practice seeing more than one word at a time. With practice, you can learn to see entire phrases or short sentences in the same natural way that you currently see individual words.
Set a stopwatch to count down from a minute and see how many words you can read in that time. Repeat this procedure regularly and check to see if you are improving. Keep the reading material consistent and remember that more complicated material will take longer to read and comprehend. Practice your speed reading techniques every day and take note of anything that slows your reading or distracts you during the process.
Practice your speed reading, but once you finish a paragraph, quiz yourself about the information you retain. See if you can remember the significant points of the paragraph and the author's primary conclusions. Describe any action from the paragraph and then reread the paragraph to see how accurate you were.