http://bit.ly/fasterread - Business leaders are well-informed readers. Learn three tactics to help you process what you read faster in Skill #3 (Read Faster) of the blog series on businessenglishace.com, 21 Important Business Skills for Success. Faster reading also means snappier decisions is a global economy where time is money.

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Headline: Read Faster – Business Skill 3
- See more at: http://www.businessenglishace.com/read-faster-business-skill-3/
Read faster for greater business success.
Start reading rapidly today to gain a competitive
advantage over both colleagues and clients.
Read on to discover more benefits to reading faster.
Finally, learn fast tips to help you increase your reading
speed without speed reading books.
Benefits of Reading Faster
First, one of the primary benefits of rapid reading is
enhanced leadership.
Great leaders are great readers.
Leaders read broadly and a faster rate allows for
greater productivity as illustrated by Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Charles Duhigg in his seminal tome,
Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business.
Second, fast readers are more analytical.
Your thinking process requires prior knowledge, the memory of it, and the use of that prior knowledge to
process facts and statistics.
Your thinking is fed from reading a wide range of books.
Business professionals thus accumulate vast amounts of information in less time in order to make snap
judgments in the breakneck global economy.
The cliché – time is money – does not deter these fast-reading business leaders who are one step ahead
of the competition.
Third, quick devourers of information are, well, smarter, and thus more innovative.
Fast-reading business leaders are one step ahead of the competition.
Scientia potestas est (Francis Bacon’s “knowledge is power”) is the coin of the realm of the
interdependent Information Economy.
Businesspeople from frontline clerks to CEOs know that more power is a distinct advantage against
competitors in the global marketplace.
Moreover, research indicates the broadening of knowledge (by reading exhaustively) enhances your
creative spark.
Stimulation from reading and the ability to read faster combine to make business professionals well-
informed and adaptable to the kaleidoscope of the ever-changing interdependent world economy.

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Finally, quick consumption of reading material makes you smarter through a larger vocabulary and more
knowledge in addition to the abstract reasoning skills.
Go read the blog post on Skill #1 – Strong Vocabulary – in our series, 21 Skills Important Business Skills.
Learn more details on how bigger word power helps business professionals succeed.
Check out blog post #2, Write Better Business
Documents, as well.
How to Read Faster
Read below four ways to read faster.
The first, the reading environment, is under your
direct control. Thus, you are able to personalize
your own reading experience. Prepare yourself
for quick consumption of reading material by
getting into a comfortable setting.
The other three are skills gained through
steadfast practice. Of the three, probably
chunking is the most important.
Therefore, practice these skills every time you read and you’ll soon see your reading rate rapidly
increase.
Effective and efficient readers then can rapidly read a text by skimming, and scanning it to identify its
purpose.
Finally, start chunking the words in the document to speed up both comprehension and analysis of your
document’s content.
Get details for each of these tactics below.
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Your Reading Environment
In general, find a comfortable spot to read.
Reading is more effective in these surroundings.
Build a strong vocabulary with Grow Your Word Power: 301 Useful Vocabulary Terms.

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Check the lighting in the room.
Settle into a comfortable chair. Your position should be neither too comfortable nor too uncomfortable.
Avoid distractions.
Switch off the cellphone and don’t dabble with the Internet to concentrate on your reading.
Finally, make sure you take frequent 5-minute breaks every 30 to 60 minutes to give your eyes and brain
a break!
Skimming
Skimming and scanning work in tandem to enhance your English reading skills at the office.
Skimming is the process by which you quickly determine the basic meaning of a document.
Scanning is like skimming, but you read to find a particular piece of information, fact, or figure.
Precisely, follow these steps to efficiently skim a document:
• Read the title. What are you reading?
• Read the full first paragraph. What is the purpose of the document?
• Read the first sentence of every other paragraph.
• Remember any headings and sub-headings.
• Review any pictures, charts, or graphs. How do they help tell the story?
• Notice any italicized or boldface words or phrases.
• Read fully the last paragraph.
Scan a section for key words. (see below)
Skim to the words that provide meaning and may be useful for you and your purpose.
You should immediately skim any new report, email, or memo to get the gist or basic meaning using the
steps outlined above.
Do you already have knowledge about the subject?
Activate your memory because if you can make a deeper connecting with the text about a familiar topic
you understand it better!
Scanning
Scanning help you locate a single fact or a specific bit of information without reading everything in the
whole memo, email, or other document at the office.
Scanning is tightly focused form of skimming. Instead of a broad search, you scan for particular
information. Since you have skimmed the entire document, it should be much easier to locate data.

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Does a chart of graph contain the information?
Is there a summary paragraph?
Precisely, follow these steps to quickly scan a document:
• Ask: What is the specific information you are looking for?
• Seek keywords about the topic of your document
• Remember any headings or charts and graphs that will help you identify which sections might
contain the information you are looking for.
Using skimming and scanning should greatly enhance your ability to read a text in English and get the
information you seek.
Check out this exercise on skimming and scanning on the BBC website.
Chunks
When you learned to read, you learned one word at a time.
This is a very inefficient and makes comprehension more difficult.
Every sentence is not only made up of individual words, but also groups of words that form a complete
thought.
You can read much faster and with good comprehension when you practice thought chunking or grouping
words into logical units.
The size of the thought chunks doesn’t matter, as long as each chunk is a thought and makes sense to
you.
Chunking not only allows you to read faster, but also boosts comprehension.
How do you divide up a sentence into logical units?
How do you read in chunks or groups of words?
Train your eyes to concentrate and see a group of 3 to 4 words at a glance. This is not natural for the
eyes, however.
Practice about 15 minutes a day reading a newspaper using this method. Try to read 3 to 4 words or a
whole sentence at a time.
Faster reading allows you to make the right choices necessary to succeed with less effort.
A newspaper usually has about 4 to 5 words across each line. Read an article line by line, but be sure to
group the words. You will soon get used to reading phrases, not words.
You may want to take a pen or pencil to separate text into chunks at first.
Ex: Reading in clusters is a faster and easier way to understand and read a text. [15 words]

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Suggested grouping:
(Reading in clusters)(is a faster) (and easier way )(to understand) (and read a text.) [5 phrases!]
It is easier to read 5 phrases than 15 words!
Check out this video for more information.
Pro Tip: Commas are your best friend! These markers neatly divide up the text of a sentence. Use these
natural breaks inserted by the writer to help chunk your texts.
Conclusion
Business professionals are often asked to read fast so they can get through all the material they’re asked
to deal with.
Business readers are flexible readers – reading for a purpose, but only that information required to get the
data or answer to a question they seek.
Speed up your reading for greater business success.
Speed up your reading for greater business success.
Your ability to speed up your reading depends on your level of education, vocabulary, background
knowledge, experience, and motivation.
Reading is an individual activity and you learn how to speed read in your own way.
Focus on building your level of fluent reading to build comprehension.
Grow as a leader at the office and impress your bosses with your sharp judgment because of vast
knowledge gained from reading. As a result, use quick thinking to outsmart the competition.
Indeed, faster reading allows you to make the right choices necessary to succeed with less effort.
Now, you are better able to speed read and achieve enduring career success.
- See more at: http://www.businessenglishace.com/read-faster-business-skill-3/
Park Photo Credit: CC 4.0
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