12 Tips To Improve Your Reading Substantially

Written by: Nat Crawford
Published on: January 31, 2024

Do you feel like you can improve your reading? Many people think reading is simply going from one word to the next until done, but there’s more to becoming a truly effective and efficient reader.

The following 12 tips can help you become a better reader.

1. Read Slowly

What? I bet a lot of you feel that you should be reading quickly, not slowly. Aren’t better readers faster readers?

No, better readers are not necessarily faster readers, and faster readers are not necessarily better readers. Plenty of people agree. I myself know the importance of slow reading from personal experience.

I read a lot as a child. From second grade through sixth grade, I probably averaged four hours a day—about 7,300 hours total. Though I read less in middle and high school, I still probably averaged two hours a day. So by the time I started college, I had already logged well over 10,000 hours of reading. According to Malcolm Gladwell, that’s the time it takes to achieve mastery of a skill.

By typical measurements, i was an accomplished reader. I finished my reading assignments quickly, did fine on my essays, and went to a good college, where I continued to get good grades. Unfortunately, my reading ability was superficial.

What was the problem? My technique was wrong. I didn’t use a dictionary; I didn’t visualize; I didn’t reflect on what I was reading. My eyes were skimming over the words, but my mind was idle.

And I compounded all these problems by reading too fast. I gave myself plenty of excuses: “I have too many pages to cover, so I need to move quickly”; “I need to know only 80% of the material”; “I already know enough vocabulary, so I don’t need to look up that unknown word.”

Eventually, I realized that as a student of the English language, I needed to become a better reader. So I put myself through a rigorous training program: I read, wrote, and reflected for up to 10 hours a day.

During that time, I applied many of the techniques described in these posts. But the most important element of my training was reading slower. Reading slower gave me time to think carefully about word meaning, word choice, connections to other books and ideas, and links to my own experience. I took the time to look up words (even words that I thought I knew) and to create strong visual images.

And at the end of about 18 months, I could read. I felt as if I’d shifted from experiencing the book in two dimensions to experiencing it in three.

So how fast should you read? If you are looking to improve your reading, read silently at about the speed it would take to read aloud.

Feel free to move your lips while reading in order to establish the right pace. Throughout the process, remind yourself of your goal: not faster reading, but deeper reading.

You’ll find that the rewards are enormous.

For Parents:

Parents sometimes ask tutors to teach their children to read faster. But before you can read faster, you need to read smoothly at a slow pace. (You learn to walk before you learn to run.) If your child stumbles when he reads aloud, he needs to work on his fluency, not his speed.

2. Read Aloud

Reading aloud is an overlooked way to build reading ability. As a college student, I often struggled to understand difficult texts. I noticed, though, that when I read aloud, I often instantly understood those passages. Why such a dramatic impact? I have a few thoughts.

Reading aloud is an overlooked way to build reading ability. As a college student, I often struggled to understand difficult texts. I noticed, though, that when I read aloud, I often instantly understood those passages. Why such a dramatic impact? I have a few thoughts.

First, reading aloud forces you to focus. You have to think about how to pronounce words, how to link them together into sentences, and how to adjust your voice for questions and interjections. You can’t simply pass your eyes over the words while dreaming about the latest video game. You can’t skim the passage, trying to pick out the selections that answer study questions. You have to be 100% focused on bringing the text to life. And focus is a big part of reading comprehension.

Second, reading aloud instantly exposes weaknesses in comprehension. Struggling to pronounce a word? That’s a word that you need to look up! Stumbling in the middle of a sentence? You probably need to understand it better! The faster you address reading weaknesses, the sooner you become a better reader.

Third, reading aloud also encourages you to read expressively, building your emotional connection to the book. This emotional connection makes it easier to understand a book and remember its content. In addition, reading aloud helps people build fluency, comprehension, critical reading skills, and an understanding of cause and effect. All that benefit from so little work!

A final point: during oral reading, one of the most common mistakes that developing students make is not ending sentences properly.

When they hit a period, they plow right into the next sentence; when they see a question mark, they don’t change their tone. This is a big mistake because it prevents the mind from taking advantage of “chunking.”

Chunking is the grouping of data into chunks that are easier to remember. Which is easier to remember: 112063542 or 112-063-542? The second one, by far. We chunk number groups by splitting them into groups, and we chunk word groups by letting the voice fall at the end of a sentence. Without these endings, the text seems like a wall of words—hard to understand, and even harder to remember.

For Parents:

Parents should read aloud to their children well into their high school years. According to Jim Trelease, author of the million- copy bestseller The Read-Aloud Handbook, research shows that “reading aloud to children improves their reading, writing, speaking, listening—and, best of all, their attitudes about reading.”

So if you want your kids to value reading, read aloud to them daily. You can save a lot of money on test prep too—one small-town boy got a perfect score on his ACT, without doing any prep work, after 14 years of listening to his family read to him for half an hour a night.

3. Read More

How much more? Start by aiming for just 15 minutes a day― every day.

Just 15 minutes a day adds up to a lot of words over the course of the year. Consider the case of a third grader reading at a typical pace for his age. Reading 15 minutes a day, in just one year, he would read about 956,000 words. That’s about

  • 27 children’s books
  • 14 young adult novels
  • Four to six classic novels

Try it for a few weeks! Use an app such as Coach.me to create the habit of regular reading. You’ll have to discipline yourself to establish the habit. But flossing and brushing twice a day takes 8–10 minutes, and you still do it; you can find 15 minutes for reading. (When you’ve done it for a month, write to us and let us know the results.)

FOR PARENTS:

Families can help their kids by setting aside 15 minutes every day (perhaps after dinner) when everyone, parents included, reads silently from a book that he or she has chosen.

Remember—choice is important! The books should not be assigned by the school or the parent! (See the next tip for why.)

Family reading time is a good way of leading by example. If your kids see you reading, they’ll learn to value reading themselves.

4. Read What You Love

We read what we love with ease. But we struggle to read what we dislike. So, want to improve your reading ability? Grab the books that really interest you.

Some people believe that only difficult books improve reading. Wrong! Consider exercise. Think about all the physical benefits people get from:

  • A game of tag
  • A casual game of soccer or basketball
  • A 15-minute walk

Easy exercise six days a week is better than running until you collapse once a week.

Reading enjoyable books is like light exercise for the mind: it keeps you mentally fit.

The 18th-century British writer Samuel Johnson said, “A man ought to read just as inclination leads him; for what he reads as a task will do him little good.” Forcing yourself to read a book is like making yourself play soccer while wearing a heavy backpack. How will you learn to love the game?

Also, at any reading level, most of what we read is the same from book to book. Many of the words and phrases in a high school history textbook will also appear in a typical adventure novel. So familiarize yourself with these words and phrases in the books you love; that’s how you learn to read harder material.

I’ve written more on this topic in this blog post. In the meantime, here’s a good trick for finding books that you love: Take advantage of the recommendation algorithm on Amazon. It works like this:

  • Find the title of a book you remember loving.
  • Scroll down to the “Customers who bought this item also bought” section.
  • Look for books that have reviews of 4+ stars with at least a few hundred reviews. (I find that the books with only 4 stars or lower are generally enjoyable only for dedicated fans of the subject or the author.) At first, focus on the books that have the most total reviews.
    If a book has 4+ stars and over a thousand reviews, it’s probably an excellent candidate.
  • Click on the book title. Read the summary and a few of the reader reviews. If it looks good, buy it or check it out from the library. Chances are good that you’ll enjoy it as much as the book you loved.

For Parents

I often meet parents who are upset with their kid’s reading: “He won’t read
the biography of Steve Jobs that I gave him! He only reads science fiction!” Relax. Maybe your son prefers physics to business. So long as he’s reading, he’s exercising his mind. That’s good. Give your kids as much freedom as possible to read what they love. Remember how easy it is for them to do something if they enjoy it.

5. Reread

Every skilled reader spends a fair amount of time rereading favorite books. What makes experienced teachers so effective? Rereading the books they teach—often.

Naturally, rereading benefits young readers too. Research shows that children learn more vocabulary from rereading old books than they do from reading a new one. Reading a book a second time also helps people build a stronger emotional connection to the book.

Rereading doesn’t just help people better understand the book they are rereading; it builds abilities that transfer to other books.

For example, rereading a book will often help you to see a new level of detail. Once you see this level of detail in one book, you’ll look for it in another book. As another example, on rereading a book, you might see symbolism that you didn’t notice the first time. You will start to look for symbolism in other books. Finally, sometimes rereading helps you notice a hidden meaning in a conversation between characters.

You will then start to look for hidden meanings in the conversations in other books. Don’t feel guilty about rereading books you love! By rereading, you really are helping yourself become a better reader.

For Parents:

Don’t worry if your children want to reread the same stories and books over and over. In fact, encourage them to do so! Ask them what new features they noticed, what plot points got cleared up, what characters they changed their opinions about. Or just ask them to talk about why they love the book so much.

6. Eliminate Distractions

Do your reading in a calm environment. If you need quiet, find a quiet space, or use noise-canceling headphones. Some people prefer the white noise of a coffee shop, which you can now access online. But avoid working in any location where you can hear the distinct words of a conversation.

However, if you really want to eliminate distractions while reading, you should seriously consider getting away from your computer.

In his breakthrough article “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” Nicholas Carr suggests that researching and reading online weakened his ability to read. On his computer, he faced web ads, electronic notifications, and the constant urge to jump to a new link. All these distractions made it harder for him to focus—even when he shifted to reading a physical book!

Other research suggests that reading on a computer harms the mind:

Fortunately, there’s help. When reading web pages, remove ad clutter with apps like Instapaper or the Chrome extension Just Read. Or just print out the pages that you want to read.

For Parents:

Discourage your kids from reading books on the iPad or the laptop. These devices are full of distractions. Instead, encourage them to use physical books, a Kindle, or an electronic device not stocked with games, alerts, and apps. (Sometimes it’s a good investment to print copies of online readings and store the pages in a binder.) In addition, I highly recommend devoting money to book purchases. A shelf of books is a tempting resource for a bored child. Generally, a family with hundreds of books on the shelves will have children who read well. Just $15 a month in book purchases, especially if you buy used copies, adds up to hundreds of books over 15 years.

7. Visualize

As you read, make mental images. When you are reading fiction, these images will help you understand the action of the story. More importantly, though, they will help you understand the emotions of the characters. That’s because in your images you’ll need to picture facial expressions and responses to other characters. I’ve written more about how to visualize in this blog post.

The more detailed you can make your visual images, the better. Think of yourself as creating the movie version of the book you are reading. What kinds of clothes are the characters wearing? What color are their homes and cars? Do they wink, nod, or cross their arms when they talk?

The more you connect words to visual images, the more you will understand and remember the action. At the same time, you’ll develop your brain by creating a stronger neural network of brain cells and synapses.

When you start to visualize, you’ll probably start to read more slowly. As I noted above, that’s good! It shows that you are starting to read at a deeper level.

8. Connect to Your Experience

If you want to understand a book, connect what you’re reading to what you already know. Brain researchers remind us of the importance of these connections. You can make them in a variety of ways. Let’s start with fiction.

Here’s the most important thing to do when reading fiction: Put yourself in the position of the protagonist! The purpose of fiction is to help us escape from reality, so do so. Don’t just see the characters; see what they see. Don’t just read about their feelings; feel what they feel.

Instead of thinking of yourself as watching a movie screen, put yourself onto the screen and become part of the action.

You can even make connections to your life when reading nonfiction. For example, when reading about a dispute over water resources, you could think about classroom arguments over using special pens. Perhaps a queen reminds you of a teacher you had, or a general reminds you of a coach. Maybe a famous telegram makes you think of a recent Twitter post, or a debate at the conclusion of a war reminds you of a similar debate in a sci-fi novel.

These connections won’t seem obvious, so you’ll have to work to create them. The work will pay off, though, when you find yourself remembering details that you used to forget.

For Parents:

When reading aloud to your child, use questions to connect the story to her personal experience.

  • “Would you want to be friends with this character?”
  • “How would you feel if he had done that to you?”
  • “What would you do when faced with this decision?”
  • “Have you ever felt this way before?”

9. Ask Questions

Asking questions is central to good learning. Every good thinker knows that questions are more important than answers. The best questions are ones that have yet to be answered; they pave the way for innovative answers or solutions. Asking the best questions, though, requires practice with asking simpler ones. Reading offers one of the best ways to develop this skill.

The questions you should ask while reading can take many forms. The most basic prompt for a question is, “That doesn’t make sense.” When you experience this feeling, stop reading! Create a question. Try to figure out an answer. Don’t assume that the answer is obvious.

  • “I thought I knew this word. Why doesn’t it make sense here?” (Use a dictionary. There’s a good chance the word has a secondary meaning that you don’t know.)
  • “What’s this historical event that the author is referring to?” (Use an encyclopedia. It’s good to expand your background knowledge.)
  • “It doesn’t make sense that the character would express this emotion.” (Reread the passage. Perhaps you have misunderstood what is happening. Or perhaps you are overlooking irony or sarcasm.)
  • “It doesn’t make sense that the characters overlook this way of handling their problem.” (Ask someone else for help. Maybe there is a cultural or historical context that you are overlooking.)

There are more advanced questions, of course; we cover them in courses on literary analysis. But if you just ask questions like those above, you’ll see your reading comprehension advance dramatically.

For Parents:

Do whatever you can to encourage your child to ask questions about a book he is reading. They shouldn’t be simple comprehension questions, like the ones found in a school anthology. Children need to ask questions that are genuinely puzzling to them—perhaps even puzzling to you. Consider giving a reward for coming up with questions that are difficult for you to answer.

10. Use the Right Dictionary

Everyone knows the importance of using a dictionary, but very few people take the time to use one properly. One of the problems is knowing what dictionary to choose.

  • FreeDictionary?
  • Google?
  • Merriam-Webster?

For the typical student, there’s only one dictionary to use: the Longman Dictionary of the English Language. I’ve explained at length elsewhere why this one is best. Briefly, here’s why:

  • The definitions are written with the 2,000 most common words in the English language. So you’ll never need to look up another word in order to understand the words of the definition.
  • Each definition includes a large number of sentences that illustrate usage.

Once your vocabulary is more advanced (i.e., you can define most of the words on this list with ease), you can start using more advanced dictionaries, as I’ve explained here.

The next question is how to use the dictionary. Should you look up every single word that you don’t know? In theory, that would help you build vocabulary faster. Or should you look up words only occasionally, so that you can spend more time reading and finish more books?

Of the two choices, I prefer the second one. As you read, underline or write down the words that you don’t understand. Once you’ve finished a couple of pages, take a moment to look up the words that form the biggest obstacle to understanding the passage.

Why just those words? Because the point of the passage is more important than the words it contains. (If you spend more time looking up words than actually reading, you need to switch to an easier book or article.)

Here’s the important part: take the time to write down the words and the definitions on paper.

Researchers have found that “students who write out their notes on paper actually learn more.” You should dedicate a special notebook to this purpose, ideally one that is easy to carry in a purse or pocket.

This approach was crucial for my own reading development. Before I started writing out vocabulary definitions by hand, I had trouble remembering the meanings of words. Once I started carrying a notebook in my pocket and writing down definitions, I had an easier time remembering them, even if I didn’t take the time to review.

For Parents:

It’s a good idea to have a paper copy of a dictionary in your home because finding the words helps to develop the part of the brain that sorts and classifies. Many of the greatest writers of English mastered writing by using paper dictionaries. Robert Browning read the dictionary through several times a year; Emily Dickinson wrote comments on her dictionary; Mark Twain read one during a long trip across
the American West.

11. Take Notes

Writing down the meanings of vocabulary words is one element of a larger practice: notetaking. Good thinkers rarely rely on their memory; instead, they commit their notes to the page.

Tim Ferriss is the author of three #1 New York Times bestsellers and creator of the most popular podcast on the planet. He describes himself as “a compulsive notetaker.” He has over eight feet of shelf space devoted to notebooks in which he has recorded observations about his experiments, his reflections, and his reading. All these notes were taken by hand. When writing his books, he opens his notes.

Taking notes forces you to think about what you’ve read and put it in your own words. that’s a huge aid to comprehension.

It’s a good test of it too. If you find that you can’t summarize your reading in a few sentences, you probably don’t understand it very well.

There are many ways of taking notes, too many to go into detail here. You’ll need to find a system that works for you. You can:

  • Try various systems, like Cornell notes, mind-mapping, or charting
  • Experiment with when to write your notes (while you read, or after you are done)
  • Experiment with what to include

Just keep the ultimate goal in mind: You want to understand what you read and remember it better. Find the system that helps you meet those goals.

For Parents:

Do not let your child read a textbook unless she is taking notes on a separate sheet of paper. Reading a textbook is pointless if you aren’t using some system that will enable you to sort, store, and retrieve the information. Highlighting or underlining the text is not a substitute. It’s always worthwhile to take the extra time to think and take notes.

12. Listen to Audiobooks

There’s a good chance you can improve your reading by listening to audiobooks.

From the earliest stages of its evolution, the human species has learned language by listening.

Spoken languages have been around for 60,000 to 100,000 years. By contrast, languages were first written at most about 5,000 years ago. And only in the last 200–300 years have societies started to teach everyone how to read.

Given the close link between language and speech, it’s no surprise that our language processing is closely linked to our hearing. A Georgetown University study showed that music and language are processed by similar areas of the brain. Neuroscientists observe that “the higher-order processes of listening and reading comprehension are intertwined, rather than separate.”

So, ready to give audiobooks a shot?

To make audiobooks effective, you should probably listen with few distractions, as when riding in a car or driving. But you can also listen to an audiobook while reading the book itself.

These days, audiobooks are easy to find:

  • The website www.librivox.org has free audio editions of literary classics.
  • Your local public library has CD versions of classics, popular fiction, and recent nonfiction, read by professional readers.
  • Sites like www.audible.com offer convenient downloads for a monthly subscription.

The audio technique doesn’t work for everybody. But if you haven’t tried it yet, you should. After all, you have 60,000 years of evolution working in your favor.

For Parents:

Listening to audiobooks can be especially helpful for children whose parents speak another language in the home. Also, a professional reader brings out a wide range of emotions; hearing these can help kids better understand a character’s feelings.

BONUS Tip: Talk More!

Intuitively, this makes sense. Talking, like taking notes, forces us to put material into our own words. Every teacher knows that the way to learn a subject is to teach it, talking about the subject to an audience.

How can talking help us read better, though? You might say, “I talk every day to teachers, to friends, and to parents, but I still have difficulty reading.” Of course! To make the talking approach work, you must apply it to books.

  1. First, you can talk about anything you have just read—a book, an article, or an essay someone has written for a class. Try to explain the writing to another person, and be prepared to answer questions about it.
  2. Second, when preparing for an exam, get together with a group of one or two friends to discuss the material. (Keep the group to three people or fewer so that you can stay focused.) Before the meeting, each person should write down 5–10 questions that she knows the answers to. At the meeting, have your friends try to answer the questions aloud. Use their answers as a basis for further discussion.
  3. Third, pose questions about what you’ve read to teachers, parents, or friends. Figuring out what questions to ask is an important part of learning. Listening to people answer them is also an important skill.

If you make a point of regularly talking about what you read, you will probably find that you understand the material better and remember it longer.

For Parents:

Chances are that your child is learning material you didn’t learn in school. So turn your child into a teacher; ask him questions about his reading.

Not sure what questions to ask? Think of the five W’s + H: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How. Pay particular attention to Why and How; these questions demand complex thinking.

Categorized in: 12 Tips