In the context of reading, regressions refer to the act of going back to words you have already read in order to read them again. Sometimes this happens when we are struggling to understand a difficult concept and we need to revisit the subject matter. However, much of the time regressions happen because we have learned some bad reading habits. The eyes sometimes to wander erratically over words we have already read, thereby wasting time, and making it difficult to flow to new naterial.

Fortunately, just as you can learn these bad habits, you can unlearn them too. All it takes is a little consistent practice. Reducing wasted time spent on rereading material can dramatically increase your reading speed.

One of the easiest ways to cut down on regressions is to use your finger to trace the words you are reading. You may remember that this was the way that you learned to read as a child. Don’t worry if you feel a little childish again when doing this. The important thing is to practise doing this regularly.

In future, whenever you read something, run your finger underneath the line of text you are reading. The finger is sometimes called the pacing finger when you do this. At this point, we are not deliberately trying to speed up our reading, so try and keep your reading at your usual speed. If you train your eyes to continually progress to new words in the sentence, without returning to old words, the number of regressions will reduce.

Because using a pacing finger is so easy to do, and is something that you can do anywhere, you should get into the habit of always reading like this, even when you feel that you can do it without your finger.

Tackling regressions is just one exercise we can perform when increasing our reading speed. There are many more techniques, drills and exercises that we can use, and these will be introduced in upcoming tutorials. The next tutorial will help improve how well you pick out words and groups of words, so that you don’t have to just read one word at a time. I recommend that you practice using your pacing finger for a week before moving onto the next exercise

Stay tuned!