Many people don't seem to understand the fine line between learning to read at enormous speeds and actually being able to understand, comprehend, and retain what you read at those speeds. After all, what use is being able to go through a large book if you don't really understand what you read?
Remember, people rarely read the way they dance. Dancing is done for pleasure, and it doesn't really matter how you dance. But reading is another thing altogether – it's almost always done with some end in view, with some point to it. And usually, attaining one's ends while reading demands that one understand the written work that one is exploring.
This is why speed reading programs and speed reading software that focus on only the physical aspect of training your reading speed are considered deficient – to be truly valuable, software or a speed reading course has to also train your understanding.
The first thing that we'll talk about when speaking of techniques of comprehension is a process called 'visualization'. Visualization is a key process when you want to truly absorb the crucial aspects of any written matter, and it is also one of the most sophisticated of the brain processes that lead to an understanding of any subject.
That said, how do you go about practicing 'visualization'? It's not really that hard at all.
Visualization means simply to form pictures in your mind about the text that you're reading. If the text is a biological text about single celled organisms, imagine the organism. If it's the minutes of a meeting, imagine the meeting. Use your imagination to make the text more than mere text. Use your imagination to make the text a reality that you experience first-hand.
And when you do that, not only does comprehension become easy, but you'll find that you'll remember the gist of what you've gone through much better, and retain it for far longer than you would have had you not used visualization.
Of course, it may take some time and practice before you can use visualizations regularly, easily, and comfortably. But the results are well worth the effort.
You need to practice visualization until it is more than merely a technique that you use sometimes. You need to practice visualization until it is a technique that you use ALL the time, more or less sub-consciously.
Your aim while speed reading is to use the visualization comprehension method to provide the memory retention skills that your speed reading abilities demand, so that these two skills, working together, give you the incredible abilities demonstrated so often by speed reading specialists, of not only reading rapidly, but of being able to demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the substance matter immediately afterward.
The best speed reading software includes tools that help you with the visualization method, so make sure you check that any software that you download or are interested in has this feature. There is definitely software around that do, like 7-Speed Reading, for example. If your favorite software doesn't have this feature, you can always practice visualization separately, of course.