Chewing gum.

Read what’s comfortable. If you subvocalize, it’s totally fine. If you try to think about how fast you’re reading you’re more likely to end up missing the content because you’re actively detracting away from what you’re reading.

I wouldn’t worry about it too much, but if you insist on trying to wear out the idea, I would try practicing with books you would like to re-read. Familiarity with the content will make it easier to re-learn what you’re taking in.

I don’t think faster readers get rid of the subvocalization. They either speed it up to match or they stop being conscious of it. You want it to at least match your speaking speed or the speed a person would use if they were telling you the story out loud. I’m assuming that you don’t…talk…like…this…in…your…daily…conversations.

Ideally, when you glance at a word, you say it in your head instantly. You don’t stop to think about what word that is or how to say it out loud or study the spelling of it. Even more ideally, you glance at the first couple of words, have the context of the scene/moment, know the character’s personality, and instantly predict the entire sentence/paragraph. < — This is what happens when you get into a zone with a book that is written in a generally modern, easy style of writing. Classics with older writing styles and more complicated language are going to slow you down until/unless you get very used to them.

I’ve been reading online that this “subvocalization” actually slows reading WAY down and doesn’t help with reading comprehension (once you know how to read).

[citation needed]

It probably took me 6-7 years after noticing I was doing this to effectively eliminate it from how I was reading. I found that deliberately attempting to stop myself from doing so over time allowed me to start reading in sentence fragments instead of word-by-word. As a result, I don’t subvocalize all the words anymore. Though I might still subvocalize some fraction of them, it is greatly reduced, as well as its impact on my reading.

It’s not a race. You’re reading to relax, not break a speed record.

I think you’re putting too much thought into this. Just read the book at your own pace. Reading isn’t meant to be a race of who reads faster. Just sit down and relax with a good book. It’s that simple.

In an active listening training I just did I learned people can process 500-600 words per minute but human speech is only about 150 wpm, which is why we tend to “drift off” and think about other things while people are talking to us. I feel like that definitely supports the theory that we can read faster with no loss in comprehension without subvocalization. There was an app I used to use that helped you practice it, I think it was called Elevate.

Read aloud. I do. It’s fun.

There should never be a rush to read. Allow every single one of your sub-vocalizations to flourish while reading anything. You want the fullest and most genuine relation/dialogue to text/art.

Getting rid of subvocalization is a speed reading technique, not something to do if you just want to read faster but still enjoy what you’re reading. When I do this, it’s to just be able to scan the words on the page and just “understand” what I’m reading without thinking about it. You can train this by focusing on your breath rather than your thoughts, scanning steadily with your finger, and stopping every paragraph or so to summarize what you just read to test your comprehension. But this is only useful to me when I just want to get the information and am not looking to enjoy the writing whatsoever.

I find I read faster (while still being able to enjoy what I’m reading) by starting each book slowly, reading at least a good chunk of pages, 40-50, deliberately getting my inner monologue used to the sound of the author’s voice (their writing style), the setting and characters and other basic things about the story, while not getting too caught up on minute details. Once I have a feel for their writing style and get familiar with the characters, I naturally start to speed up until I don’t even think about whether I’m vocalizing in my head or not.

I would start fallowing along to some audiobooks while reading the physical. I swear it helps turn off the inner voice that is thinking about other things and will push your eyes through the words faster, its great to because you can speed up the audio book and really get through it quicker. There’s nothing wrong with being a slow reader and never give up. the more you do it the more seasoned you become and then in a few years you’ll look back and see the progress.

I totally relate to what you’re saying! I’m a native English speaker and yet for the longest time, I’d always subvocalize. As I started to read more books more frequently, I stopped subvocalizing. On the other hand, I still subvocalize when I read French books because French is not my first language. I’d say just read as much as you can, then?

When studying I used to listen to instrumental or foreign language music. Sometimes I still do when just casually reading

Practice. Read things that take less effort for you to read. This could be less narratively complex things, even less jargon/weird names (like in Fantasy).

The less you have to stop and think “wait which character is this?”

“Which year did we jump to?”

“Whose perspective is this?”

“How the fuck do I pronounce [fantasy word/name]?”

The more you can just read undisturbed and get your mind accustomed to doing so. Once you’re more practiced with longer reading sessions you can start including books with more complex aspects and start practicing an over-arching running-comprehension of those themes and aspects while you read without it becoming an obstacle to your reading.

But there’s a realistic limit. No one is meaningfully reading Finnegan’s Wake or A Thousand Plateaus quickly.