This article will address the benefits of reading out loud, and especially how it can help you "learn how to speed read." Most of us have drifted to only reading silently, but we're forgetting the advantages to reading aloud. I believe that everyone should read at least one full article out loud every week. Reading aloud well is a good, challenging combination of both reading and talking that can contribute to the improvement of both skills individually.
The main benefit of reading aloud is that it can help you in gaining a strong familiarity of the words you're reading. This type of familiarity is impossible to achieve when speed reading or when reading regularly.
When you read out loud, you are using several different parts of your brain...
Your brain does not only have to use the eyes to read in the individual words, but also decipher how each word sounds, based on memory of the words, or based on knowledge of the groups of letters if the word is unfamiliar.
You are speaking, which requires the use of your mouth, your larynx, your tongue, and several other different parts near and around those. But not only do you pronounce the words, you also have to control your intonation, inflection, and tone, based on the sentence as a whole.
You are also comprehending, which requires fetching the connotations and possible definitions for all the words coming in, and assembling the proper definitions together to form the same meaning the author was assembling when he wrote what you're reading!
When you move through this many processes to perform an activity, the processes are forced to improve, so that the activity may be performed more easily the next time. So, the more you read out loud, the easier it will become.
After a couple days of reading out loud, you'll improve so much that it will feel like you're finally fluent in English! You will develop a general familiarity with most of the words you encounter, making it easy to read anything with similar style or language.
In any kind of reading, especially speed reading, it is important to have a very secure knowledge of all the words and sentences you are going to read. When you improve your reading out loud, you improve every other type of reading as well. Think of it as an optimization of all your language skills.
Probably the most important (and noticeable) part of your word familiarity will be the improvement of visual word recognition. Once you're 'fluent' enough to read out loud without stuttering or repeating yourself, it will be because you know what you're going to say. The only way you can know in advance what you will say is by visually recognizing the words coming up.
This is effectively speed reading on top of reading aloud. Speed reading is reading visually instead of aurally. Reading aloud is doing both - you speed read ahead so that the aural reading is smooth.
Reading out loud is very useful. Just by reading out loud a little every day, you can improve all your reading skills, and you can even get some easy speed reading training as well. Reading skills are extremely important in today's world. It is important to make sure you can read efficiently and effectively.