How to Read Groups of Words – Chunking

Chunking words: Learn to read words groups & reduce eye fixation

Reading chunks of words is the most advanced of the three essential speed reading techniques. This method can be easily combined with hand pacing and previewing and aims to reach reading speeds of 750-1,000 words per minute.

Applying this strategy will allow you to read, process, or comprehend bigger chunks of words rather than single ones only. It was successfully used by many great scholars, writers, and philosophers. Anyone can learn chunking words into groups.

This tutorial will help you understand and implement the chunking words strategy. I will also provide free resources and materials to practice either online and offline.

Objectives & learning outcome

• Learn how to practice word hopping
• Learn how to expand your eye vision
• Implement the strategy in your everyday reading
• Use carefully designed instructions, programs, tips and assignments

Reading Chunks of Words – Overview and Benefits

Letters do not carry information – Thinking back to your school days you might recall being taught to recognize the whole word, rather than each individual letter that makes up the word. Why? Compared to words a single letter does not carry any meaning.

I also remember that I tried to recognize every single word, and after subvocalizing it I would move to the next word to finally understand the meaning of the sentence.

Words do not carry ideas – What I did not grasp was that individual words can barely communicate an idea or concept either. This can be communicated much easier within groups of three or more words, or often a whole sentence.

In school, I should therefore have learned to recognize clusters or whole sentences rather than focusing on individual words alone. The image below will show why.

In this case, only the complete phrase delivers the correct message.

Word groups can carry concepts – Using this knowledge, it is more effective to group or chunk words together in order to achieve a higher and faster reading performance. The good thing is, the brain already chunks things together in order to save time and energy or improve output.

You can see this happening many times each day, i.e., when reading signs, labels, country names, brand names or common phrases, orders, advice or instructions. We are so familiar with many of them that we do not identify each word on its own but understand the word group’s meaning at the moment we read it.

How to do it? Practicing hopping techniques and expanding your eye vision are keys to recognizing and understanding chunks of words, whole phrases or sentences.

There are multiple benefits here: The ‘word group’ or ‘chunking words’ method will help increase reading speed and also improve vocabulary and comprehension. Winston Churchill is said to have finished books within a short period of time; he could go through paragraphs in seconds and comprehend them.

There are even more benefits

• Visualization of material is easier.
• Works perfectly with skimming and scanning and hand pacing.
• Helps to reduce sub-vocalization.
• Evades hopping back during reading.
• Understand the basic idea at a glance.

How to Read Groups of Words

The Chunking technique is a general concept that can be applied to many different activities, i.e. chunking words, phone numbers or ideas and data. The goal is to get larger units of information that can be processed faster and memorized easier.

Learning to read chunks of words is all about training in which you will practice

• expanding your eye vision
• reducing eye fixation stops
• focusing on nouns and verbs
• ignoring filler words
• reducing bad reading habits
• combining multiple reading strategies

Reading word groups – The method

I used Ron Cole’s Alchemy Training Method. Ron Cole’s literature and free materials on the subject are considered to be one the best. He’s also the author of “How to be a super reader”. I read his book and practiced with the free eye-hopping material you can find below.

There are also applications and speed reading courses for desktops, tablets or smartphones available on which you can practice group reading. It really depends if you prefer learning with paper or digital resources.

Free material and resources

• Use this tool to create sheets with your own material
• Speed reading apps such as Spreeder do offer eye hopping training as well

Chunking words – Rule of thumb

As a beginner, you may start from a few words practice a week or until comfortable and then jump to the next level. It is also not about speed but on which spot in a word group you focus your eyes. Experiment a bit and enjoy the learning process.

Suggested training levels

• Beginner levels start from two words
• Medium level is three to four words
• Advanced level is five words and above

Chunking Words – Training Plan

Below is a simple schedule to start practicing. Download the PDF sheets and print them. Alternatively, you can use them on your screen, of course. Test which way is more suitable for you.

Time – I recommend committing to a training plan. A session of 10-15 minutes a day will really improve your ability to recognize multiple words simultaneously.

Start with 2 words. This is the perfect level to stimulate your brain to process a larger number of words per minute. Don’t rush or skip a skill level.

Use a pointer or your index finger to jump from one-word group to the next chunk. Try increasing speed for better stimulation and slow down to keep up with comprehension.
Tip: I tend to focus on the space between the words to recognize them all.

Limit your exercises to about 15 minutes because your eye muscles will need a rest, particularly at the beginning. There are good videos available to relax eye muscles.

Note: You might be pronouncing words in your brain while exercising. Don’t worry. Subvocalization is a common bad reading habit. You will be able to reduce it successfully by progressing to groups of 5 words.

Variation 1: There is no hard rule of how many fixations tips you should perform per line or sentence. In the beginning, you may need 3-5 stops. However, the better you get at chunking words, the fewer fixations you will need. The goal is 1-2 stops per line. Use a pointer tool to control pace and stops.

Variation 2: After mastering groups of 4 words, you can try the Zig-Zag hand pacing method. Go down the page in a zig-zag motion and jump from one word group to another chunk of words. Your goal would be to skip filler words and get the right to the central idea. Try to recognize a logical group before landing.

Reading Groups of Words – Summary

Chunking words or reading groups of words is a powerful way to capture the meaning of a sentence or paragraph quickly. This is because ideas and concepts are not delivered through individual words, but rather through phrases and sentences.

As a result, the faster you extract information from chunks of words the faster you can move on to the next group or sentence. Hence, the faster you will be able to read.

Though this concept sounds easy, it requires more effort and time than other methods to boost your reading. Using our capability of peripheral vision, students will need to expand their eye vision to see multiple words around one fixation point. A common goal is to process groups of 4 to 5 words with one fixation stop.

Tip – When chunking words into even bigger groups you will be able to reduce the stops per line significantly. It is best to split each line into two and then set a stop on each half. Alternatively, you might want to recognize chunks based on their meaning and adjust each stop based on how information is being structured or organized.

 
Other chunking techniques – As mentioned, you can use chunking to not only read groups of words but to remember things as well. Start with the items on your shopping lists and group them into chunks, i.e., dairy products, beverages or cosmetics. Then attach individual items to those chunks. Use imagination or association to recall them. If practiced regularly, you might remember even larger chunks of information, which becomes beneficial when reading books to learn new skills.

I hope this tutorial to learn to read groups of words (chunking words) will help to get you started. Keep practicing and remember it will take some time to read, process and understand larger chunks of words.

Are you chunking words together to accelerate your reading? Feel free to contact me with questions.
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