When you're reading faster your mind is always looking for short cuts, and it's going to spend less time filling in the filler words. So there a number ways of doing this: People could hum or they can bite their knuckles on chewing gum - these are not very sanitary but will help them distract themselves. Listen to music that really agrees with you; i am partial to classical music which has about 60 beats per minute. You can build very strong proficiency because when you're looking at a word, you're not looking at letters in one word, righte? Stronger readers will actually see two or three of these words together because they 're looking for ideas," she says.