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Speed Reading

SkeptiChick said:
So... When we'd get those assignments in HS where the teacher wanted you to make a list of 5-10 words in the assigned reading that you didn't know, look up the words, and write down the definitions, I wound up having to "read" the assigned passages twice. Once to actually read them, and once to skim through to find words that I thought I was expected not to know.
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Yeah, assignments like that are a bit of a problem when by HS you already have a huge vocabulary...
 
dafydd said:
If I have to find a key word in a block of text on a webpage,it just seems to jump out at me.I get very frustrated if I'm looking at it with someone else and they're reading it line by line to find the word.
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I can find key words quite easily as well. If that's what I'm looking for. Find a word puzzles are cake for me. If I'm actually supposed to be reading for content though, individual words don't jump out at me.
 
dafydd said:
Then you read the sentences starting at the second word and scan till the second last word,your peripheral vision will take care of the first and last words.After a while you start at the the third word and scan till the third last word.As for comprehension,it's not a problem for me.
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What I meant to say was: Could you elaborate on that for me?

Are there any techniques to help shut up that stupid narrator? To me, saying "read the words without speaking them internally" is pretty much the same as "chew your food, but don't taste it." I don't know how I'd even start.
 
dafydd said:
Then you read the sentences starting at the second word and scan till the second last word,your peripheral vision will take care of the first and last words.After a while you start at the the third word and scan till the third last word.As for comprehension,it's not a problem for me.
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I always tested out at a high rate and high comprehension. However, not on gibberish like that. I had to read that 3 times to figure out what it didn't mean.
 
dafydd said:
Then you read the sentences starting at the second word and scan till the second last word,your peripheral vision will take care of the first and last words.After a while you start at the the third word and scan till the third last word.As for comprehension,it's not a problem for me.
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Yeah, see the problem is reading the words.

Usually you know just from the word shape what the word is. I've realized this because minor typos throw off my reading FAR more than should be expected - it's not the shape I expected to see (similarly, unfamiliar words throw me off, but frankly, there's a small number of those at this point).

Tricks like this seem pointless.
 
SkeptiChick said:
The only other problem with reading this way is that I go through way too many books, way too fast. I can can go through easily 1200 paperback pages in a weekend, if not a single day. I've actually had to work hard at not reading so fast so that my book purchasing budget can last me a little longer. :)
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Many years ago on my first job I shared a boarding house with a chap who'd taken a speed reading course (Possibly Evelyn Wood, but I can't recall). He worked from dawn to dusk on a well drilling rig, and when he'd come in at night he'd have some trashy paperback novel he'd picked up on the way. By the time he was ready for bed he often have finished the book, at which point he'd loudly complain that thanks to his speed reading prowess he was spending a good part of his wages on books since he could complete one every day or two. (Yeah, he was clearly skimming, but with those kind of novels it probably wasn't all that hard to do.)
 
In all the trashy novels he read, did he ever stumble upon the word "library"?
 
Somewhere, I read about a computer gizmo that allows one to read a single, continuous line of text. There is a throttle to control how fast the words come. Evidently, its a much faster way to read. The eye needn't jump from upper right to lower left constantly, or keep track of the line you're on.
 
SkeptiChick said:
I've never had my reading speed tested... So I can't throw a number out there for people. But I will say that as good as this manner of reading is for speed and content (I've never had a single problem recounting the content of something I've read, even a year or three down the line), it was hell for me on vocabulary assignments. Because I read the entire phrase/sentence/line/etc., and not single word by single word, I get the meaning of words from context and not by "recognizing a word I don't know then looking it up in a dictionary".
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Hmmm, IIRC, there was a lecturer in first year psych who liked to yak on about dyslexia, how dyslexia showed up. The thing is, most people have a massive memory of what a combination of letters mean for easy retrieval, and a phonetical route, whereby you could figure out what the word is via sounding it out. Both have their uses, memory route is excellent when dealing with non phonetic words, like foreign, while other is great for words like good, or misspelling's and typo's.

I also remember hearing about exceptionally good readers (nothing to do with the speed reading movement however), such as one guy who would desync his eyes in order to read both sides of a page at once, and some librarian on Amazon who was posting 4-5 reviews a day, although they could have been some kinda hoax I suppose, or maybe even really short books.
 
GreyICE said:
Yeah, see the problem is reading the words.

Usually you know just from the word shape what the word is. I've realized this because minor typos throw off my reading FAR more than should be expected - it's not the shape I expected to see (similarly, unfamiliar words throw me off, but frankly, there's a small number of those at this point).

Tricks like this seem pointless.
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Similarly, I long ago noticed I was reading entire words at a crack, and even common phrases. As they entered my near peripheral vision, I knew them before my focus passed by them.

It's kind of like memorizing your times tables up to 256x256 -- you can skip doing it "the hard way" most of the time.
 
Jeff Corey said:
I always tested out at a high rate and high comprehension. However, not on gibberish like that. I had to read that 3 times to figure out what it didn't mean.
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The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog
The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.
 
GreyICE said:
Yeah, see the problem is reading the words.

Usually you know just from the word shape what the word is. I've realized this because minor typos throw off my reading FAR more than should be expected - it's not the shape I expected to see (similarly, unfamiliar words throw me off, but frankly, there's a small number of those at this point).

Tricks like this seem pointless.
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Why pointless?
 
I took a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.

-Woody Allen
 
I was taught speed reading at a HSC Study course in 1992. To be honest, it wasn't my thing, I like to savour the words I read and feel the text (if that makes any sense) to speed through it really ruined the reading experience for me.
 
Riayn said:
I was taught speed reading at a HSC Study course in 1992. To be honest, it wasn't my thing, I like to savour the words I read and feel the text (if that makes any sense) to speed through it really ruined the reading experience for me.
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It all depends on the material.I read Moby Dick once year,and I read that slowly,but Agatha Christie and the like goes in at the rate of a mile a minute.
 
PracAthe said:
Every now and again I hear of this phenomena called speed reading. Some even claim that this greatly improves your reading ability, with no loss to comprehension. However, as with all these types of claims, you have to wonder that if this is such a wonderful thing, why don't most people do this, or the government instituted it in schools. After all, I remember my father and older brother trying this when I was 8, although I can't remember if it made any difference.

Thus, I ask you, ******** or science?
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Dunno about programs or anything, but I read at roughly 1100 words per minute, and I almost never miss a thing.
 
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