Speed Reading Just a Gimmick

Speed Reading Just a Gimmick

news.yahoo.com

When you read, your eyes act like spotlights on a stage. The construction of your eyes only allows them to focus on one small area on the page at a time, so the idea of speed reading is bunk, according to several studies published in the Journal of Vision this month.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Darn, I really wanted to learn how to do that too.

news.yahoo.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

That's not true, i have done speed reading in the past and i can still do it. Without concentrating on every single word i can read through a book or a letter pretty fast. I usually take longer if i am reading a book i like. I am pretty sure there are a lot of people who can do speed reading.


[edit on 21-3-2007 by Muaddib]

Ok so some moron couldn't figure out how to speed read so they declare it is a hoax?

Speed reading is primarily the removal of the greatest bottleneck to reading: internal monologue. Repeating the words you read to yourself slows your reading down drastically. Eliminate this and the words your eyes see are immediately conceptualized.

Next is increasing the number of structural words your eyes take in with each pass. Ignore words like 'the', 'a', 'that', etc. Your mind can figure out articles and prepositions much faster than your eyes can read them.

Last is shortening the time between pauses... the points where your eyes land on the line of text.

"Now is the time for all good men to come to the aide of their country."

At most your eyes only need to fall on 'time', 'come', and 'country'. You can easily pick up all other significant words surrounding those points and extrapolate the insignificant words.

This is dependent on knowing the definition of the words. If you ever encounter a word you don't know the meaning of, and can't reliable figure it out from context, look it up. Otherwise you lose all meaning for the entire sentence and probably a good portion of the paragraph.

Our public education is terrible at teaching our children to read. They get to the point of being able to follow words with their fingers and leave them to figure it out from there. If we incorporated accelerated reading into our 1st and 2nd grade classrooms, kids would be reading well over a thousand WPM by high school.

Thats all i do is speed read, I couldn't do it any other way.

Thanks for the info guys. I will continue to try to do it then. Why the heck do scientists and researchers try to dismiss anything they don't understand?

My only explanation is that despite what some may think, stupidity does exist, and it is not banished from those with a bunch of letters after their name.

Arrogance plays a pretty big role too. Just look at all the _blank_s that think that _blank_s are causing _blank_.

I agree with apc, the schools do not afford for the average student to learn to read properly. When I was in my freshmen year at college I read about how the average human brain repeats the words in the head, because we are trained at a young age to read aloud. Silent reading is about thinking it in our heads instead of recognizing what it is we are reading. This is a normal process for 85% of Americans. Speed reading actually isn't speed reading it is only reading efficiently, they way we recognize the world. When you see a stop sign, you stop, you don't say "STOP" in your head. It's as simple as that! APC, you are correct!!

I'm with Shar on this one. All I do is speed read. I don't know any other way to read. Even when I try to read slowly and take my time with a book I tear through it in no time.

Thank you APC couldent have put it better my self as a avid reader having read more books then most ppl read news papers and magzz (magazens ???) combined Im a self tought speed reader and the key is simply as APC explaned skipping repetive words and in my verson a sort of scaning of the page .
Wile the basic part about the area you can accutly see may be true by changing your reading from left to right and reading word for word you scan the page from left to right taking in as much as 2 lines at once and allowing your brain to prosses is into an ordered pargraph on auto more or less.
This only works for people who read treamends amounts as we get to the point were sentence structer is no longer about redaing the stuff but more on how the words are aranged .
Check this out everyone my spelling is bad behond belife and my wrighting is even worse and my LEARND sentence structer is way out in left field . Now im quite sure all you english fanitcs can spot manny mistakes in this post but and this is the BIG BUT .
If I were to just go with my true ability and not fake it this post would be unreadable to manny ppl.
Faking you may ask??? simply I dont know sentence structer but having read so much I just simply put the pargraphs togher in a way that looks like what I read and wile im sure I still make manny mistakes It sure looks better pluse because my spelling is so bad my meathed for dealing with that is simler .
Any time I have a word I need in a sentince and cant spell it I try to swich it with a word that means the same or nearly the same thing to reduce the spelling Mistakes ( EXA i was going to put in errors? arrers> errars? i think errors is correct but not 100% sure but I know mistakes is correct and means the same thing.
Pss as much as it anoys my how manny flames I get about my spelling I should realy thank the flamers as my spelling and wrighting as improved (tremandsly?? )))) alot .

[edit on 21-3-2007 by xcalbiersword]

I just read for the pictures, mmm hmmm?

Some people call it a Kaiser Blade, I call it a Sling Blade.....

Originally posted by apc
If we incorporated accelerated reading into our 1st and 2nd grade classrooms, kids would be reading well over a thousand WPM by high school.

My school did do that, of course it was a great many years ago. In 2nd grade we were taught speed reading with the use of a variable speed projector. The teacher taught us the basics that apc mentioned, then we practiced with a machine that ran the words on a projection screen just like credits rolling after a movie.

As we gained proficiency, the speed was increased and the text moved faster and faster. We had to pass a comprehension test over the story we had read before we moved to the next higher speed.

I was amazed when 30 some-odd years later my son went to school and no such program existed. His language teachers had never even heard of doing such a thing.

While I never reached a thousand words per minute, I don't know very many people who can read faster than I can. People always let me get first crack at the newspaper, they know I'll only take a few minutes.

I took a speed reading course in college. It was taught in the Education dept. as an elective.

At the begining, we were tested to determine what our 'baseline' speed would be......average was around 350 or so, as I recall. By the end of the course we were all much faster, and were averaging between 900 and 1000 wpm. And we coundn't 'fake it', as we were tested on our comprehension of the material, and no material was re-used.

It certainly came in handy when "War and Peace" or "Crime and Punishment" was on the reading list.

Everyone should be able to speed read naturally. It's just a matter of doing it and improving.

I often speed read when I don't care to take the time to indulge myself. It just happens without thinking about it for me.

Skipping text or taking in an entire para with one glance is not that difficult and as I said, it's natural and I believe everyone could do it sans their hangups or thinking too much.

Originally posted by Muaddib
That's not true, i have done speed reading in the past and i can still do it. Without concentrating on every single word i can read through a book or a letter pretty fast. I usually take longer if i am reading a book i like. I am pretty sure there are a lot of people who can do speed reading.


[edit on 21-3-2007 by Muaddib]

I personally have never done it, but several of my friends are quite avid. My best friend, can read an 800 page book within an hour or two and retain the majority of what he read. I have always intended to learn, however I have never had the time.

Of all the gimmicky, hoaxy things out there, this ain't one of 'em. I had speed reading as an elective class my senior year of high school. I can't recall what I got my speed up to since this was before Watergate story broke, but it was up there pretty far. We used these desktop machines that cast a narrow band of light on the text of a book at a controlled speed. Like most things, proficiency is a function of practice.

Here's a good site for speed reading reference. Free stuff including a free 7 day course.

www.speedreadnow.net...

I would say everyone on this board is speed reading right now... unless your spending 5 minutes per page, you are scanning topics written by fellow atsers, probably at least 600 wpm... otherwise we could never finish a forum topic. :=P:
The question is can we turn this modern computer skill into a trait usable in hardbound books? to the people who know how to speed read, does it matter if you are reading text on a screen or a page as to the speed you read?

IMO you would read a screen faster, so the transition of computer speed reading to literal book in hand speed reading would actually be harder to do than say learning it through books, and then applying it to computer abilities?

Just my 2 cents

Coven

Thanks for the sales pitch on speed reading. I didn't realize it was something I always wanted to do. I agree that it should be taught in schools while kids are still young.

I've never been tested with any of the devices you folks mentioned, so I don't even really have anything to anchor WPM rates to a term that's meaningful to me - I consider myself a very quick reader, but have no idea what it would translate to in WPM.

But some of those infomercials on speed-reading to me seem incredibly hokey - the type where you have people reading so fast they can barely turn the page of a book fast enough!! Is this what you guys can do?! Seems like it'd turn reading a book into quite the stressful endeavor!

I'd say I'm a quicker reader than anyone I know personally, but have never attempted to actually measure it. I wish such a course would have been open to me in high school or college. I credit my quick typing and reading skills to my endless hours of playing online MUDs (Multi-User-Dimensions) when I was a kid. The type where everything is text and you have to type in all your action or travel commands.

I have good verbal skills and a very good verbal aptitude. I have no idea how fast I read, but I don't really think it's all that fast, relative to the claims of some.

In order for me to fully comprehend a text, I must read it thoroughly and consider its meaning and I have never ever found a shortcut to that method.

I think that when I was in school and was doing copious amounts of reading, I was faster, but I still took the time to read my text assignments multiple times to increase my comprehension and retention.

Ultimately, comprehension and retention are the only dimensions of import in the academic setting. Speed far less important than the "midnight oil," meaning diligence.