Speed Reading Just a Gimmick

When I was in college over 20 plus years ago I took the Evelyn Wood speed reading course.

I thought it would make studying easier and it did in some respects.

It did work but it really depends on the type of material you are reading as to how fast you can really read.

If you read for enjoyment it would be ludicrous to speed read.
If you have to read long boring documents or contracts and need to find specific information I think it works really well.

As for comprehension of technical information imo it does not work so well.

www.pryor.com...

[edit on 21-3-2007 by etshrtslr]

I picked up a speed reading book a number of years ago, and gave it shot.

It was actually quite easy to understand, and made alot of sense, and worked well for non technical materials. i.e. entertainment materials, magazines, books, newspapers and so fourth. But when it came to wanting or having to understand in-depth, what was being communicated, it was difficult to comprehend and retain what I wanted. Partly because of my obsession with accute meanings and context of words, but mainly because my brain needed an extra moment to really digest the info.

The book I read, attempted to train the reader how to use periphial vision. The eye would never actually look at a word, but the space between them, and the frequency of 'pauses' at the empty space would decrease as your skill would increase. Like another poster mentioned, you brain eventually learns to pick out common word combos, leaving only important contextual words to be 'logged'.

The world's fastest readers actually can look at the center of a page, and comprehend/retain the info therein.

Moderate speed readers may only look at the middle of each sentence.

I advise anyone to pick up a speed reading book and give a read.

We were told to use the Reader's Digest magazine for practice.....the columns of copy were just about perfect for going down the page, just looking in the center of the column, and being able to 'get' the rest of the line.

We also used a device that would cover a 'standard-size' book page and it would mechanically 'scroll' a bar down the page. It looked like an oversized bookmark and had several speed settings.

If you want to test your speed, I believe you can have some one time you for a minute or so and count the number of words you read....( seems like a 'word' was at least 5 letters, so you'd count two small words as one.....)

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

Talk about tunnel vision - figuratively and literally. Someone needs to explain to these scientists the concept of 'peripheral vision'. Just because the eye is not focused on something, doesn't mean it doesn't reach the visual cortex.

I am not sure speed reading is for me... i like to take my time to understand what i read. Pluse, i do not know how effective it is... peace

Originally posted by theutahbigfoothunter
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?

Excuse the snarky tone, here, but THIS scientist speed reads. So do a lot of others.

The paper basically described the mechanism (reading chunks of 8-10 words at a glance) and added several bits of information that are useful (such as your speed may decrease as your vision gets worse and there are some noted changes with aging.)

Please, just because a pair of researchers says something, do NOT label us all as following blindly or accepting the whole thing. I have always read much faster than usual (around 600 words/minute, so a 200 page novel lasts about 90 minutes for me), but if in a hurry I can speed read a 5,000 word article in 5 minutes... and discuss it rationally.

I did it all the time in class. It was marginally annoying to my fellow students and left the profs rather bemused. About one student in 100 can do this.

So hammer at the TWO Researchers. Call for a re-study.

BUT DON'T SAY ALL SCIENTISTS AND SNEER AT US, THINKING WE ALL ADHERE TO THAT! (grrr)

Okay?

(sorry. I get very tired of the slams against scientists by people who have never actually met any of us.)

If I "speed read" I never remember the text as much as if I truly concentrate on the text and take my time.

Granted if I want to skim something over and pick out key words... Ill do some "speed reading".