Speed Reading?

Chacham writes "Anyone here have success with Speed Reading? I've seen complaints about less comprehension, that it is uncomfortable, and that it's just plain hard to do. I've also seen people say it is invaluable. What are your experiences? I am particularly interested about reading technical resources, but I am curious overall as well." We've actually asked this before, but it's been three years, might as well take a second look at it.

Comments

Would have been great in College

[Anonymous Coward]

I have an IQ of 140 and attended an Ivy League college after having aced High School, and I nearly failed out of college because I read so slowly. I read some passages 3 or 4 times because I seem to tune out, and then on the 3rd or 4th pass I "remember" to pay attention to what I'm reading. I spent many nights trying to read texts until well past 3am. For assignments that were "on reserve," i.e. we had to go to the library to read the selections, it was a nightmare.

A big problem, aside from being inherently slow at reading, was that I would fall asleep within 30 minutes of starting to read. This seemed to happen no matter where I was -- library, dorm room, sitting on the grass -- and regardless to how much sleep I'd had or how much caffeine I ingested. If I could read & comprehend quickly, I would have had a 4.0. I guess I should have taken a speeed reading or reading comprehension class or something, but I guess I had too much stupid pride. :-(

Speedreading

[JMZero]

Speedreading is good for reading things that are more verbose than you'd like.

Most of the things I'm willing to read have a high content/words ratio - my bottleneck in "time-to-comprehension" performance is usually not "how fast can I read". But I suppose it might be if I was into reading the Sunday paper.

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Sounds odd.

[King of the World]

Speed reading is really a misnomer and the wrong way of looking at the problem. It's about rentention. It's all about improving rentention. Like drawing the outline of a picture before you fill it in I strongly believe retention is improved by skimming a book (randomly flicking through) so the mind can prepare to organise that information.

question regarding word per minute...

[CanadaMan]

I'm wondering if anyone knows how to find out at speed a person reads. I'd be interested in finding out what my WPM is so that if I choose to improve I am able to track my progress.

Thanks.

Only speed read when you have to.

[gdr]

Unless you need to read a large ammount of text and quickly extract to main points (e.g. for your job) I wouldn't bother.

If you just want to be able to read more books in less time, it's not worth it. Anything that can be speed read without losing any meaning isn't worth reading.