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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.
Life's not fair.
I have a 155 IQ, yet I'm attending a 3rd tier University.
And I'm struggling my way through, both academically and financially.
To top it off, I barely squeaked through high school -- 2.8 GPA, #145 out of 300 in the graduating class.
To respond to your post without this turning into an IQ/Penis size contest: do you only have concentration problems when reading texts, or other fairly boring material? I've had that problem from time to time myself; and yet I can read recreational reading material in record time.
I've found this book, Arco's Triple Your Reading Speed, a comparatively honest, straightforward look at the topic, without all the nonsense other books tend to contain. Essentially, reading is all about vision; you increase your vision area, you increase your ability to read more words at a glance. This book approaches speed-reading from this angle, and teaches you to increase your ability to "see more words" at a glance. It's not magic, and I haven't reached the claimed "triple" (1200 wpm for me) speed, but I've seen some improvement. Of course, technical books still slow me down, but I'm still quite a bit faster. I'm really hoping to get to the "page-turner" speed I used to see on That's Incredible. :)
To me, the best benefit of speed-reading is the reduction in reading time. The faster you read, the more time you have to re-read the material if you need it. Reading any material twice is better than a single slow-read, especially when studying. I have only noticed any particular discomfort when I am really trying to read terribly fast - up against my limits. At that point, I can read quickly, but I find my eyes start feeling strained, as though the ocular muscles are cramping. This sounds weird, it feels weird, and I generally slow down.
Good luck.
What'dya mean there's no BLINK tag!?
I have found that if I simply read sitting up (don't lie down), but sit up, and either using a sheet of paper or a finger (a bookmark works too) just pacing yourself gets the job done fairly quickly.
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If you are reading proprerly (good, soft light and upright postion w/ little or no distraction) it becomes fairly easy to comprehend and you get done alot faster than you would think.
Here's my theory on why it works...first off, alot of ppl have TV/Music, etc on while they are trying to read. It's a distraction...if you must have noise, try classical music (something instrumental, nothing with lyrics). The other thing is, your mind can really only comprehend so much at one time.
So, here's the secret to speed reading...
The big trick to speed reading has always been to overcome the mind's natural tencency to "say" every word you read and therefore "wander".
I have found that it's really pretty easy to do, but the truth is the complaints about comprehension are true and it's a fact that becomes apparent after you try it for a while. Many ppl say that comprehension improves with practice. This might be, but it will certainly take a while to learn the technique.
By simply focusing on your reading, you will tend to learn how your mind works and develop techniques on your own.
For a good material on the subject, and some more college study help...try the following:
Study Skills Links
Speed reading is based on patterns in a given language and a statistical analysis of said patterns. A good percentage of words in a paragraph are prepositions and articles either definite or indefinite. Can you assume they are there and not need to actually read them? Yes you can, in fact American sign language does away with most (AFAIK, someone with more experience with it might want to correct me) aticles and prepositions in English because it would add needless complexity to the language structure. Speed reading takes into account portions of English sentence structure is merely grammarical fluff and thus teaches you to skip over it reflexively. It usually suggests you scan for keywords like nouns and verbs and just let your brain fill in the rest. Speed readers also suggest reading based on visual ques rather than actual literary ques. Instead of reading a phrase or term that repeats in a paragraph you just remember what it looks like visually and whenever you see it you insert the meaning of it where that pattern is. I guess in a way speed reading is sort of like compressing text based on patterns. You create virtual tokens in your brain to represent certain patterns.
However speed reading has disadvantages, reading literature where the language actually has more meaning than what it says in context doesn't work well. I can usually use speed reading techniques on stuff like newspaper articles and novels which often times are getting more across contextually than dictively. Things with more figurative language like poems or more meaningful literary pieces I read in a normal fashion, same with technical documentation. Woe to he that skims over technical documentation. Though I find even reading in a normal fashion I can go pretty fast, I think it has to do with having shifty eyes. Anyways, look into speed reading if you want to get through the daily paper quickly or skim through a Tom Clancy book go for the speed reading, otherwise I'd say just set aside some spare time to get stuff read.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Well, I can identify, I think. No Ivy League, but a tough school. I can't read anything. OK. I made it through LOTR several times, and I loved the Hitchhiker's series. But I really can't make it through an entire book. I fall asleep mid-chapter, preventing me from reading a book (I keep having to re-read the same chapter). Oddly enough, I have no problems with school. Most of my reading at school can be broken up into 5-25 page bits. I can handle that (usually). I read very often. I read periodicals. The NY Times. The Economist. Not exactly light reading. And I read *tons* of technical manuals--again, I only need to read a few pages at a time. Maybe I have ADD. Whatever. But I sure wish I could read books. I haven't made it through a pleasure book in probably 5 years. It's a pitty. But I've probably read 100,000 pages of technical material and periodicals in that time. The 'net helps out, too--good for those of us with the MTV attention span.
--Be human.
I speed-read by nature. As in, my brain naturally works that fast, due to me reading the newspaper and paperback after paperback of science fiction since I was in grade school.
Sure, it's great once in a while when you pick out details on something, but if you need to get real comprehension, you will end up reading it two or three times to get the proper amounts of comprehension.
What you gain is the ability to absorb the basic idea of an entire work quickly. But there is a certain specific rate at which your brain can absorb information -- your personal mental bandwidth -- and you can't go any faster. Speed-read too much and you will miss things.
Speed reading is not a technique that will make you more brilliant or anything. Your brain pretty much wired itself up when you were five or so, so you can't take a course on speed reading and become brilliant. It'll just give you a skill of seeming to be more brilliant because you can read fast and pick out the important aspects of a document that may or may not prove useful to you.
Gentoo Sucks
I too find recreational reading insanly entertaining and easy. This semester I have read the last two HHGTTG Books, Red Mars, and I am in the middle of Green mars right now. I have learned to cope with my disorder by utilizing the Internet, without it I would not be doing as good as I am now. I CANNOT DO Library research, I try to read those boring books, and get tried really fast. But the internet lets you read blurb about almost anything. I also find almost any aspect of computers intuitive. If you are not a CS major (or were not) consider moving that route. Make sure you dont end up having kids with someone else who has an LD, your kids will probably have asbugers(sp?).
Seriously without the internet I would be working at McD's getting $5.50. (Ok maybe not, I would probably be in the EE field :))
I am not the only one in my family with a LD. My mom has one and went through high school being told she was dumb, and lazy. Given shes not that smart, (book smart) she picks things up pretty rapidly. And one of my brothers is also diagnosed, he did take advantage of the Resource room in HS, and he has a 3.9 GPA and was just accepted to RIT (with scholarship). He's smart but can't spell for shit. (He's worse them me)
Your not the only one. there are lots of people who are, keep it a secret; people will just assume your dumb if you tell them.
What you say is definitely true. Skimming alone is bad, but I have to argue with the idea that keywords cannot be plucked out of un-bolded text.
No interesting content is made up of solely 'the's, 'and's, and 'said's. Rather, it is usually an interesting tapestry of words and phrases that come together to form the content. In this content, you will usually find some words much more important than other words.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Unless you are a lawyer, there is a little in there that you can skip and still retain full comprehension (or at least enough comprehension to be able to truthfully purport understanding of the main topics.
Taking out all the stuff we can infer from context, you get something like the following:
1. no law establishing religion or excerise thereof.
2. freedom of speech or press
3. right to peacefully assemble
4. petition government for redress of grievances
4 points, all fairly well understood even without the non-keywords included.
It takes practice to figure out what the keywords in a text are, but reading for comprehension practice (normal reading too!) will help the reader to figure out how to discern keywords from non-keywords.