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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.
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#include "coucou.h"
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.
I went to the hospital after a speed reading accident.
I hit a bookmark.
-- Steven Wright
Wheeeee
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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Let's not stir that bag of worms...
You might want to read The Straight Dope about speed reading...
Recently, I tried out GnomeRSVP to find out what that is all about...
Much to my surprise, I must say that, for texts which are available on the computer, it is a very convenient and fast tool to quickly absorb huge amounts of text.
I can read somewhere around 1000 to 1200 words per minute and remember about 90% of it for about 12 hours.
That is more than enough if you have to get a quick overview about a subject.
It is not enough to write a paper about a specific topic as you loose most abbreviations or references to other texts. You also can't really enjoy the experience.
I ran a test and held a talk about a topic I know exactly nothing about, just based on the texts I read... and my recall was comprehensive and precise.
After 12 hours, the rate of recall was down to about 60% though... so, in my case, the data is not permanently absorbed, as the context is lost and I can't recall longer paragraphs as a whole...
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!?
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.
--Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all
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.
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I had this teacher in high school that force-fed us the "secrets" of high-speed reading. According to him, you only had to skim thru a page and capture the keywords in order to "comprehend" it.
Of course, this totally ignores the fact that a book doesn't have the keywords marked in bold so your eyes can fetch them quickly without actually reading the page (maybe this guy sped-read comics?).
It also ignores the fact that the teachers that assigned a book asked about the details in it, which you totally lose when you skim rapidly through it, even if you manage to understand what the book is about (extreme exercise: speed-read Beowulf, then tell us what did you understand).
The class-mates that tried this flopped miserably in the following midterm and whined to no end, rightly so (I do acknowledge they didn't have much experience speed-reading, but I still think it shows how much the method sucks).
There are some technical books where you can read the first two paragraphs of a section and skip the rest, but that isn't really "speed-reading".
"Trust me - I know what I'm doing."
- Sledge Hammer
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
Analyse your own reading habits. If you are slow, it's probably (statistically speaking) because of a small handful of common bad habits. The worst of these is mouthing the words as you go along. You'd probably have noticed the extreme case, but people do everything from mouthing them enough for a lipreader to read, all the way down to subvocalizations you can barely feel. All slow you down about the same amount, there's just a difference in noticability, both to you and others. ;-)
;-)
Other bad habits include compulsively re-reading lines several times (when you don't need to), skipping segments of the text (when you don't need to), forcing you to go back, and general wandering eyes. Note the first two are sometimes desirable.
As for the speed reading claims, they are bunk, and it's easy to see. You essentially have a fixed bandwidth along which you can recieve information from words. This is not entirely correct, but at the scales we're discussing, it good enough for government work. Speed readers claim order-of-magnitude increases, which is absurd. The fact is, nothing you do will increase your comprehension (read: download) rate that much, once you have maxed out your vision bandwidth. (Note that was the focus of my first paragraph.)
Speed reading works by dropping the amount of information obtained from the text, despite all claims to the contrary. There are times when it is useful. You might even practice it; in school it's usually called "skimming". But it's not a miracle.
The best way to increase real bandwidth is to practice, by reading difficlt things. This includes technical stuff, but also older books or novels. For instance, stuff written in the late 1800's is a little harder to read, both because they weren't afraid to use English to the fullest (without fear they'd lose readers because it was too hard), and because the language has shifted. See how far back you can go. You'll become more literate, too.
A friend of mine doesn't sound out the words AT ALL when he reads, and homophones cause him big trouble. When something is poorly written and the wrong word is used, he gets completely stumped .. he realizes that the sentence is messed up, but doesn't quite no wear. I read a little differently: when reading non-technical stuff, I usually sound out a lot of things (partially because I have a minor in poetry and love the sound of words). I don't sound out the more technical stuff (especially when it's "words" like SCSI or PCMCIA). Homophones stick out like a sore thumb to me, but they don't hinder my comprehension.
True story. What kind of reader are you? Did you notice the too homophones I used? Ok, there were three.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
I once spoke a guy who had bought a book from an commercial/home-shopping program. It did work, not as well as the commercial would make you believe it would, but he did notice that while reading the book, during the learning-process, has reading speed improved.
But the system doesn't work for everyone and it works a lot better on well-written literature.
After not using the system for a few weeks he was almost back where he started...
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.
Good point. Imagine how quick you'd get through Lord of the Rings... But why?
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Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I can read at about 400 WPM for normal text. If its really interesting, I cut down to 200. I'd say I read novels at about 200 - it lets the imagination kick in better.
If there's a lot of it, I ramp it up to up to 3000 (I think; at least its about a 8 1/2 x 11" page in under 2 seconds at about 10 point font).
Its all about the purpose of the reading. At the greatest speed, I don't even have enough time to put together whole sentences in my head (though I read every word), so I can't even completely get the general idea. However, if I'm searching for important words, it works well. This is how I read the front page of the newspaper and freshmeat.
I got as fast as I am by reading a LOT. About 30 pages every day at least. As I did it more, I got to where I could alter the speed (and comprehension) of what I read to suit the various kinds of reading that I did. Sure, there are lots of tricks - seeing everything at once, skip the articles, etc, but they just sort of happen naturally if you TRY to read faster - except for the change in the way you think.
Others have spoken correctly - you have to allow yourself to take on varying degrees of understanding. At the lowest level is merely catching the words - the highest level is imagery. I think most people read at the speech comprehension level (which is not even the same as sentence comprehension level) and are missing out on the others.
Now if you're lucky, you may be capable of actually thinking much, much faster than you speak, and may be capable of reading at around 1000 WPM without having to lose anything, but that ability is usually only reserved for geniuses.
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Flip through your tech book very fast. See what the book is made of -- lots of picture? Small font? Now, go back and do it again at a rate of about 1 second/page or so. Look for headings. Figures. Code examples. Don't read any of the actual text body. This will give you a feeling for the pace of the book -- such as, how many paragraphs on average will I be expected to read before I see a code example? It's not a specific measure, it's just a feeling.
Once you've done this, look at the table of contents. You'll know more about the chapters than you did before. Choose the chapters you want to read, based on what you've scanned. If you scanned a chapter and didn't see any code examples or headings that caught your eye (literally), skip it if you like.
When reading free form text, put your finger under the word you are reading, and follow along. Keep the two matched. If you want to read faster, move your finger faster. Try to move your finger at a constant pace, though, so if you speed up, stay sped up, don't "skim" (ironic, isn't it?) and then slow down at the good parts. NEVER STOP AND GO BACK. If you feel like you've missed something, read it again in some other pass. Get through the whole chapter (or logical break). Then if you want, go do it again.
Not exactly what people think about when they think speed reading, but it's what the first few lessons were about when I tried it. And the above is the only thing I use regularly. I never developed that thing they do where they just whip a hand straight down the page and then flip. But, what I do use works better than my old method of eyes glazing over and turning pages periodically before realizing that I'm not paying attention to what was on the last 3 pages.
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Interesting; that's how I read Perl source code. I found that out when I read a thread on the pronunciation of certain characters and constructions and realised that I didn't have a pronunciation for $_ -- when I read code, my mind would see that pattern of symbols and fill in a meaning without assigning it a sound at all.
Esli epei etot cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.