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

Slashdot !

[dago]

Just read slashdot comments at 0.

and try to get the interesting answers ... the go at +4 and verify if you catche the good ones

(or if there was a bias in the moderation system)

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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. :-(

Re:Would have been great in College

[The Mayor]

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.

Hopitalized...

[heliocentric]

I went to the hospital after a speed reading accident.

I hit a bookmark.

-- Steven Wright

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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The straight dope about speed reading

[Ilari]

You might want to read The Straight Dope about speed reading...

Computerized speed reading

[JMemmert]

I read very fast in everyday life... somewhere between 300 and 400 words per minute, I'd guess, with a rate of recall of about 90% for a day and still 60% after a week (Yes, I have a good memory).

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...

My own reading speed...

[mmaddox]

...was in the neighborhood of 400 wpm before I started actually trying to speed-read. I have always been considered a comparatively quick reader, and have good comprehension, especially where novels, history, and other, non-technical literature is concerned. I picked up a book on speed-reading after becoming a professional software developer, and struggling to comprehend technical books with the same ease that I had experienced with other books.

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.

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.

It's not what you think...

[OneFix]

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.

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 .

Powered by Ramen

[Graymalkin]

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.

Bah...

[cmowire]

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.