Speed reading. Anyone give it a try?

[Jbroad572]

Well there was a seminar today on campus regarding effective reading. www.effectivereading.com for those interested. Well anyways, they came and ran us through the program and of course taught us a sample of speed reading. At the end you ca sign up for the course and all and it's a 4 week course taught by a teacher on campus. Of course it sounds good to the ear, as you know they get you very interested then spring the cost on you. I according to their test increased my reading speed by 198 wpm. I didnt necessarily retain all the info, but I do feel with practice and maybe some guidance I could. I put a $5 deposti to hold a position in the 4 week class. Mainly so I can come find out if any of you guys have tried it and have any opinions. In the course they mainly emphasize faster reading, comprehension, retention, concentration through a number of methods. So give me some feedback, is it a rip or worth my time and money? The class is $230 or I can just buy the video for like $70, it'd be nice to have someone there in person though to instruct.
What do you guys think?

 

[vorlonix]

eh, nothing like normal reading if you ask me.
its nothing more than skimming.

 

[SunByrne]

Speed reading is mostly snake oil. You can compute based on the amount of text you can get into your fovea (central vision) while still being able to see it, and the rate at which people can move their eyes, that the absolute upper bound on reading speed would be 600wpm. Any claim that you can actually read at a rate near or above that is BS. Also, even if you could go that fast, don't expect much in the way of comprehension.

Speed "reading" therefore can't really be reading. Skimming, maybe, and that can have uses. The best way to actually improve your reading speed is to read a lot of challenging text.

 

[Edwood]

Speed reading works, but it's really really really hard to unlearn the piss slow phonetic method of reading we are taught in grade school. "Hooked on Phonics works for me!" Yeah, and I still read not much faster than the speed of a grade schooler. OK, I'm exaggerating. But it's still slow.

The theory behind speed reading is to read by recognizing the visual patterns of words, not by sounding them out in your head. We can see things alot faster than we can speak.

Incidentally people with photographic memory read this way. Anyone with photographic memory here?

-Ed

 

[Jbroad572]

So do you speed read? Would that mean you would encourage it? I just need as many opinions as possible, because with $240 I could buy a new cable for my 650's

j/k, but I feel that if it really is legit it is more than worth the $240 and it's something I can take with me the rest of my life. They have a money back guarantee, but I'm sure that's a little and probably some catch to it.

 

[Edwood]

Get the guarantee in writing then. "Guaranteed to read ___words per minute. "

If they balk, then it's a bunch of male cow feces.

-Ed

 

[Jbroad572]

Its just that your speed will double by the end of the course. Which mine doubled just from what they were teaching us today, so I think they have that one prepared.

 

[Demolition]

While enrolled in a university transfer program at a local community college, I needed some "basket weaving"-type courses as electives. So, I took an "Advanced Reading" course in the Developmental Studies department, which turned out to be speed reading.

As Ed mentioned, they teach you to recognize the visual patterns of words (AKA "scanning"), while simultaneously trying to break you of the usual practice of phonetically sounding-out words in your head (AKA "vocalization"). In my class, there were no guarantees of increased reading speeds (I've heard such wild claims of 2500 wpm and higher in some of those late-night TV infomercials), although the techniques that we were taught did result in mild speed increases (e.g. ~50-75 wpm increase for most people). However, they were secondary to the main goal of increasing reading comprehension. After all, anybody can "read" at 20,000 wpm, as long as you can scan written pages with your eyes at that rate. But, what use is it if you only retain/comprehend every hundredth word?

Anyway, unless things have changed in the last 15-20 years, I suspect that they'll use the tried and true methods, such as telling you to avoid subvocalizing words as you see them, avoid reading the same word/line over and over, and encourage you to see more than one word at a time. Basically, they try to teach you to take a photo of the page you're reading (i.e.. brain as photocopier) instead of imprinting each word sequentially on your mind (i.e. brain as dot-matrix printer).

Well, let us know how it goes.

D.

 

[ServinginEcuador]

I bought and used the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading System a few years ago. It worked 100%. My rate tripled or so, and retention went up with it. Instead of reading a word at a time I can do about 4-6 words at a time and take it in. When I push myself I can pass 1000wpm, but generally stick to about 400-600.

I highly reco one of these type courses over the read a whole page at a time and get up to 6000wpm or something rediculous.

 

[usc goose]

Quote:

Originally posted by Edwood Incidentally people with photographic memory read this way. Anyone with photographic memory here?

in my younger days, people used to say that. getting old though. last i was tested i think i was pushing about 800 wpm and i've never learned speed reading. i read ridiculously fast but i have to read everything twice if i want to understand and retain it.

 

[radrd]

I can read extremely fast, with pretty good retention, but I don't like to. It's more fun and productive to go at a comfortable pace where I can think about what I am reading. What's the point of reading if you don't get anything out of it? Also, most of my classes (English major) have required me to come up with arguments and draw conclusions, and that's hard for me to do when I'm just devouring pages.

 

[Earwax]

The techniques that those outfits teach do work. But you have to keep practicing and pushing yourself after the course is over or you'll drop back down to your old, more comfortable speed.

 

[Edwood]

Memory retention.

I think I'm suffering from "Memento" memory. I just start yammering on about something. Pretty funny that speed reading is easy, but remembering what the hell you read is another story altogether.

Uh.. What was I talking about?

-Ed

 

[Habib]

I am a very fast Chinese reader, but only an average English reader. My retention is about the same level for both but since I read one faster than the other I guess I retain more Chinese reading over the same period of time.

For some reason, I just naturally "speed read" for Chinese, but it never crossed over to English. At this point, I can write in English better and faster than in Chinese but I still read very slow - at least not to my own expectation

It's very frustrating...

 

[SunByrne]

I see the snake oil folks are winning.

Look, it's simple arithmetic. It takes about 230 milliseconds to move your eye to a new fixation point (this is called a "saccade"). With each fixation, assuming you can pattern-recognize the words, you can get 2-3 words per fixation (split the difference, call it 2.5 words):

.230 sec/saccade X 2.5 words/saccade X 60 sec/minute = 652 words/minute.

That's the fastest you can just MOVE YOUR EYES to actually see all the words on a page. It's simply not physiologically possible to read every word and read faster than this. (Demolition's statement " anybody can "read" at 20,000 wpm, as long as you can scan written pages with your eyes at that rate" is incorrect because NOBODY can move their eyes even remotely close to that rate.) This doesn't include time to do any kind of processing of the text, this is just to get the words in view.

Can you improve your reading rate by improving visual recognition of words? Sure--in fact, that ~50-75wpm improvement for relatively average readers sounds about right.

If you want to include any time at all to process the words and not just simply see them, the true maxium reading rate would be around 535 wpm (that's a whole 50 milliseconds extra per saccade).

Anybody claiming to read faster than that is only reading some of the words--therefore skimming. Skimming can be fine for some things--I get a lot of email, for instance, that I only skim--but for full reading with good comprehension, beware claims of very high rates.

I have more, but I have to go teach...