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Education

Speed Reading? 68

Posted by michael from the slow-down-cowboy dept.
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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Speed Reading? More

Speed Reading?

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  • Slashdot ! (Score:3, Funny)

    by dago ( 25724 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @03:45PM (#3202448)
    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)

    --

  • Would have been great in College (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21, 2002 @03:48PM (#3202481)
    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 (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      The "forgetting what you've read" thing, that makes you reread it over and over again is a sign of Attention Deficit Disorder (not to be confused with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). You may wanna talk to a physciatrist about it.

      (BTW - I have ADD, and drugs help out quite a bit).

    • Re:Would have been great in College (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

      • Re:Would have been great in College (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        My IQ is only 130, but I have the same problems as you. I wasn't really hand feed in HighSchool, I was diagnosed with an LD, but my pride and the "other" students led me to avoid utilizing the "Retard Room". Personally, I don't think its fair that they stick us with the mentally retarded. I was however 40th in my class (out of 200), and I have a 3.6 GPA now. I am one year away from my BA in CS.

        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.

        • The thing about recreational reading is that the language is usually at a lower level than technical reading, and it usually doesn't involve very abstract concepts, like a computer science textbook would. The amount of interest is a big factor as well, however. If you're reading a story, say, and the characters are amusing and the plot is involving, you'll obviously read through it faster than a discussion on memory paging or task scheduling (unless you're really interested in those). I know some people that have trouble reading. The advice I would give is do "preliminary reading." Go through a chapter and read things like the section headers or bold faced words to get an idea of what it will be about. Then when you start to actually read, try to identify the main idea of a paragraph and then re-read it with that in mind. Just don't give up. Keep reading. It's worth it.
      • Well, my IQ has varied in tests between about 115 to over 170. No, I don't place any value on the high score as it was heavily maths based which I'm very good at; an IQ test based on image recognition would rate me lower. This gave me a 2.2 honours degree (in the UK degrees are rated 1st class, 2.1, 2.2, 3rd class in decending order) and a pass in an MSc which, to be honest, I really should have got a distinction in as I was probably one of the most technically skilled in the class (this wasn't too hard, given the majority of the class :) )

        Anyway, the point I'd like to make is that IQ != good marks at school/college/university. Learning things by rote can get you a passing grade in most subjects. A high IQ should give you an advantage in analyzing questions to get good answers and give you a few (lot?) more marks, but if you haven't got the learning bit done right, an IQ of 200 isn't going to help you get a top grade mark.

    • 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.
    • My IQ is 149 but I barely graduated high school with a lovely 2.0 GPA, made a 25 on my ACT which was the only way i made it into my university [tntech.edu]. While I was taking classes, I managed in 4 semesters to make a 1.18 GPA, due to a complete unwillingness to study & attend classes, not that I don't enjoy learning. I just never had to study in my high school to pass anything, it just wasn't important. Now I am suspened from school for a semester, and looking at how I can possibly raise my GPA so that maybe just maybe I won't have to depend on my ACM Programming Contest Awards to get a job out of College.
  • What did you say?? I forgot what I just read.. must have been reading too fast..

  • Hopitalized... (Score:5, Funny)

    by heliocentric ( 74613 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:01PM (#3202581) Homepage Journal
    I went to the hospital after a speed reading accident.

    I hit a bookmark.

    -- Steven Wright

  • Speedreading (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JMZero ( 449047 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:08PM (#3202625) Homepage
    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.

    .

  • The straight dope about speed reading (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ilari ( 27923 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:12PM (#3202642)
    You might want to read The Straight Dope [straightdope.com] about speed reading...

  • Computerized speed reading (Score:5, Informative)

    by JMemmert ( 564338 ) <memmert@@@jpmdesign...net> on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:16PM (#3202676) Homepage Journal
    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...

  • I had a quick course in college. (pun sort of intended). But I am woefully out of practice because it something you have to focus on and remember to do.

    It was a one day intro with some stuff to study and practice. It actually did help comprehension, and did dramatically reduce time spent reading most material. However-- it was extremely fatiguing!! I figure that as I read more, quicker, I had to stop and take a break three times as soon (and thus, more often) as normal reading. However, time saved is time earned.

    Not all materials are conducive, either. I think Lit was hard to speed read-- but I enjoy getting lost in the vicarious experience and tend to slow down and enjoy it better (hmm, works with love-making, too; definitely don't want to speed through that!).

  • Check out Photo Reading.

    http://www.photoreading.com/

  • My own reading speed... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mmaddox ( 155681 ) <oopfoo@gma[ ]com ['il.' in gap]> on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:28PM (#3202788)
    ...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 [amazon.com] 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 [amazon.com], 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.

    • Is that the book where there are examples of staring at one letter, and seeing letters in the two columns beside it?

      I once looked at a book like that, and I wanted to find it again. Even it it didn't increase my reading speed, it was still quite interesting.
    • 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.

  • Sounds odd. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by King of the World ( 212739 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:32PM (#3202821) Journal
    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... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by OneFix ( 18661 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:41PM (#3202902)
    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 [ttu.edu] .
    • your post (esp. heavy use of 'ppl') reminds of an interesting thing I learned recently. In Hebrew, reading material not targeted at childern doesn't use vowels. As in 'ppl' for people. Of course hebrew uses vowels very diffently than english (they don't change the meaning of the word - just expain how to pronounce it) but that would increase the word density (and possibly read rate). it also makes the assumption that you know the words, which. I submit, is why may people '"say" every word'. it's a crutch that helps a lot with words you don't recognize, but for most words it just slows you down.
      • Yea, you're right...in general, when you are talking about "generic" writing (like comments tend to be) alot of words are meaningless and the "ideas" can be very abstract. If you understand the subject, you can easily get the idea without reading the whole thing :)

        Then again, purely factual writing generally doesn't include meaningless words. In technical writing the structure of the sentences and placement of words all have meaning. That is why "speed reading" doesn't work well with technical documents.

  • Powered by Ramen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Graymalkin ( 13732 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @04:47PM (#3202954)
    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.
    • That sounds sort of like how I read. I generally don't read all of a word, just the first and last few letters and put the sentance together by context. It makes it really hard to read outloud, because my eyes skip lines, and I make the sentance sort of sound write, and my spelling and grammer are pretty poor, because I never read enough to pick it up. However I read at around 500 wpm unless it is quite technical or uses extremely rare words.

    • 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.

      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.

  • 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.

    • Re:question regarding word per minute... (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      1) Find a book with a fairly heavy amount of text-per-page ratio.

      2) Pick a page that starts with a complete sentence and ends with a complete sentence.

      3) Start stopwatch

      4) Read page

      5) Stop stopwatch

      6) Count the number of words you read

      7) Using simple algebra, divide the value you got in #6 with the reading you got in #5. Adjust to figure out WPM.

      For extra credit, read the selection again and time yourself again. You should be able to retain more information on the second reading and improve your reading speed simultaneously. But, really, you'd expect that since you can mentally skip over stuff that you retained on the first go through.

      • Re:question regarding word per minute... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The other way...
        Read your usual reading material for a minute and count the words. The speedreading class texts had numbers at the end of each line counting the total words, so it was easy to check. Of course, you could have this rescaled - read for 5 minutes and have the numbers represent 1/5 the number of actual words.
    • divide the # of words read by the length of time it took to read them(words/minute). a simple way to get a word count of a text is to use the wc command, at least on unix-type systems.
  • 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".

    • Re:Speed reading SUCKS (IMNAAHO, YMMV) (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      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.

  • Bah... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cmowire ( 254489 ) on Thursday March 21, 2002 @06:46PM (#3203883) Homepage
    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.

  • Impossible (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If by speed reading you mean that you are reading like the guy in the infomercials, it's impossible. Cognition has a property called 'attentional blink', where by the systems that are responsible for transfering information between different regions of your brain are busy for a finite ammount of time. For more information on it check here [20m.com] and I think you'll agree. You may also want to check out the articulatory control unit and iconic memory. If you ask anyone who is worth their salt in the field of psychology or neuroscience they will agree that it's just impossible to do.
  • 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 [m-w.com] 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.
    • I'm the same way with reading and not observing the "sound" of the word. Unfortuneately although benificial, it has caused me problems. For instance, consistently mispronouncing words, and being laughed at, simply because I had read them and absorbed their meaning long before I ever heard them or had them presented to me in a classroom situation. In 3rd grade I was charted at being able to read (for comprehension) at an 8th grade level. I read LOTR for the first time in 2nd grade. I naturally read at 350-400 wpm, and have been able to conciously speed read (without any kind of training) at a much higher rate, albeit at a lower level of comprehension.

      Long and short of it is, it definately hurts your ego when in high school you do things like pronouncing "dachshund" (wiener-dogs) as "dash-hound" not only to be laughed at and later hear it pronounced "doxond". Even still, I pronounce composite as "KOM-pahzit" instead of "kom-PO-zit" or "KOM-PAH-zit"
      • I went to my sister's HS graduation, and the principal gave his speech... he used the word epitome, but pronounced it "epi-tome" instead of "e-pit-o-me" [m-w.com]. And that's one of those words I consider a classic high-school-english-paper word. Of course, this was about the time Ernest P. Worrell [yesterdayland.com] was pronoucing the word that way, and it took me a little bit to figure out that there were two words, but then again I wasn't the principal.

        Thanks for the heads up on dachshund -- you just saved me some future embarassement! So far in my life I (luckily) haven't to spell either doxen or pronouce dachshund.
    • I'm definatly the same way. My lack of sounding out words leaves me at a loss when it comes to proper nouns that I read. It seems like my brain subconciously assigned variables to people that I read about, so that when I read the sentence "John and Salley went down to the market to buy some bread from Mr. Williams." I get PersonA(male) PersonB(female) market bread-PersonC(older, male). Later in the story, if Mr Williams is mentioned again, then my brain references PersonC from that sentence. I'm not sure what in my formative years made me do this, but it's fascinated me forever. If someone could provide insight or if they do it too, please let me know, it's very interesting.
  • I've never actually studied speed reading, but I can "read" large amounts of text quickly by selectively cutting out large chunks - normally complete paragraphs.

    I'm not totally sure how I do it, but it's along the lines of making a realisation that this paragraph is going nowhere, is too verbose, or is just something I know already. I find myself scanning ahead to look for keywords that indicate that I probably already know what this paragraph is trying to put across.

    For example, if i'm reading a magazine article on some new whiz bang technology, and a paragraph starts of talking about XML and XSLT, i'll very quickly scan the rest of the paragraph to see if it looks like it will add anything to my existing knowledge of XML and XSLT. If the last paragraph said "so therefore you can use XSLT to translate an XML document into HTML.", i'd realise that I don't need to read the whole paragraph.

    I think.
  • 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...
  • 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.

  • What I got out of it is that the structure of the book can tell you alot. When reading a novel, don't you find yourself drawn toward the dialogue sections, rather than the lengthy paragraphs describing the scene of the crime?

    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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