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Ask Slashdot: Technical Speed Reading Courses? 107

Posted by Cliff from the can-you-read-this-under-one-second? dept.
Headius is concerned about the following: "In today's bleeding edge technological world it's a chore just to keep up with all the new developments. My only answer is to keep expanding my library, both digital and physical. The only problem is my reading speed and speed of comprehension. I always read everything word for word, or I miss some critical bit of information. Does anyone know of a "speed reading" course that really works, and works well for the tightly packed information in most tech texts today?" I've always wondered about this. I've seen folks speed read before and I'm just amazed at the fact that they can go through pages of text in under 10 seconds and comprehend it all. This would be a worthwhile skill to learn.
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Ask Slashdot: Technical Speed Reading Courses?

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  • Hehe, due to `slow reading', I still have snippets of books I read once over 15 years ago. Mind you, they were novels, and those snippets are stored as images (scenes) rather than words, but that's how I read anyway.

    Only problem, reading texts (non fiction) usually puts me to sleep. Might have to try the coffee beans mentioned above.

    Oh, and for books that I re-read several times, even ~15 years ago? Just about the whole story line is in my head (sufficient to describe the story), with the odd detail crytal clear.

  • It makes a novel much more interesting and memorable if you can `hear' it (IMHO).
  • Evlyn Wood was reputed to be a good speed-reading course, but I couldn't come up with the dough when I saw it last and I don't know if they are still in business.

    Speed-reading technical stuff generally doesn't work as well as you'd like, and the Wood people admitted that when I asked (years ago). Your speed was supposed to go up for technical reading, but not as fast as it would for general reading.

  • Posted by liver:

    get a stylus-type thingie. run over the text with it. you will probably double your reading speed. This is because the primary problem the eye faces is going to the next line and making sure that is actually the next line. so if the pen does it for your eye, all your eye has to do is read... time yourself. /me will now get flamed.
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    Appearantly you don't know what speed reading is.

    What we now know as speed reading grew out of research the military did with fighter pilots. They were showed slides of various enemy aircraft at various distances and the object was to find out how far away a pilot could be from an enemy plane and still know it to be a hostile, and how quick he could do it.

    Speed reading is a subtle change in the way our minds naturally process information to maximize the results.

    I read a book once by Gary Buzan about speed reading and it gives a lot of history as well as his method.

    LK
  • Posted by Lord Kano-The Gangster Of Love:

    Appearantly you don't know what speed reading is.

    What we now know as speed reading grew out of research the military did with fighter pilots. They were showed slides of various enemy aircraft at various distances and the object was to find out how far away a pilot could be from an enemy plane and still know it to be a hostile, and how quickly he could do it.

    Speed reading is a subtle change in the way our minds naturally process information to maximize the results.

    I read a book once by Gary Buzan about speed reading and it gives a lot of history as well as his method.

    LK
  • Posted by beer4me:

    I at one time wrote a windoze program that took a text file, and flashed it a word-at-a-time in the same point on the computer screen. You'd be surprised how easily the brain can recognize words without having to actually read or process each one. --Thus, eliminating the need to move your eyes around the page allowed me to exceed 1000 words/min with good comprehension.

    I don't know if i still have it around, but I'm sure it could be reproduced pretty easily if i don't. (ask me to look if you'd like...)

    Ths nice thing here, is that it allows you to speed up your reading, without going to classes or having to learn how.
  • NLP teaches that the mind has seen the whole page in only an instant and that you can allow the mind to sort out the information so that it can be brought into the conscious mind from the non-conscious.

    Each page takes a few seconds to scan and all that moves is the finger moving down the edge of the page in a fairly rapid manner. Your eyes are fixed at a point slightly above the book and are unwavering.

    Books can be read in this way upside down and then the mind inverts the pages.

    I have seen individuals who have read in this manner reading the odd number pages, then inverting the book and read the even number pages upside down.

    Then the mind inverts the pages, reassembles them in the corect order and then downloads to your consciousness some of the information. The rest of the information is still there in the non-conscious, and can be recalled when a need arises for the data. It is as if you just know the answer.

    There are a lot of good books on NLP in the libraries. This is only the tip of the iceberg as to what NLP is all about.
  • Phonetically reading unknown words and then *later* matching those sounds up to vocabulary you learn after-the-fact can't work, because English has too many damn ambiguous pronounciations such that you end up having to just memorize every word. (The classic "ghoti = fish" example).

    If I learned to pronounce "system" as sigh-stem by looking at the spelling (which is perfectly valid given the rules of the letters that make it up), I would have a hard time recognizing later on that that is the same word as sis-tem.

  • My 5 year old is learning phonics in kindegarden
    the progam is called finger phonics. He can now
    read most Dr. Suess books. It's a good thing.
    I think that school are starting to clue in
    an go back to stuff that works
  • Most of the comments so far seem to deal with speed reading, in limiting what you read. There is another approach though.

    I once read a book, well part of it, and it spoke about how we read slower than we comprehend. When your eye sees a word, it fixates on it, and then you read the next word. Fixating on each word slows you down a lot. Then there's the point that you can see a lot more then what you are centered on. It's a matter of not shifting your eyes, but forcing yourself to see what's around you. And, then there's the reading it in your head. Since you can see faster than you can read, reading it in your head only slows you down.

    The book had excersises, and they needed to be done religously. I don't know if it works though; I never made it past the beginning.

    I don't remember the name of the book either. I got it from the liberary a while ago.
  • Hey, you don't have to know everything about everything in the industry. Just focus on a few things that you enjoy and learn them well. Everything else will fall into place.

    Computer languages are basically the same.

    Networking and Hardware is easy enough if you have the papers that came with the pieces and a couple of reference manuals.

    Databases are mostly all alike.

    Being on the bleeding edge can be a good thing...unless the newest fad falls on it's face.

    Take it easy, relax, and enjoy what you do.

    Misfit
  • I read a lot. A LOT. My speed seems to vary.. sometimes I can plow through a book in a matter of hours, sometimes it takes days/weeks... the reason for this depends on the subject at hand and how my mind is treating that subject.

    I read somewhere, i think it was InformationWeek's Secret CIO column, where he described three different types of reading (that some linguist in the 70's coined):

    [i probably have the exact terms wrong, but the meaning is still there, i think]

    - Absorption reading. This is very similar to skim reading: you intentionally read each line fast in order to absorb information in the least amount of time. Because you're reading fast, all that your brain is dedicated to is *absorbing*. This is good for reference manuals or novels.

    - Retention reading. This is the typical pace when you're introduced to new concepts, or are reading material that requires some thought to understand. Usually this is how you read when you're studying for mathematics or some other subject that requires *understanding* and regurgitation of that *understanding* rather than just the information that is on paper.

    - Synoptic reading. This is the highest form of reading, and is pretty slow. Basically, it's "reading in between the lines" - trying to get new (sometimes unrelated) ideas based on previous work that is similar to the area you're thinking about.
    Synoptic reading could be used to describe why the "Design Patterns" community was related: it took a lot of the ideas from Christopher Alexander's building-architecture work and applied it to their area.

    I think those categories are good... For purely technical books, the first two would probably be most effective, but for "big picture" books like those on Design Patterns or software design, I think "synoptic" reading might be the best way to approach the book...
  • There are programs for spitting text onto the screen at a certain speed. But then you need the text in digital form, of course.

    You could possibly use an old modem for the same purpose. 2400 baud would probably be fine. Remember to disable data compression. :-)

    --Bud

  • Yes.. but the concepts are the same. Recursive vs Iterative, lists, arrays, functions, structures, etc. etc.. these are prety much universal in programing languages. The only real diferance is syntax and style.

    Sure Lisp is not even close to C/C++.. but the concepts are the same. Once you know the basis behind what you want to do.. the language is irrelevant.

    -Ex-Nt-User
  • Hmmm, while I have never taken a speed-reading course, or so much as inquired into its methodology, I have had many friends who did so as a natural part of the programs we were enrolled in for high school. One thing I have always found is that not only did i naturally read faster than those who went through the training, my comprehension was also much better... I dont know what style, method, or form of "speed reading" i practice, but I know it is indeed fast, and certainly works as Ive done it my whole life, with everything I read.

    So, whether it is possible to train someone to speed read I do not know, but I do know that I am a very fast reader, with very high comprehension and retention... I can recall reading this way as far back as 5 though, so I doubt that I could teach, in a neat and tidy curriculum, my own methods - I dont bother to care HOW it works as reading itself is such a time-consumer and I really only want to maximize my bang-per-minute since I suffer from constant time-anxiety.

    Binary Boy
  • Try Gravity's Rainbow by Pynchon or Foucalt's Pendulum (Umberto Eco)... I practically forgot my English after a Pendulum marathon one weekend. :)
    Binary Boy
  • Eat a bunch of chocolate covered coffee beans before reading anything. That works.
  • After seeing Good Will Hunting I went to my university library and did some research on speed reading studies. It appears that speed reading does not improve your comprehension speed at all. All it does is allow you to spread what you comprehend over a larger area. For example, if a slow reading of a technical document is 10 times slower than a speed reading, then the speed reading will only retain 10% of the information that the slow reading will.

    You may read a lot of propaganda on the contrary to this, but before you buy into it, reseach the legitimate studies on speed reading. There are a lot of poorly done studies out there.
  • 1. Start reading a paragraph,
    2. Get lost in thought thinking about what you read.
    3. Reread the paragraph because you were daydreaming.

    I tell you, it's slow going, but my comprehension is double to triple.


    --

  • What's great about eating espersso beans all day is that it halps you write better. You can just go on an on and keep writing and reading and then wurting some more and dont woerry about typos but it's real fun.

    And you never get redundant because your brain is moving so fast that you skip over intervening ideas and jsut get on to the mating rhinos you watched on TV last noght bcasue you were eating espresso beans last nioght to help yopu stay awake while reading and help you write better, which it's really good for.

  • People tend to market "miracle cures" in this area. You can't really read fast and comprehend more. If someone trys to tell you that they can teach you to do this, beat them up and chase them away. They're a crook.

    A lot of people promote speed reading couses to uni students and busy bussiness people. Usually they just teach you to skim read and a few little tricks. Sometime these are useful, sometimes they are a massive rip-off. Some people feel compelled to read everything thoroughly, in which case a course can help them break the habit.

    The secret to speed reading the skim read. Pay attention to the headings. Read the first paragraph of each section and if it looks like it's not relevant, skim forward. Read the first sentance of each paragraph and watch for keywords that are relevant to you (but not too hard). You will not comprehend anywhere near as much. But that's not really the point.

    The real trick is to pick the style of reading that is appropriate for the situation. Skim reading a technical book will give you an overview of that book and make it easier to come back to bits you need later (especially if you use labeled bookmarks ;-) or find the bits you need now. When you need to actually understand something in detail you will want to read it more slowly and carefully. If it's difficult it may need repeated, slow, careful readings and taking notes (trust me it can really help) etc.

    Of course, you don't want to "speed read" stuff like novels where the the point is to spend time doing something fulfilling.
  • Reading with a stylus or your finger is one of the best ways to slow down your reading speed. By using either of those, you are forced to pay close attention to the word that is pointed to and only that word. The whole idea behind speed reading is to absorb as much information in one glance as you can; not limit it.
  • Actually, it probably works because it uses the simple idea that if you can sound out an unknown written word, most of the time it will match up with a known spoken word.

    We could get into a big argument on the value of phonics vs whole language. Which Californai is going through again. My opinion is that you teach children how to read phonically, then work on vocabulary and provide plenty of opportunities to read whatever the kid is interested in. Just like anything else reading is learned by practice, and it is learned faster if it can hold the attention of the student.
  • I find that there are some modes to reading.

    The first is the "mind seeing what it wants to see" mode, where it completely rearranges letters and words (making false connections between data) to make completely false sentences and statements.

    Sencond is "just seeing words and not taking in any meaning at all", where, under stress, the mind just sees a series of words, devoid of meaning, but in order.

    Thirdly, in an unstressed, unflustered state, the words are seen in the correct order, with the correct spelling,, in the right context and it makes sense.

    Any psychologists/liguists out there care to comment?

    ;->
  • I had a friend I grew up with who was exceptionally brilliant. He learned to read at a very young age - much of it self taught. As a result he had a very unique reading style and it was really, really fast. He could practically look at a page for a second and then recite large parts of it back (note the "recite" part - he could read it, but comprehension was another issue).

    Anyway, early in high school I asked him how he read. From what I gathered, when he looked at a page he didn't see individual words - he saw large blocks of them. When I tried doing what I thought he was doing I noticed it made a huge difference. Instead of reading individual words I read complete prepositional phrases all at once. So in a sentence like "I walked over the hill to the store to return Windows" it reads fast if you break it into "I walked over_the_hill to_the_store to_return_Windows".

    I never got as good as my friend - I pretty much have to stop at prepositional phrases. He reads complete sentences all at once. (It must also have something to do with picking out the verb and focusing on it, but I've never been able to figure that out...)
  • Out of curiosity (basically the same reason you stated), I picked up the Evelyn Wood book one day when I was at B&N for about 5 bucks. I read it and started to use the techniques and have noticed a dramitic increase in speed. My comprehension seems to be holding up just fine too. Note that I really only use it for fiction texts where if I miss something it's not a big deal. I've been happy with it so far.
  • I practice speed reading zooming past all the comments every article gets. I'm now proficient at "uploading" only the relevant information into my brain. I know this isn't dense, technical info. No matter how fast you can read, if you literally don't understand a concept, or can't grasp it, reading faster won't help. Like this comment itself. :-)

    Over and out.
  • I can read and comprehend german texts quite fast,
    as german is my native language.
    When reading english texts it's quite hard to view
    at whole phrases to keep up the speed. It's even harder to remember things right and follow the lines of thought.

    Anybody experience with this? Anybody got an answer _beside_ improving my english ;)

    regards
    kampi
  • I must've taken a different speed reading course. After speed reading that tome, I got that it was about War. I must be missing something...
  • I have always been able to speed read, it just came naturally to me. The only problem occurs when trying to read something more "literary", I read to fast and I miss the concept. It is very hard to read a good book when all you do is scan for keywords. Unfortunatly, I have become used to speed reading, so I give up all hope.
    --Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
  • Of course, you don't want to "speed read" stuff like novels where the the point is to spend time doing something fulfilling

    I suppose it depends on the novel. A lot of older novels have big sections that are really boring to me. For example, War and Peace was a great novel, but it has whole chapters that are completely boring. Skimming can be very good in this case. Of course, maybe getting an abridged version it better... but I hate to not know what it was that they cut out!

  • TealDoc (shareware with a 1 second nag and nothing crippled) for the Palm Pilot has an autoscroll function, and you can vary the speed. If your text is in HTML (which most bleeding edge tech stuff is), you should be able to convert to a DOC format.
  • And if you're lucky, you might lose your mind! (Which isn't necesarily a bad thing, especially if you've already lost it -- speed just helps to illuminate that fact)
  • Bloody Woody Allen ripoff. ;)
  • Mite I sug jest that al uf ur books be ritten in foniks. it maeks for faster reeding.
  • Just for the record, those jumps are called "saccades." They are generated unconsciously and you can watch the process in action: get a friend and move your finger before their eyes, slowly, at a distance of about 1 ft. Watch their eyes. They do what is called "smooth pursuit." Only higher primates can do this. Now ask them to pretend they are following your finger and trace their eyes back and forth like before. Their eyes will do saccades and jump--you need to be looking at a moving target for smooth pursuit.

    I had a test on this very subject earlier today and thought I would share!
  • Try reading a book by Kundera, such as "The Joke" or "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" These books should result in a 80%+ change in reading your current reading speeds. The only thing is each sentence requires several minutes of thought and reflection to truly grasp and love, and thus the speed change is not in the direction you would like.
  • Aye, I have that problem too. Very annoying. The closest thing I've found to a cure is reading the material standing up, but that has its own problems :-[

  • Reading (Score:1)

    by mhat ( 17077 )
    Alternativly you could go the way of things like crystal meth / nodoze.. etc.
  • This post may be a little bloated for which I apologize -- not enough time to edit this one down. Three main points to offer, with the following preface and background:

    (not a brag but to offer perspective) With no speed reading courses whatsoever I was tested at 800+ words per minute (English) with 98% accuracy in fifth grade and still read pretty damn fast and retain MOST of what I read. Which means that often I can burn through a tech book in hours instead of weeks. Now then, here's my main points and two cents worth: ts.
    1. Like most people, I've had to slog through tech books, papers, etc. at maybe 20 wpm, trying to comprehend. Because the topic was more difficult to master? Not usually. (IMHO and IMH Experience) 90% of the time it is because a large number of science types, engineers, and programmers can't write explanatory text worth a fake penny. So point # 1 is that It takes alot less time to pick a good book than it does to slog through a bad one.
    2. It has been proven in many learning studies that retention is primarily a focus of repetition. Which means that the best way to learn something and keep it is essentially a process which looks like this: "READ, review review, review." Which is why I will often burn through three or four well-written "learning" books before buying the inevitable reference tome. BTW, I only use the reference for the tidbits which aren't needed very often.
    3. My belief is that the reason the "_____for Dummies" , the "Teach yourself _____" books, etc. sell so well is because the authors hired by these companies can often explain otherwise difficult concepts easily.
    Adding these items together, I would surmise that the problem is probably not your reading, but poor writing by the author(s).From these points I derive my suggestion to the questioner: -- find good authors, friendly tech types you can talk to, and others who can amplify the concepts without the slog. It'll save a whole lot of time and money on speed courses, paying for badly written tech books etc.

    Oh, one technique I don't use very often but which I have taught a couple friends that seemed to up their speed and comprehension quite a bit. [it was mentioned also in a previous post] If a person has trouble keeping eye position on a page, their eyes waste alot of time and energy fighting the distraction of the text which they haven't and don't need to read yet. Use a 3x5 card or other straight edge to cover the text below where you are reading. That way the eyes (and brain) only have to process one thought at a time.
  • It is very nice to be able to read fast. I don't think any of those programs work though. The problem lies in the fact that you learn reading at such an early age (usually) that it gets ingrained very deeply. I learned to read when I was under two years old. By the age of three I could read books and such labeled for much older children. Now I can read very fast indeed. Comprehension, however, is not linked to reading speed as much as you might think. Speed reading is largely improved memory. I can read a page of text and recite it back more or less word for word (not perfect mind you, but not far off). But, I usually have to take a little more time to digest it. That's the whole key. You CAN improve your memory, and your reading speed will increase, though not dramatically.

    The only thing I have to say is to teach your children to read from the moment they are born. It's definitely a bonus. The "Hooked on Phonics" stuff is mostly crap. That works only because it requires parent/child interaction. If you want your kid to read, and work with him/her on it from an early age, they will be able to read easily. As long as you show an interest.

    Anyway, I'm rambling now, so there.
  • A similar thing happened to me when I got into drama -- I started reading stuff not just for basic comprehension and speed, but for tone, inflection, phrasing and general "how would I deliver these as lines in a play"-type stuff.

    My reading speed dropped from somewhere near 1000 wpm down to about 350 or so. But I can cold-read nearly anything and make it sound professional and well-rehearsed the first time.

    I'm not sure the trade-off is worth it, though, unless I go back into theater.
  • I think it's because the refresh of the monitor makes your eyes want to unfocus, so to read off of a monitor you have to constantly focus your eyes. that or you can learn to read fuzzy letters and give up the fight, I also think that's the reason why monitors cause eye strain.
  • Speed-reading courses are useful. Evelyn Woods' course is excellent.

    There ARE some tricks which will help you stay focused on what you're reading.

    They don't work very well online, but do work on printed material.

    Several ideas:

    -Forget all the stupidity you've acquired about how to read.

    -Use your finger to follow the lines of text you're reading (your third-grade teacher would be horrified, but it WILL help you read faster). Use it to follow your eye-direction as you read. Your finger will be moving side to side along the lines, and moving down the columns of text you're reading. This technique, because it essentially stops REreading what you've just read, usually increases reading speed by about 100%, sometimes more.

    -Read SO FAST that you CANNOT subvocalize what you're reading -- subvocalizaion, or reading out loud without speaking, is a major cause of slow reading.

    -Ask questions of what you're reading. For example, if you read "Uncle Emma was reading brown" you might ask (out loud) "Who is Uncle Emma" "What is 'reading brown'" and so on. This technique is to engender subconscious INTEREST in what you're reading, and to help you catch the cues to the answers to these questions later on. Also, it effectively prevents subvocalization.

    Go ahead. Try it and see.
  • A teacher once told me that, if you're having trouble understanding a textbook chapter (for example), you should speed up, not slow down. If you slow down you'll get lost in the details with no context. The key is to read the "important stuff", such as intros, bold face stuff, captions, ... Once you have a high-level view, you should have a better time re-reading the chapter because you can picture where the details fit within the big picture.

    Regarding tech books, I think the most important thing is to know where you can find more information when you actually need it. I've skimmed many tech books, giving me the big picture. Later, I can flip back to Page 495 when I have a question. Knowing what you don't know is wise.

  • I remember reading text on BBSes back in the late 1980s. With the text screaming past at 9600 baud! My friends would brag, "dewd, I can read at 19200 baud! really!"

  • I had a 1/2 year project in Enviromental Science that had to deal w/ the change of genentics w/ the change in enviroments and vice versa..
  • I recently purchased "Coles notes for speed reading", and believe it or not, I doubled my reading rate. It is a very good little lesson, and for under $5 US, you can't go wrong. I can't read a novel in 10 minutes, but it certainly helps with my reading.
  • Hmmm... speed reading would be great. Even better would be being able to *stay awake* when reading (things such as textbooks and dry technical documents). Anybody have advice for this?
  • I am just about to finish my degree in Computer Science. Many of the students here were subjects in a speed-reading clinical test.
    The stunning results: Hard stuff takes longer.
    I bet you could blaze through a novel with some speed-reading techniques, but slogging through a technical treatise on assembler-level memory management would still take hours and gallons of coffee.

    Besides, I would rather read meaningful stuff at a meaningful pace.
  • Speed reading works for extracting general info out of fluffy text (e.g. magazine articles, fiction, etc.) Essentially it works by grabbing key concepts out of the text you skip through and letting your brain organize these concepts on its own.

    Unfortunately, dense texts (not only technical) are not really amenable to this.

    Besides, you probably want to *understand* information, not just pack it in your brain. Haven't met any shortcuts for this yet.
  • Sure, all procedural languages are similar: if you know C you won't have much trouble picking up C++, Java, Pascal, Modula, Perl, etc.

    On the other hand, consider:

    Lisp

    Prolog

    Forth

    Smalltalk

  • I've found that I can reading from a book/newspaper or any printed material at a faster pace and have a much better understanding than reading from a monitor -- not to mention that eyes start to get weary much sooner. And I know I'm not alone, coz many people told me that's the case for them also. Does anyone know if that has to do with the way we were taught to read or is it a natural thing?
  • (sorry for the rhyme)

    Most people will sound out or sub vocalize as
    they read. Believe it or not, but you don't have
    to do this to understand what you're reading. Stop sub vocalizing, and you double your reading speed.
  • hear hear. #1 reason that a BA will be the end of the line for me: it seems silly to pay some institution to put me to sleep.

    Sad but true.
  • If you learn how to program in an imperative language, then just about all of them are the same after that. C, C++, Java, Ada, Modula-3, Perl, Python, Forth, Smalltalk, Eiffel, all of them are very similar in a lot of ways; the syntax is radically different but it's not too hard to pick that up. Learn to do functional programming, logic programming, literate programming, and maybe some dynamic programming. 5 skillsets and just about any programming language will be a piece of cake after that. There aren't that many programming concepts to learn, if you're having trouble learning a language it's either a terrible language (C++ is a fine example of this) or you're thinking about programming in the wrong concepts.
  • This is true, use your finger or something as a guide.

    Read sitting up at a desk or table. You'd be surprized how many people read text books in an inclined state, when you put lie down your body is trained through years of experience to turn the mind off and you fall asleep. 99% of the time when you lie down you're sleeping or watching TV.

    Practice, reading is like everything else and the more you do it the better you get at it.

  • There are two types of speed reading:

    1. Normal reading at high speeds
    2. Dynamic reading

    The first one can give you speeds of up to 1000 wpm (words per minutes) but usually around 700 wpm. The average reader reads at around 250 wpm. This technique is simple enough that anyone can do it:

    * First, move your finger under each line as you read it. This stops you from pausing or rereading sentences because you think you didn't understand what you just read. 99.999% of the time you _will_ understand what you just read if you keep reading on. And, you will understand it _better_ if you don't pause because your mind has less time to wander. In other words, your mind is forced to stay on the job.

    * Anticipate what is coming next. Even when you are forced to read fast (by following your finger), there are still times when your mind can wander. If you are constantly thinking of what will come next, it will also help to keep your mind on the job. It can be a fun skill to practice.

    * Practice moving your finger much faster than normal. Then slow down to your normal speed. You will find that what you think is your normal speed is actualy twice the speed that you usually do. If you never give yourself the chance to read at these speeds, you will never get good at it (obvious huh?)

    * Don't say the words in your head as you read them. This is difficult to try, so don't. You'll find that when you read at fast enough speeds, you won't have time to say each word.

    The other technique for speed reading requires special training such as Evelyn Wood, but here's the general idea (basically what Evelyn Wood teaches):

    When you are taught to read, you are trained to focus on one word at a time. By the time you become an adult, you don't even realise that you can focus on much wider areas than that. It is possible to focus on a whole paragraph in one go. The strange thing is that when you're looking about your surroundings, you are expanding your focus, but as soon as you look at a book, your focus automatically reduces itself to a single word (because that's what it has been trained to do). Amazingly, if you turn your book upside down so that you don't recognize any of the words, your focus will expand again, you will even notice things on either side of the book you're looking at. Of course, when you turn your book up the right way again, all you can see is one word...

    The Evelyn Wood training course tries to un-train your eyes so that they allow a much broader focus. A broader focus allows you to move down the page quicker, but your brain must also be trained to recognise whole groups of words at a time to keep up with the speed that you're moving down the page. They teach this too. This technique gives you around 2000 wpm (higher if you pratice) which is equivalent to reading a page in 10 to 20 seconds (depending on the size of the page).

    I hear that the fastest reader in the world reads at 25000 words per minute and he has is own speed reading course. Has anyone taken it? ("Mega Speed Reading" I think it was called)
  • The best thing I can suggest for cost-effectiveness is to get a public library card and start checking out books. Granted, you won't have the luxury of keeping them around, but at least you can stop paying for books.
  • I'll second that. I have a copy of Use Both Sides of Your Brain by Tony Buzan, and it's very interesting. There's a chapter on speed reading, but I haven't had a chance to try it out in practice yet (ironic, isn't it?).

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