speed reading - is it for real?

[flurpy2]

Just wondering about speed reading.

I'm a rather slowish reader - about 180 words per minute.

I've known of speed reading courses for some time, claiming that one can improve reading speed to around 1000 words per minute.

There was this infomercial on TV with a product "Mega Reading" where the presenter claims to read a whopping 25,000 words per minute!

On radio they had a lady the other day who won some kind of contest, where she was able to read 28,000 words per minute!
She told how she read a book in 10 minutes, and then took 4 hours to write a summary of what she read.

Is it possible, or bogus?

I cannot even imagine myself paging through a book at that pace.

[Arken]

Nope, sorry. (http://www.skepdic.com/speedreading.html)

[HeatherD]

Originally posted by flurpy2
Just wondering about speed reading.

I'm a rather slowish reader - about 180 words per minute.

I've known of speed reading courses for some time, claiming that one can improve reading speed to around 1000 words per minute.

There was this infomercial on TV with a product "Mega Reading" where the presenter claims to read a whopping 25,000 words per minute!

On radio they had a lady the other day who won some kind of contest, where she was able to read 28,000 words per minute!
She told how she read a book in 10 minutes, and then took 4 hours to write a summary of what she read.

Is it possible, or bogus?

I cannot even imagine myself paging through a book at that pace.

Well, without deciding either way, let us do some math and see if there is anything obviously bogus:

I have an e-text copy (MS-Word) of the King James Bible. Using word count on pages formatted US Letter size (not normal Bible size I'd guess) I get:

Pages: 1,186
Words: 820,963

At 28,000 wpm, she would read the Bible in about 29 minutes.
In 29 minutes she would read 1,186 pages, or slightly over 40 pages per minute, which works out to (without approximating previous figures) 1 page every .67 seconds.

I don't know offhand how many pages an average printed version of the KJV Bible has but I'd guess much more. Although I've seen smaller Bibles and they usually use smaller print sizes.

Overall though, I'd guess it isn't impossible for a human to turn a page every 7/10 of a second. The real question is what is her comprehension rate?

[Coragyps]

Back in the 1960's, when the Evelyn Woods speedreading program (see Arken's link) was popular, someone did a study of comprehension on several E.W. graduates - they read a several-page essay, and were able to answer a few questions on content. But they failed to notice that what they had read was two lines from one text alternating with two lines of an unrelated text. It sort of embarrassed the speedreading promoters.

[flurpy2]

Thanks for the replies.

If the 25,000 words per minute claims are bogus, what is a realistic obtainable speed?

I will be most interested to here from someone on the forum who speedreads.

It can't all be bogus, since Tony Buzan (aka Mr Lateral Thinking) also wrote a book on Speed Reading.

[Asha'man]

My mom actually taught the Evelyn Wood course, and I took it a couple of times as a kid.

Speed reading is real, but the claims of speed you are hearing are greatly exaggerated.

I don't recall my exact speed when I finished the course, but it was somewhere around 1200 wpm. This was slightly more than double my original speed. I was still reading with full comprehension of what I was reading, which generally means able to answer a series of questions about the text with 90% success. (I also remember learning a different way to outline my notes, which can help recall no matter what the speed)

Even at that speed, however, you do miss something: the rhythm of the prose. I knew the meaning behind what was said, but I won’t remember how the sentence was constructed.

For enjoyment of fiction, which is where the vast majority of my reading happens, I would rather read at a more moderate speed. For complicated textbook type material, you have to go slow anyways, because you are learning difficult subjects and that takes much more concentration.

As for taking the course yourself, I would look carefully at your current reading skills. If you are being slowed down by poor skills, speed reading won’t help, and it will make things worse. If you have to puzzle out grammar and vocabulary as you read, reading faster can’t possibly make the task easier.

On the other hand, if you have perfect comprehension of what you read, but are just slow, a speed reading course may be able to help. Simply learning not to backtrack and sub-vocalize will speed you up greatly, and that is the vast majority of what you learn. Area reading (seeing a line or more at a time) is possible, but really only for people with a great deal of speed reading experience and time to practice.

[keyser_soze]

A few of my friends have used the Eye-Q program and it doubled their reading speed. It also tests for comprehension, and that doubled too. But the claims were outrageous, thousands of words per minute. I think they both average around 50 pages an hour reading, where it used to be 25. I already read around 200 pages an hour(at maximum speed, usually around 120 standard). I tried the program, and mostly it seems to be exercises to strengthen the eye muscles and change the scan pattern you typically use to read. The program just gave me a monster headache, and I didn't really see any improvements at all. In a nutshell, it works, but mileage may very SIGNFICANTLY.

[callmejay]

I did know someone in middle school (!) who could read a page of a young adult type novel in about 2 seconds, with comprehension. His eyes would move straight down the middle. So it's possible, although I don't know if you can learn to do that.

[Naked Ape]

I think that it (the ability to read quickly) comes with practice, and good comprehension which in turn requires a good vocabulary. When I was in grade 8 (back in the Seventies), It took 16 hours to read all three books of 'The Lord of the Rings' on a rainy Saturday. By 14 I had read all of the books in the Science Fiction section of the Public library and was starting out with the Fantasy books. My current reading habits are not so voracious. I read the fifth Harry Potter book last weekend and it took 16 hours to read that one book. If you want to get better at reading quickly: practice, practice, practice!

Cheers,

Naked Ape

[Benjamin Franklin]

This is what, Mortimer J Adler, former editor of Britannica, has to say about speed reading in his book How to Read A Book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0671212095/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/102-3998293-9055332?v=glance&s=books&vi=customer-reviews)

“ Speed reading courses properly make much of the discovery – we have known it for half a century or more – that most people continue to sub-vocalize for years after they are first taught to read. Films of eye movements, furthermore, show that the eyes of young or untrained readers “fixate” as many as five or six times in the course of each line that is read. (The eye is blind while it moves, it only can see when it stops.) Thus single words or at the most two-word or three-word phrases are being read at a time, in jumps across the line. Even worse than that, the eyes of incompetent readers regress as often as once every two or three lines - that is, they return to phrases or sentences previous read.
All these habits are wasteful and obviously cut down reading speed. They are wasteful because of the mind, unlike the eye, does not need to “read” only a word or short phrase at a time. The mind, the astounding instrument, can grasp a sentence of even a paragraph at a “glance” – if only the eyes will provide it with the information it needs. Thus the primary task- recognized as such by all speed reading courses – is to correct the fixations and regressions that slow so many readers down”

He also pointed out that speed reading cannot really help to improve your reading comprehension i.e. it would not be possible to read complex material quickly. And claims of 5000 words per minute are just inspectional reading.


BF

Ps - He also has other comments about reading speeds which I am too lazy to typed it out and in the book, he also suggested a simple way of learning speed reading without having to sign up for any speed reading course.

[Calzaer]

The eye is blind while it moves, it only can see when it stops.

*skeptical*
That sounds bogus, to me... what mechanism could possibly cause that?

[Gothic_J]

I can chomp out a robert jordan book in a couple hours. Im told its a good speed.

[Graeme]

Originally posted by callmejay
I did know someone in middle school (!) who could read a page of a young adult type novel in about 2 seconds, with comprehension. His eyes would move straight down the middle. So it's possible, although I don't know if you can learn to do that.

That's not too tough (depending on the complexity of the material of course), and it mostly involves being able to pick out 'keywords' as you scan quickly down the page, then making an educated guess from what you DID see as to the content.

I'd bet that someone who had read pages 1 through 49 at regular speed then 'fast-read' page 50 would have MUCH better comprehension using this method than someone who just opened the book to page 50 without any background on its content.

[Postcard73]

Originally posted by Asha'man
Even at that speed, however, you do miss something: the rhythm of the prose. I knew the meaning behind what was said, but I won’t remember how the sentence was constructed.
I agree with this statement. A few years ago, I found a self-taught speed reading course in a used bookstore for just a couple bucks. In only a few hours, I went from being a slow reader - I have ADHD, so I'm easily distracted - to flying through books. I don't know how many words per minute I was reading, but I know it was a lot. I was also achieving solid comprehension. One time, some co-workers saw me blasting through a book and proceeded to quiz me on it. I was able to answer every question they asked. Unfortunately, while speed reading can speed up your ability to learn what is written, it comes at a cost of ignoring how it is written. Personally, I feel that this makes speed reading virtually useless for fiction, and I even feel that it detracts heavily from non-fiction. Except for the occasional Vonnegut novel, I almost exclusively read non-fiction. As a grad student, I find speed reading useful sometimes for covering recommended course reading, but I seldom use it for required reading. If I do it's either because I'm behind, or it's a simple attempt to familiarize myself with a book before reading it for real. I never use it for recreational reading...