The reason people want to read quickly is because writers often digress. Maybe the focus should be on writing text that can be absorbed easily and quickly and finding and promoting such text.
Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
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Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#12Sorry, NYT, I can. Of course, speed reading gets some meaning lost. But the very skill of speed-reading amounts to developing a sense of look-ahead: first, intuitively establishing fast anchors in text to actually read a few moments later; second, to expand on this anchors, absorb the information and introduce feedback corrections in look-ahead patterns. All my reading is "speed reading"; I even can't follow the line…
Ok, so you notice you lose "some" meaning. The question is, how much? One way to find out is to read something the fast way and then the slow way and pay attention to how much is new the second time. Have you tried this, or perhaps some other way to see how much meaning gets lost?
As for comparing reading speed to talking speed (audio books and lectures): of course talking is slower than reading, even if you don't speed read.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#13Sorry, NYT, I can. Of course, speed reading gets some meaning lost. But the very skill of speed-reading amounts to developing a sense of look-ahead: first, intuitively establishing fast anchors in text to actually read a few moments later; second, to expand on this anchors, absorb the information and introduce feedback corrections in look-ahead patterns. All my reading is "speed reading"; I even can't follow the line…
>> Of course, speed reading gets some meaning lost.
The whole premise of this article is that it does not, that "speed reading" is reading faster without losing meaning, and this is precisely what most people cannot actually do.
The author calls the activity you are referring to "skimming", and says it is what most people do.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#14Sorry, NYT, I can. Of course, speed reading gets some meaning lost. But the very skill of speed-reading amounts to developing a sense of look-ahead: first, intuitively establishing fast anchors in text to actually read a few moments later; second, to expand on this anchors, absorb the information and introduce feedback corrections in look-ahead patterns. All my reading is "speed reading"; I even can't follow the line…
I don't know that I 'speed' read, but I read rather quickly, enough so that I detest any kind of video explanation because I would have finished reading it by the time they finished mumbling some pointless introductory nonsense.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#15Also, the part about not listening to stuff at double speed. As if all recordings (and thus people speaking) were using the same speed. Sure, there are people who talk too fast anyway, but I've had an online course where I had to move to 1.5x speed to even be able to follow along and not drift off constantly...
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#16I skimmed this article in about 20 seconds and then went back and read it more closely. I don't feel like I missed much on the first pass. Sure you won't get the full literary experience skimming through War and Peace. But fluffy articles with a single tweet's worth of information content I can "speed read" just fine.
skip reading is perhaps a better name for it. I got the gist - speed reading doesn't work, saved myself a few minutes only skipping to the start of each paragraph.
There's already a name for it: skimming
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#17Also, the part about not listening to stuff at double speed. As if all recordings (and thus people speaking) were using the same speed. Sure, there are people who talk too fast anyway, but I've had an online course where I had to move to 1.5x speed to even be able to follow along and not drift off constantly...
Yeah, listening is very different from reading. Most audiobooks I play at 1.5x-2x because narrations are usually super slow.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#18The linked article abstract from Psychological Science says: > The way to maintain high comprehension and get through text faster is to practice reading and to become a more skilled language user (e.g., through increased vocabulary). This is because language skill is at the heart of reading speed. So, in short, moving your eyes over the page faster only helps if your speed of language interpretation can keep up (the…
I agree. I feel that for me reading in my native language or English goes as fast as I can see sentence. So I assume my language interpretation for those languages is high and maybe I could speed up by doing fancy things with eye movement.
But I am learning Dutch right now and I have to spend a lot more time to get correct meaning of sentence. So no eye movement technique would help me.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#19I don't get why anybody would want to speed read a novel. (Outside of a High School literature class where you're being forced to read Ethan Frome and you just want to get back to playing Minecraft, of course). When I'm reading Hemingway, I'll go back and read individual paragraphs three times to squeeze the last drop of juice out of them. There are only so many Hemingway paragraphs in existence, so wasting one feels…
If you like the recount of the spanish war in "For whom the bell tolls", read "Homage to catalonia" by George Orwell. It's one of the best books I ever read.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#20I don't get why anybody would want to speed read a novel. (Outside of a High School literature class where you're being forced to read Ethan Frome and you just want to get back to playing Minecraft, of course). When I'm reading Hemingway, I'll go back and read individual paragraphs three times to squeeze the last drop of juice out of them. There are only so many Hemingway paragraphs in existence, so wasting one feels…
I speed read pulp novels, and have for decades. From Doc Savage to Honor Harrington's recent outings, sometimes you just want the the combination of that literary equivalent of zoning out in front of the TV, combined with finding out what happens next.
You're right that speed reading very well done stuff is a waste of time, but for the written equivalent of fast food, it seems to work fine. And if something does turn out to be better than expected, I can always slow down or go back and reread at my normal speed.