I run text through text-to-speech while reading visually to double my attention.
This is either insane, or pure genius. Has anyone else tried this?
Hey, it worked in grade school reading groups with human-powered "text-to-speech," right? :)
Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
41–50 of 133 posts
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#42I 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…
What is the point of speed reading a novel? If you can't be bothered to read what the author wrote, word for word (or nearly so) then you might as well go online and read a summary of the novel - job done. When an author writes a book, they consider every word they put in. Every word has meaning and a reason for being there. I am sure you could take almost any novel ever written and reduce it down to a 10th of it's original size and not lose any of its plot, but it would not be a good book to read.
Of course, it is your time and you can read or not read a book any way that pleases you, I just do not see the point in skimming it.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#43Hmm interesting. But speed reading isn't just less eye movement while reading line by line. It's using your peripheralife vision to read longer chunks of words line by line. Like when driving you see a sign and just know what you saw without slowly reading it. Idk if I agree with this 100%.
Ironically, this point is addressed in the article. Maybe you didn't see it. :) Here it is:
There is only a small area in the retina (called the fovea) for which our visual acuity is very high. Our eyes are seriously limited in their precision outside of that. This means that we can take in only a word or so at each glance, as well as a little bit about the words on either side. In fact, since the 1960s, experiments have repeatedly confirmed that when people “speed read,” they simply do not comprehend the parts of the text that their eyes skip over.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#44I 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 would never want to "speed read" a novel, or anything else I was reading for enjoyment or enrichment. There are times, however, when I found "speed reading" for rapid content absorption not only desirable, but necessary. When I was in graduate school I would often be assigned voluminous amounts of text on a weekly basis, in several classes. Much of this assigned reading was not particularly interesting or enlightening, yet it composed of hundreds of pages per week in each class. It certainly isn't something you want do to all the time, but speed reading does have its place.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#45Regarding audio they say: > Doubling the speed, in our experience, leaves individual words perfectly identifiable — but makes it just about impossible to follow the meaning. Wow, sorry but this is very misinformed. A lot of people me included can listen to audio at 2x. I constantly listen to podcasts (so not a slow narration to begin with) at 2x in English which is not even my native language and I understand everyth…
It depends on the density of the information doesn't it? I would certainly agree that many, if not, most podcasts could be listened to at double speed or higher and still be understood. However if the podcast is about a detailed analysis of how string theory explains quantum gravity effects, then I highly doubt one could listen to it at double speed and retain much understanding.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#46If you are in a hurry, have don't much time to read novels or book you want to read. You should focus on speed reading.
There are free speed reading software available on the internet which you can use to improve your reading speed.
I would like to recommend spreeder.com
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#47I 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.
There's all kinds of different... "textures" of information.
Some things are extremely thick with information. Every few sentences, I might need to pause and think through all the implications and realizations that are revealed to me. In audio form, I'm rewinding or pausing, and consuming at Other sources might spread the important details and facts around. I'm better served by speedreading / skimming / playing back at (>?)2x speed. This strains my short term memory less, letting me assemble the important bits into a broader, deeper understanding of the material, that can contextualize all those snippets in a way that makes it easier to commit to long term memory.
This can happen even with information dense material, in which case I'm better served by repeatedly skimming, than trying to do a single solid readthrough once.
And then there's the stuff that wasn't even worth skimming through once.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#48Regarding audio they say: > Doubling the speed, in our experience, leaves individual words perfectly identifiable — but makes it just about impossible to follow the meaning. Wow, sorry but this is very misinformed. A lot of people me included can listen to audio at 2x. I constantly listen to podcasts (so not a slow narration to begin with) at 2x in English which is not even my native language and I understand everyth…
Perhaps this depends on the speed of your brain? You know, different people score differently on IQ tests. For example, some score 140 while others score 70. I read (in the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen, I think) that what an IQ test basically does, is measuring the speed of your brain.
So I guess intelligent people will be able to understand everything on 2x while dumb ones may not.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#49Regarding audio they say: > Doubling the speed, in our experience, leaves individual words perfectly identifiable — but makes it just about impossible to follow the meaning. Wow, sorry but this is very misinformed. A lot of people me included can listen to audio at 2x. I constantly listen to podcasts (so not a slow narration to begin with) at 2x in English which is not even my native language and I understand everyth…
It depends on the density of the information doesn't it? I would certainly agree that many, if not, most podcasts could be listened to at double speed or higher and still be understood. However if the podcast is about a detailed analysis of how string theory explains quantum gravity effects, then I highly doubt one could listen to it at double speed and retain much understanding.
I'm a physics student who has listened to tons of physics course videos at 2x or sometimes 2.5x. I pause when an equation is drawn on the board, but the speech is fine.
Re: Sorry, You Can’t Speed Read
#50I don't know whether to call what I do speed reading or not, but I definitely read faster than most people I know. I've spent a lot of time analyzing what things effect my reading speed. I find that my reading speed is most heavily effected by how much my eyes have to move to scan the words in the line. The best for me is if a column is narrow enough that I don't really have to move my eyes side to side to get all th…
> The best for me is if a column is narrow enough that I don't really have to move my eyes side to side to get all the words in the column.
Interesting. I'm the opposite way. Part of how I speed read is being able to quickly back-track if I detect that I've failed to notice something important. Filling the reading surface with text means that I almost never have to scroll around to locate what I missed.