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I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

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Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#81

Post by NateEag »

zelly wrote: post #22
Terretta wrote: post #15

On “subvocalization” ... > It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using that inner voice. So reading faster means being able to use this inner voice faster, not eliminating it. To further that, expert speed readers who were studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster. I’ve seen this argued elsewhere, and am not convinced they’ve found readers who do not subvocalize to study. Most…

It's impossible to get into the flow state of reading (when you are not aware you are reading) without subvocalizing. I've tried forever. It's impossible and anyone who claims to is lying or is just constantly skimming ("speed reading").

I do not subvocalize when reading.

Trying to do it feels really weird to me.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#82

Post by InternetOfStuff »

Terretta wrote: post #15

On “subvocalization” ... > It’s simply not possible to comprehend what you’re reading and avoid using that inner voice. So reading faster means being able to use this inner voice faster, not eliminating it. To further that, expert speed readers who were studied also subvocalized, they just did it faster. I’ve seen this argued elsewhere, and am not convinced they’ve found readers who do not subvocalize to study. Most…

I don't think I subvocalise, I read way faster than I can speak. There's certainly ideas flowing through my mind as I read, but not sounds. It feels like a mixture between words, thoughts and emotions, not a stream of (silently) spoken words.

I bought a book on speed reading because I was dissatisfied with my "slow" reading, only to discover that according to their tests I was way up there in both speed and comprehension :-D

I was shocked to learn from that book that many people subvocalise - it felt so foreign (and utterly cumbersome) to me. I hadn't even considered people did that.

Most of the book was about not subvocalising - which I don't think I do anyway, so I never read it to the end.

Indeed if I read to my kids I'm often simultaneously reading one sentence aloud, and reading 1...2 sentences ahead for myself so I get the voices right. So in effect I'm reading the entire text twice while speaking it once.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#83

Post by tzury »

speed reading?

for me, reading a book is a treat. Something I rearly manage to make time for, and when I do, I'd rather enjoy every paragraph.

You don't chew a great food as fast as you do with simple one, right?

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#84

Post by pmoriarty »

emodendroket wrote: post #44
rmason wrote: post #4

I took a speed reading course one summer when I was in college. My mother thought that it would give me an edge. First they test you and my reading speed was already on the high end of normal. In the course I did theoretically more than double my reading speed. But my comprehension was based on the test they gave me. Plus I noticed that I tired quickly doing speed reading. I was a kid who loved to read and had no pro…

I think the skill many of us need to cultivate is the opposite one -- slowing down and carefully reading a challenging text. It took me a while to get out of "the final is tomorrow so I've got to blow through the rest of this book today" mode.

Beyond slowing down, a real challenge for many of us in this age of distraction is to keep one's attention focused on a single text for extended periods of time.

I know I struggle with this myself despite being a life-long reader from the pre-Internet days who used to have no trouble staying focused through a full book.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#85

Post by NateEag »

The full article claims that it's impossible to reduce saccades by reading multiple lines simultaneously.

I know that claim is false because I have experienced reading an entire book by perceiving two to four lines simultaneously.

I've only had that happen once, on incredibly easy double-spaced material, but humans are capable of it.

Note that I am a natural speed reader and aphantasiac - those may be contributing factors (I've noticed the most talented visualizers I know are all slow readers, and discussion leads me too believe it's partly because they can't help stopping to visualize, while I cannot stop to visualize).

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#86

Post by csa »

Mirioron wrote: post #67
csa wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very possible. Japanese was my first foreign language. I could read a lot of Chinese while having no idea how to pronounce it. Furthermore, once I learned some fairly basic grammar in Chinese, I could read some texts with a fairly high level of accuracy. All that said, I’m pretty sure I sub-vocalized in Japanese. I will also say that there are words in both languages where I have forgotten the pronunciation o…

> Thinking more about this some more, I’m pretty sure that there is a conceptual and/or visual “sub vocalization” that I have experienced where I clearly knew what something meant, but the words to say it in any language didn’t readily come to my mind. Isn't this a common occurrence when you just can't think of a word, but it's on the tip of your tongue? Another thing that's similar to this would be all the symbols w…

Not really.

Tip-of-the-tongue definitely is a part of symbolic knowledge/cognition.

That said, what I am speaking of is much more complex. The example I gave for Japanese, while most educated native speakers would have known the pronunciation, the meaning was not obvious. As a non-native speaker, the translation was something like "with the devotion of a Buddhist monk", but that doesn't really convey the intensity of the phrase. Even today, when I try to translate it into English, my explanation does not do the phrase justice. When I try to explain it to not-so- linguistically-gifted Japanese people, I can provide a gist fairly easily (just as in English), but the weight of the phrase is tough to convey.

In English, I might equate this to when someone uses just the right Latin or Greek term. The literal translation is fine, but the depth of the meaning is almost impossible to describe while being almost palpable to those in the know.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#87

Post by elfexec »

Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

It has its uses, but you aren't going to speed read poetry, literature, etc and get much out of it. The same thing with memory maps and other tricks. They have their limited uses, but aren't a panacea for learning and knowledge.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#88

Post by visarga »

Buttons840 wrote: post #41
Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

I've worked with some programmers who were so slow at typing I would find myself reluctant to help them with their "hands on" work, like directing them to try something in the REPL for example, or even just asking them to run a shell command. It was a struggle for me not to excuse myself as soon as possible once they started typing. They seemingly couldn't get a single word out without a typo, and would frequently hu…

I think it's good practice to copy variable names in order to avoid typos, at least in plain text editors.

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#89

Post by [deleted] »

ergocoder wrote: post #53
Reedx wrote: post #11

Reading speed strikes me similarly to typing speed when it comes to programming. It's fun to read/type fast, but it's not really the bottleneck.

This is true to some degree. I'd like to think of a better analogy. Typing in programming is like running in soccer. It's definitely a problem if you type slowly or can't type for a long period of time. Passing the certain speed and endurance, typing faster doesn't help much. It's the same with soccer.

[deleted]

Re: I Was Wrong About Speed Reading (2015)

#90

Post by zelly »

NateEag wrote: post #81
zelly wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to get into the flow state of reading (when you are not aware you are reading) without subvocalizing. I've tried forever. It's impossible and anyone who claims to is lying or is just constantly skimming ("speed reading").

I do not subvocalize when reading. Trying to do it feels really weird to me.

You probably do even if you do not realize it.

Can you spot incorrect use of "a" vs. "an" in text? You're subvocalizing.

Are you unable to read while talking? You're subvocalizing.

The idea of not-subvocalizing is to see text as images. You should be able to recognize chunks of words like you recognize different types of emojis or types of dogs. It is completely different from the way everyone learned to read.

I can not-subvocalize after much practice but only temporarily.

I don't recommend it. It's useless on the same level as learning Dvorak.

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