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Is speed reading really possible?

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Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#121

Post by Tycho »

I have 3 thoughts on speed reading

1. Speed reading fiction is about as sensible as watching movies in fast forward.

2. Speed reading non-fiction will not lead to much formation of conceptual knowledge in your brain, and definitely not the sort of rich inter-connected learning that we probably read for in the first place.

3. Speed reading where you develop a sixth sense for which parts of, say, an academic paper you should slow down and read carefully could probably be a good thing.

In general, while I used to think there was some sort of prestige attached to how much / how fast you could read, I don't think that anymore. It's how 'deeply' you read that counts.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#122

Post by mistercow »

emhart wrote: post #99
mistercow wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this sort of problem all the time, and I wonder if it is due to a Problem. For example, if I become aware of my blinking (like if someone does the "manual blinking" trick on me ... ... damn it), then I become anxious and uncomfortable until I can be sufficiently distracted from thinking about it. Another one is eye contact; I generally don't have a problem making eye contact during conversation, but if I start…

Hah, the triclops comment made me chuckle. And don't read too much into this, as I doubt it is at all an appropriate indicator, but I should disclose that I actually have an anxiety disorder. Particularly in conversation I will sort through conversational trees and actively analyze the dialog I am having, as it is happening. It can be both maddening and very useful. But more than anything it makes you realize how com…

Interesting. I also have an anxiety disorder, so maybe there is some relationship there. We just need someone neurotypical to chime in and tell us whether it happens to them too.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#123

Post by logn »

I've discovered a few things about reading speed in my experience.

1) When I read fiction by good authors, I take great delight in reading their sentences, so I slow down drastically to take every word and piece of punctuation in.

2) Reading speed improves with practice.

3) Read smarter: if you don't need 100% comprehension then read topic sentences of paragraphs carefully then skim the rest of the paragraph for details you think are useful. And in news stories, they follow the "inverted pyramid" for paragraphs meaning that they're ordered such that the first paragraph is the most important, second one is second most important, etc. So you can stop reading at any time.

4) Choose a column width that suits you. A lot of time is spent on line transitions. Smaller columns makes this easier which you can control via your window size.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#124

Post by ryusage »

unavoidable wrote: post #117
ryusage wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal experience studying Japanese for a few years makes me skeptical of this claim. Granted, the radicals, etc in the symbols can give you a hint of their meaning, but ultimately a writing system is created to communicate vocalized words. In fact, many of the "hints" in the written symbols are based on words that sound similar to other words when pronounced (their actual meaning being unrelated), which is full…

You and the poster below mention Japanese as an example. I counter by saying that Japanese use of Kanji is very different than the Chinese use. I am a native Chinese speaker and have taken Japanese classes, and their vocalization in the language are very different. Japanese places a heavy emphasis on how the characters are pronounced because their language is not purely ideographic; rather they use a hybrid phonetic…

Hm...fair enough. I'm still skeptical, honestly, but I don't know enough about Chinese specifically to argue with that. I do see your point about Japanese being a mixture of systems.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#125

Post by ryusage »

dudurocha wrote: post #94
bambax wrote: post #47

> You can't read without subvocalization. While this article seems well researched, I find this claim very hard to believe. I can read while singing (not a song with words, but a tune that I know well, without words). I really don't think I "talk to [myself] so quietly, it cannot be heard" and while my "tongue and vocal chords" may "receive speech signals from [my] brain", I'm pretty sure they're not executed and nei…

If anybody is deaf, how can he read?

Apparently those who learn a sign language as their first language think (and I would assume read) in that sign language. Rather than "saying" the words in their head, apparently it's more like feeling the motions their hands would make if they were actually signing.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#126

Post by e12e »

tokenadult wrote: post #71

Wow. That was well worth a read, at whatever reading speed gives you full comprehension. The author did a good job of reading the previous scientific literature on the subject, and relating important issues to one another. He examined both historical claims (supposed world records of reading speed) and scientific claims (statements about how people read in general). I read quite a few books about speed-reading when I…

  > "Ronald Carver, author of the 1990 book The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement, is one researcher who has done extensive testing of readers and reading speed, and thoroughly examined the various speed reading techniques and the actual improvement likely to be gained. One notable test he did pitted four groups of the fastest readers he could find against each other. The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than 600 words per minute with more than 75% retention of information.
Interesting. According to "wc" that paragraph is roughly one hundred words, and your comment from "Wow." to "Chinese)" is around 600 words. I estimate I "speed read" that at around one minute (45 seconds on a second pass) -- and 75% retention/comprehension seems about right.

I'm a bit surprised native English speakers wouldn't do significantly better -- perhaps I am a faster reader than I thought.

I normally don't read quite that fast though -- 600 words in 60 seconds definitively puts me in "skimming" territory.

I can read faster than that, and I've found some common "speed reading" techniques, like scanning a page diagonally to help -- but I only use that in order to gain an overview of text -- and decide if something looks interesting enough for a proper read through.

I don't think the technique matters much -- but like all things practicing helps -- After a year or so of frequently forcing myself to skim -- I can speed read faster than before -- but I don't know if my "proper" reading speed has advanced much.

I still often appreciate "TL;DR"-summaries -- they are usually a great indication of weather an article warrants whatever attention is needed to read it comprehensively -- and they are much easier to read than skimming a full article.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#127

Post by kragen »

cpleppert wrote: post #92
tokenadult wrote: post #71

Wow. That was well worth a read, at whatever reading speed gives you full comprehension. The author did a good job of reading the previous scientific literature on the subject, and relating important issues to one another. He examined both historical claims (supposed world records of reading speed) and scientific claims (statements about how people read in general). I read quite a few books about speed-reading when I…

Well, up until recently people didn't read silently but always read out loud even by themselves. Saint Augustine remarked how taken aback he was by someone who read 'silently.' The propensity seems to have been that all reading didn't just involve subvocalization it was actually vocalized. I'm not sure that this proves much in terms of whether subvocalization is always involved. This simply may be a result of people…

All the writing systems I'm familiar with (e.g. hieroglyphics, Sumerian cuneiform, Chinese) have very limited ideographic content. Instead, a limited vocabulary of ideograms (up to a few hundred) are used to make rebuses of the words that don't have ideograms of their own, turning the ideograms into phonetics. As far as I know, this rebus principle is present as far back as we have records of people writing actual language (as opposed to, say, calendars or general ledgers).

Do you have pointers to discussion of purely-ideographic language writing with no phonetic component?

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#128

Post by tokenadult »

dudurocha wrote: post #94
bambax wrote: post #47

> You can't read without subvocalization. While this article seems well researched, I find this claim very hard to believe. I can read while singing (not a song with words, but a tune that I know well, without words). I really don't think I "talk to [myself] so quietly, it cannot be heard" and while my "tongue and vocal chords" may "receive speech signals from [my] brain", I'm pretty sure they're not executed and nei…

If anybody is deaf, how can he read?

It is actually exceedingly rare for someone who is "profoundly deaf" (cannot hear at all) to learn to read. Most of the deaf people with high levels of schooling completion are people who began life hearing, or who had moderate deafness and considerable support from a family who were capable in sign language.

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#129

Post by e12e »

I wonder if NASA has done comparative studies on native vs foreign language wrt sub-vocalization and reading/speed reading ?

It is rather well known that native language and (all) foreign languages are "stored" in separate parts of the brain (with some limited controversy over whether there exists "bilingual" people in a biological sense).

I wonder if that has an effect on how we read written text (other than that most people presumably read faster and with better comprehension in their native tongue).

Re: Is speed reading really possible?

#130

Post by r0s »

loopdoend wrote: post #91

The whole eye-moving thing is a complete waste of time and effort. The real trick to speed reading is RSVP[1], rapid serial visual presentation. In RSVP the words or small groups of words are flashed in extremely fast succession without the need for the reader to move their eyes at all. I use iRSVP on my iPhone to read books from my Calibre library and my reading speed has never been higher. It's not for everyone and…

My last YC pitch was a system like this, with some unique innovations.

Do you really use the iRSVP system? Can you speak to the problems or weaknesses in your experience?

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