Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
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Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#2As someone with horrible reading speed, the demo on their home page worked pretty well. I'd like to see a demo with some more advanced text. Marketing language is pretty easy to digest quickly. I'd like to see a selection from Gödel, Escher, & Bach or something to see how well I could comprehend more dense texts.
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#3Looks like the same technology as spreeder (http://www.spreeder.com/app.php)... what's the difference between the two?
As someone who tried using spreeder for a while, I can say that your retention is quite a bit lower than normal reading, especially when reading complicated texts, since you loose contextual clues (your brain is really good at doing look-aheads for clues).
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#4At first I thought "Oh dear, another gimmick." but the demo is very compelling. I wish it didn't make the syllables in my head sound like such a metronome, but it definitely works. This could really change how we "ingest" knowledge.
Also, I wonder how tired I'd get after reading like that for thirty minutes or a few hours.
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#5As someone with horrible reading speed, the demo on their home page worked pretty well. I'd like to see a demo with some more advanced text. Marketing language is pretty easy to digest quickly. I'd like to see a selection from Gödel, Escher, & Bach or something to see how well I could comprehend more dense texts.
It's been awhile since I've really looked into anything speed-reading related, but as far as I recall, there aren't that many good techniques for speed-reading something like Godel Escher Bach, because the bottleneck for comprehension for really dense or deep texts is usually time taken to think about it. When I'm reading some like GEB, I usually end up reading it slowly, then stopping and thinking about it even after I've pretty carefully read it. Then I reread it again :)
Conversely, a lot of fiction, especially fiction on the lighter side, tends to repeat itself, or provide more narrative clues as to what's going on, so you can usually pick up what you missed in the context.
Of course, that's a really high level recollection of something I'm not an expert in :P
I also might just be trying to convince myself that I'm not a slow reader, heh
If anyone has any research or info to the contrary, I'd love to hear about it, because I'd definitely like to be able to absorb meaningful/dense information more quickly, even if it were just a small percent increase.
I'd also really like to see some third party research/tests with stuff like this and spreeder
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#6I had a summer job once in high school working in the office of a small business that published test preparation books and related products. They had devoted one of their rooms to a speed reading course; one day the teacher told me that as an employee I could take the course at no charge. I said that I could already read as fast as I could think, and he rolled his eyes and said, "You people who think." I believe that this skill might be useful to some people, but I prefer to avoid reading things that could profitably be speed read, because life is too short for that. For example, I haven't read the OA.
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#7At first I thought "Oh dear, another gimmick." but the demo is very compelling. I wish it didn't make the syllables in my head sound like such a metronome, but it definitely works. This could really change how we "ingest" knowledge. Also, I wonder how tired I'd get after reading like that for thirty minutes or a few hours.
Have you tried http://www.spreeder.com/ ?
No association, but when working for it I find I can hit 1000 without losing information.
Good when I need to cram.
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#8Looks like the same technology as spreeder ( http://www.spreeder.com/app.php )... what's the difference between the two? As someone who tried using spreeder for a while, I can say that your retention is quite a bit lower than normal reading, especially when reading complicated texts, since you loose contextual clues (your brain is really good at doing look-aheads for clues).
Spreeder shows one word at a time, right? As someone who speed-reads regularly, I find that reading three words at a time works much better than one word, especially w.r.t. retaining context.
It also seems to matter whether chunks are split around punctuation or not, i.e. If the sentence is about to end after two words, the current chunk should not show the first word of the next sentence, just show the last two words of the current sentence. I couldn't find a speed-reading app that did this the way I wanted, so I wrote one for iOS (http://velocireaderapp.com/)
I also agree with the comment below that dense texts are best read without speed-reading. There's a sweet spot between easy and hard, boring and fun for texts that are ideal for speed-reading IMO.
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#9Looks like the same technology as spreeder ( http://www.spreeder.com/app.php )... what's the difference between the two? As someone who tried using spreeder for a while, I can say that your retention is quite a bit lower than normal reading, especially when reading complicated texts, since you loose contextual clues (your brain is really good at doing look-aheads for clues).
Yes, the biggest difference I can see is the red character, and there are plenty of other equivalent programs too. The key phrase is "Rapid Serial Visual Presentation".
Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training
#10The best way to read books is with enlarged font on a tablet or e-reader that's resting on an inclined treadmill. You're already ahead of the game time wise because you're exercising and reading at the same time.