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Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

spritzinc.com

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Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#151

Post by gus_massa »

MoosePlissken wrote: post #136
lukev wrote: post #40

This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests. One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even th…

What traditional reading speed/comprehension test did you take? I just took the one at readingsoft.com, and I felt like I could have guessed most of the answers in the test without even reading the text. I'm wondering if mosts comprehension tests actually do a poor job to testing comprehension. This stuff always interests me because I'm a terribly slow reader (I think I did ~180 wpm on the above test). I'd really lik…

(Not the OP, but I just take the test.) I got 6 out of 11 without reading the text. I didn't even skim the text. And in most of the questions I got wrong, the correct answer was my second choice.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#152

Post by awshepard »

lukev wrote: post #40

This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests. One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even th…

> this tool is truly excellent for breaking the subvocalization habit

I found the exact opposite when playing with the demo on the site. Perhaps I fall into the camp of the 1k+ wpm readers, and by extension am a non-linear, non-vocalizing reader, but going this slow, and seeing only one word at a time made me conscious of my mind "saying" every word.

> it forces you to read every word

Also a pain in the ass - I found if you blink, you'll end up missing words. At a consistent 500 wpm clip, a blink (avg 100-400 ms) could miss anywhere from 1 to 3 words. As you get faster, blinks are even more costly. Somehow (I assume through years of practice), when speed reading, your mind is able to properly account for blinks. This also brings up an interesting point - the creators claim that this method reduces eyestrain, but it makes me feel like I'm forced to hold my eyes open for fear of missing something. I can't imagine that's any less straining on the eyes.

Maybe in the future they'll add eye tracking and pause the text when it detects a blink. And we thought Kindle tracking your reading habits was scary.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#153

Post by nmodu »

lukev wrote: post #40

This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests. One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even th…

You raise some good points.

Over the past year, I have dedicated hundreds of hours towards improving my reading speed. I usually use Acceleread on my iPad; most recently I used it to read D.H Lawrence's Sons & Lovers at around 750-800 wpm. I also use Beeline -a different type of reading tool with some additional functionality for dyslexics- when reading web pages.

I've learned that certain types of prose make for poor speed reading material. Without a "rewind" option, there is no way that I can use these apps to read anything instructional or anything involving a high level of detail (such as a mystery novel). I understand that allowing the user to rewind would sacrifice speed, but speed can't always take precedence over clarity.

Also - in terms of the text- there needs to be a better method for handling quoted text. With speed reading apps that give the user the option of seeing chunks of words, it is far too easy to lose track of who is speaking when one chunk of words has an opening quotation mark and the next chunk of words [may or may not] have a closing quotation mark. I'm guessing that this problem is exacerbated by the fact that - in Spritz's case- words are only presented one at a time.

Here are some things I would I would like to see adopted by speed-readers:

Rewind functionality

Punctuation-based text color:

If the text is in between quotation marks, parenthesis or brackets, this text should be shaded a slightly different color than the rest.

Contextual deceleration:

I would love it if a speed reading app would automatically slow down at the end of a chapter. The last few sentences of a chapter are usually crafted with especially deliberate care and are meant to be savored.

More customization options for dyslexics:

For example, Beeline allows users to chose a specific type of font that is specifically geared towards dyslexics. In the future, I'd like to see speed readers enable these types of fonts (as well as customization options for line height and letter spacing).

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#155

Post by zhaphod »

Kiro wrote: post #101
zhaphod wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you had said you do just fine at 150 wpm may be i can accept it. But you are saying 1 wpm which means you are not trying to give constructive criticism. Most of the gen-pop is around 200-250 wpm which is why I said it is good enough. Don't be a troll.

> I do just fine reading at 250 wpm. Some times I feel just being good enough has lost its value. What is fine? What is good enough? I think it's an absurd statement that in no way is an argument against reading at 500 wpm.

Looks like your comprehension is suffering. No wonder you said 1wpm. Read what I wrote again will you:

>Most of the gen-pop is around 200-250 wpm which is why I >said it is good enough. Don't be a troll.

At around 200-250 wpm you are in the middle of the normal distribution hence good enough.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#156

Post by grogenaut »

shawn-furyan wrote: post #142
grogenaut wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the big thing when speed reading is to read it, just read it. Your brain will churn on it. Then come back and read it again. Your brain will churn more. Make notations in the margin the whole time. Now finally read it again. You'll get it all done faster than one read through and your brain will churn a ton on it. It's like when you come back to code tutorials a few days later after some practice and know what's goin…

I've never been able to get the hang of speed reading (I think I lack the knack for skimming), but I listen to a lot of audiobooks, and have a similar procedure for dense sections. Even when I'm distracted and prone to zoning out, I always get essentially 100% comprehension because I just rewind back to the last part that I remember well. In fact, it seems I still pick up something when I'm zoned out, because I'll re…

So another thing to note is sometimes what you are zoning out on isn't important so if you still get what's going on don't skip back. You can do the same thing going forward in a binary search type pattern. Works really well for stuff like Tolkien or Mellville whe're they're off on a tangent describing the sea or the somthings of somewhere and how onrey they are.

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#158

Post by a3_nm »

rjzzleep wrote: post #94
a3_nm wrote: post #86

There is a "The Science" section, referring to the Blog referring back to the same section, but I see nothing scientific about it. Science does not work by giving loads of examples of why the approach "should" work better than traditional reading, substantiated by intuition and "80%"-"20%" figures given with no reliable source. It should instead be validated by experiments. Here, it is simple enough to validate the a…

ok it's not really my job to prove their app, but to me it seems logical that reducing eye movement leads to higher performance. a quick search on google scholar [1]. i'm happy for them, yet another thing i can stroke off my todo list. tyvm [1] http://www.citeulike.org/group/6810/article/3309870

Extremely interesting.

I'm puzzled by this paper, though, and by the number it reports: > 1600 wpm for spritzing (that's > 25 words per second), but even this 790 wpm median rate for standard reading (called PAGE, page 5, column 2, line 2) is something of a mystery to me...

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#159

Post by deckar01 »

sergiosgc wrote: post #104
sgoody wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh, strange thing is it seems like I just can read that quickly anyway. Started on the banner at 250wpm, pretty comfortable, went straight to 500wpm on the banner and still fairly comfortable to read. So I thought I'd have a go at just reading some plain text as quickly as I comfortably could and it turns out that I can read more quickly than I do . I don't know why I don't read more quickly than I do, perhaps it do…

My comfortable reading speed is a bit above 700wpm. On a book with proper line length, or on my Kindle. Strangely, or not at all, I only read at that speed when parsing non-fiction texts. Reading a novel, the reading times on my Kindle boil down to 300wpm. Some stuff needs to be savored, I guess. Even at that speed, I'm known for devouring books, so I am probably reading too fast. On a side note, if Spritz is that go…

I thought the same thing. Nothing a little JavaScript can't fix:

  // Insert drop down item.
  var li = document.createElement('li');
  li.innerHTML = '1000wpm';
  li.setAttribute('data-value', '1000');
  document.querySelector('.speed ul').appendChild(li);
  
  // Create 1000wpm script
  var s = document.createElement('script');
  s.id = 'learntospritz_en_1000';
  s.type='spritztext';
  var data = JSON.parse(document.querySelector('#learntospritz_en_500').innerText);
  data[17] = '1000';
  s.innerText = JSON.stringify(data);
  document.body.appendChild(s);

Re: Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

#160

Post by raamdev »

nmodu wrote: post #153
lukev wrote: post #40

This is very interesting (and as has been pointed out in other comments, not exactly a new idea). I think its proper application, though, is in a tool for practicing reading, not for actually reading tests. One major thing this approach looses is the inherent non-linearity of text. If I miss a fact and want to back up a bit, or want to pause for a moment and think about something, I can (when reading) without even th…

You raise some good points. Over the past year, I have dedicated hundreds of hours towards improving my reading speed. I usually use Acceleread on my iPad; most recently I used it to read D.H Lawrence's Sons & Lovers at around 750-800 wpm. I also use Beeline -a different type of reading tool with some additional functionality for dyslexics- when reading web pages. I've learned that certain types of prose make for poo…

For the punctuation-based text color, it would be great if the software was able to keep track of, or at least attempt to keep track of, what character was speaking and assign a specific color to that characters' text.

For speed reading something like a novel, this would help the brain quickly associate a color with a character and avoid the need to catch the text that makes it clear who is speaking.

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