Yes, if you don't value what you read and just want to get a quick idea of it.
It's not possible for actually _reading_ stuff.
Which reminds me of the Woody Allen quote:
― "I speed-read "War and Peace". It's about Russia, right?".
Is speed reading really possible?
21–30 of 148 posts
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#22Obviously, you get your best speeds when you're just accepting the text uncriticially. If you stop to think about it, you won't hit top speeds.
Beyond that, you can certainly train for optimal eye movement, local or global optimum as the case may be. After I took speed-reading, I knew not to look directly at the very ends of lines, and I found it more comfortable to center my eyes on white space than on actual text.
IIRC, I tested up to 800 WPM, but that was on grade-appropriate material in a high school I found easy.
(Of course, this was all in the 1970s, when what one read was black text in a familiar font in neat rows on white paper, all at least somewhat thoughtfully arranged. Things are different now ...)
My best real-life estimates of my reading speed was in the 400 words a minute range, with sub-vocalization. E.g., I have a few times read 3 novels the same day, most memorably 2 days before my PhD qualifying exams. (One day beforehand, I crammed like mad. :D One hour beforehand, I led my fellow students in the most awkward game of frisbee ever.)
But it all depends on the material, and the approach to reading it. E.g., there are certain chapter subsections of Hormander's book on Analysis of Several Complex Variables that famously take a week or more each to "read".
And yes -- I subvocalize.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#23At around 7 or 8 years old, my reading level was several grades ahead of schedule. I was consuming large (for my age) novels with no sweat. My parents noticed this and gave me a speed reading book. I incorporated each an every item on that book including the removal of subvocalization. It certainly gave returns right away, allowing me to consume books at a faster rate, but a huge cost. Years later, I entered college…
After removing subvocalization, did you have comprehension problem while reading poetry?
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#24I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia.
-Woody Allen
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
But do you experience the same limits as stated on Skeptoid? Are your reading at 500-600 words per minute, with full comprehension, or even faster?
I can read pretty quickly (I've never really measured, but it takes me about a minute to read a page, which I guess is around 500 words). Depending on the text, though, there's a lot of slowing down or re-reading. I read Harry Potter pretty quickly, but "Thinking: Fast and Slow" is nowhere near at the same pace.
Yes, a lot of times speeds keep on varying. It depends a lot on the type of book that you're reading. For the rest, it's inherent abilities that assist.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#26Yes, it is possible, I do it, but not as good as I would like. You could read a book in twenty minutes as if it was a video with better comprehension that reading it slowly(as most of the brain disconnects with such a low bandwidth).
When you speed read you train your eyes to look over a wide area and you are able to read several lines at the same time and train the brain to make sense of it(use the subconscious to store-order the lines automatically).
So the best thing you could do is to control the formatting, so text is always the same size and always organized the same way, so if you force your brain to make sense of it, it does after time.
The best structure is newspaper-like text, lots of columns, small lines so your brain could make sense of entire sentences with just an eye shot.
It does not work with Hacker News, or most of the web by the way as each format is different and content is scrolled, with wide lines, not paginated.
It works really well when you could control the formatting, aka non DRM text you could interpret with your own software, but if you try to sell this software you will have problems when even blind people are not permitted to modify copyrighted text.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#27At around 7 or 8 years old, my reading level was several grades ahead of schedule. I was consuming large (for my age) novels with no sweat. My parents noticed this and gave me a speed reading book. I incorporated each an every item on that book including the removal of subvocalization. It certainly gave returns right away, allowing me to consume books at a faster rate, but a huge cost. Years later, I entered college…
I just tried reading a number of articles on the front page using www.spreeder.com that another commenter here mentioned. I got up to 800wpm with chunk size of 3 before my suspicion was confirmed: while I had no problem following the story, it felt like I had a mental buffer that was constantly filling up and skipping over interesting questions or thoughts based on what I was reading.
Fundamentally, speed reading through something is at odds with processing that information in a useful way. And therein lies the rub: I don't read something merely for the sake of reading it.
When I read novels, I enjoy losing myself daydreaming in another world, and savouring the emotions of the characters while thinking about how I would react in their shoes. When I read technical documentation I'm attemping to create or update mental models of technical concepts. When I read a friend's Facebook post I think about what, if any, response I will offer or how I would deal with their situation. When I read a message from my girlfriend I have to take time to understand and plan for whatever she's discussing or asking.
I'm honestly struggling to see the value in speed reading. I cannot think of why I would be reading something simply for the sake of reading it without further processing. More valuable would be learning ways to process information more efficiently, i.e. accurately and quickly.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#28Wondering about subvocalization, what about reading in a language I never learned to speak?
I you practice reading while saying "yadda yadda yadda" in your head, subvocalization goes away immediately.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#29At around 7 or 8 years old, my reading level was several grades ahead of schedule. I was consuming large (for my age) novels with no sweat. My parents noticed this and gave me a speed reading book. I incorporated each an every item on that book including the removal of subvocalization. It certainly gave returns right away, allowing me to consume books at a faster rate, but a huge cost. Years later, I entered college…
After removing subvocalization, did you have comprehension problem while reading poetry?
Depends on poetry, but definitely anything other than sing-song poetry is lost on me. Not sure about the link with subvocalication though, since I've never enjoyed that kind of poetry (causality?!?!)
Funny thing, it was at english class that I actually started noticing it. The exercise was to read against the grain and find the hidden meaning. I didnt get it until I physically read out loud.
Re: Is speed reading really possible?
#30It's really up to the text. When I read math or comuputer science papers, I have to read slowly, and a few times over, to get any comprehension, even from the non-formula prose.