6 ms·
Orwell - Improve your speed reading
- tbrooks 16y agoI've been using Spreeder to read online articles and long blog posts for a few years now. I'm amazed at how much information I retain from reading at 300 words/minute. http://www.spreeder.com/app.php http://www.spreeder.com/app.php
- robinduckett 16y agoThat's where I got my inspiration from, but wanted to see if I could code it myself, with the ability to have it "marquee" across, loading different amounts of words at a time, without removing words I may have (or may not have) already read.
- DrSprout 16y agoSeems a little more usable for me using text-align right so that if I'm keeping up I don't have to track the next word jumping all over the place.
- robinduckett 16y agoNow has text alignment preferences :D
- steadicat 16y ago300 words/minute looks awfully slow to me. I can speak faster than that. Reading speed can be much faster than speech, especially if you get rid of subvocalization ("speaking" words in your head as you read). I don't see the advantage of flashing a word at a time. Reading works best when the eye can scan a bunch of words simultaneously. If anything, I'd try flashing a line of text at a time.
- boredguy8 16y ago300 wpm is average reading. Speaking at 300 wpm with clarity takes a lot of practice, and most listeners require practice to comprehend that rate of speech. Research shows that with compression (i.e. articulate speech sped up, 'contentless' gaps removed), people without training lose comprehension of spoken word at about 210 wpm. Unless you're talking with former debaters, I'd slow down that speech a little. Even if you live in New York!
- jerf 16y agoAt first I thought, "Really? 300 wpm is average? I tried that setting and it's pretty slow." So I checked it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)#Reading_rate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)#Reading_rate If anything, that's the high end of average! Holy cow. I was getting bored and consequently losing focus at 300wpm. No wonder "people" don't like to read, if a huge chunk of "people" can't even go that fast.
- Tekhne 16y agoUnfortunately, I don't have source in front of me, but I've read some research that indicates that subvocalization is actually necessary for full comprehension, and that claims to the contrary are apocryphal. It's probably best to investigate before trying to eliminate subvocalization.
- mahipal 16y agoThis is a cool idea. I suppose it would need some rudimentary analytics over time to work as an actual training tool? One suggestion: For me, at least, my reading relies on the shape of the sentence. And I think for everyone they would be looking at the right edge of the sentence as more words are coming in. So it's really jarring to have the right edge jumping around, and it might make more sense to right-align the marquee.
- robinduckett 16y agoAdded text alignment prefs, just refresh :D
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoI seemed to get the optimum reading speed and fluidity at 300 wpm, 10 words at a time, reading in 1 word at a time. Edit: I also second mahipal's recommendation to right-align the text.
- robinduckett 16y agoNow right aligned by default, with a setting to change it.
- RyanMcGreal 16y agoBeautiful, thanks.
- wdewind 16y agoCool 1) It would be cool if the up and down arrow keys would make it faster and slower, or have some kind of gradual slider or something. 2) Doesn't speed reading have less to do with actual linear speed and more to do with effective and efficient scanning of the page? (I've heard people talk about moving from top left to bottom right)
- robinduckett 16y agoI made this just to help me practice, which is why you can set how many words show at once, and how many new words come in at a time :)
- conanite 16y agoCool how sample text comes from the opening pages of 1984 that cover Winston's absolute lack of privacy, describing how the Thought Police can "plug in your wire whenever they wanted to". A topical choice. If only there had been a big social website that would allow him organise a privacy protest group. +1 for right-aligned text.
- robinduckett 16y agoHehehe :D
- boredguy8 16y agoThe way you're calculating words per minute is wrong. You're calculating the page change without taking into account how many words at a time are being presented. So for instance, the refresh for show 30 / read 1 is the same as the refresh for show 30 / read 30. Yet clearly, if 'read 30' is set, the refresh should be substantially slower than if 'read 1' is set. Refresh in seconds should be (words at a time / words per minute) * 60. Right now you're just doing (60/wpm) and ignoring words at a time.
- robinduckett 16y agoI was waiting for someone to bring this up, it's because I put that "calculation" in before I put in the variable read rates in. If you know how I can fix that, any advice will promptly be implemented :)
- boredguy8 16y agoSet your refresh in seconds to (words at a time / words per minute) * 60. And maybe add a check to make sure the show value is never smaller than the words at a time value? (Though it is a fun, schizophrenic way to experience the start of 1984)
- boredguy8 16y agoNot sure what you changed, but I set WPM to 60, show 1, and read 1. This should refresh every second (1/60)*60, but it's updating very slowly.
- robinduckett 16y agoSorry, procrastination filter got me for an hour :( And it's updated exactly as you said, and I timed it. "slowly" is exactly once per second as far as I can tell. http://www.github.com/robinduckett/orwell http://www.github.com/robinduckett/orwell is the repo, take a look yourself :)
- jimmyjim 16y agoCould this possibly be implemented in Chrome as an extension (so I don't have to keep copying and pasting the texts onto it)? Well, it obviously could, so I guess what I'm asking is are you willing to do it? :) I, for one, would be very, very grateful for it.
- steadicat 16y agoDid you consider smooth scrolling instead of adding/removing a word at a time? The bouncing around due to different word-lengths is troubling me.
- robinduckett 16y agoI hadn't considered smooth scrolling, I'll have a look when I get home.
- Gormo 16y agoSpeed reading is great to remember isolated facts and data, but it doesn't work to really understand anything. If I want to absorb a complex idea and integrate it into my base of knowledge, I need to pause while reading, digest what I've read, figure out its implications, and think about it in relation to what I already know and understand. Speeding up the physical act of reading doesn't add any value here. When I try to use these techniques, I usually end up mechanically scanning the text word by word without consciously comprehending anything, and having to keep going back to re-read the same paragraphs over and over again.
- boredguy8 16y agoObviously there are many ways people process text, but my early efforts at speed reading (and speed listening) were much like yours. With practice, however, I reached a point where I could bifurcate input processing and ideational processing. It was almost as though my eyes were passively accepting information and throwing it at my mind in useful chunks, rather than my mind actively going out to get information and then churning it. The best analogy I've found is Hofstadter talking about the process of becoming good at Jumbles (where you have to unscramble letters to find the word). Early in the process, he had to actively, at the forefront of his mind, rearrange letters and test them. As he got better, that active task was offloaded to some barely-conscious 'letter combining capacity' that would only toss up fairly plausible combinations. It might not be a real word, but it had a high level of salience, whereas his active thinking-about process would make bizarre, impossible combinations that would include letters not even in the jumble. Similarly, the 'active' task of reading is, for me, a pretty passive process now, and I actually have more of my mind to devote to thinking about what I read while my eyes do the boring work of getting the input 'inside'.
- brokenmindsets 16y agohi boredguy8, I am really interested in the type of speed reading that you are describing and have started trying to learn to do it myself. I say "your type" since people seem to mean a lot of different things when they say "speed reading". What I specifically want to learn is the ability to rapidly read while maintaining comprehension by making the process less of a conscious activity. How did you learn this skill? Did you automatically start doing this or was it something you intentionally learned? If you intentionally learned it was there any particular method or book you used? I know there are a lot of books/products about the topic but I don't know which ones actually have value and which don't so I have just been trying them one at a time. I have only met a few people in real life who seem to have this skill and they typically are not able to describe how they are doing it. Any information you can provide would be greatly appreciated, even if it is just a description of the process you went through. Thanks!
- klochner 16y agoCool project. Some ideas: - let users play with fonts/colors/spacing to find their optimum setup. - aggregate user preferences to find good defaults Then you have an interesting blog post to write. I think you should blow away the scrolling and have just two controls: chunk size and speed. Personally I found chunk size ~50 to be ideal.
- robinduckett 16y agoOn the second point, how do you suggest I go around doing that? As for the "blow away the scrolling", I made this to be configurable, sure it's nice to be simple, but I made it so I could tweak it on the fly. You wouldn't have found any chunk size to be ideal if I hadn't made it editable in the first place :P
- klochner 16y agoOn the second point, how about: "log in to save your preferences!" As for "blow away the scrolling", I guess I'm channeling steve jobs: "This is the right way to do it." People could prefer scrolling text, but from everything I know about reading, they ultimately will read faster if they use chunks.
- robinduckett 16y agoWell it's forkable on github, knock yourself out, Steve :P
- klochner 16y agoif it's cool with you ... didn't want to steal your thunder :)
- pook 16y agoMaking this a readability-style bookmarklet or plugin would be awesome. I would love a "Speedify" button
- btilly 16y agoCool idea, but I would prefer it if you calculated words as groups of 5 letters (that's how it was calculated back when I was learning to type), and not as number of logical words. Because right now you're getting variable length chunks of text but my eyes really like to scan in uniform length chunks. For instance suppose I am reading in 5 word groups. Some groups I read faster than others. So even though my average reading speed is a bit above 700 wpm, at 700 wpm in your application I have noticeable pauses where I've finished the current chunk, and I have chunks I do not finish. It is very frustrating.
- Jd 16y agoShow words 4 at a time, Read in 4 words at a time @ 500 WPM is the highest comfortable reading speed. Does this mean I actually read at 2000 WPM?
- nhooey 16y agoThis thing needs to move pixels at a time, rather than words at a time. It's really hard to calibrate your eyes to the next word when the length of the next word is unknown. You lose the spatial cues of where each word's position is each time a new word is shifted on to the screen. Something like a smooth stock ticker would be much better. Although, Spreeder looks much better.