4 ms·

Speed 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

by Gormo 16y ago

Speed 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 ago
Obviously 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 ago
  hi 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!
  - boredguy8 16y ago
    First, I think some of this is just a 'the way we're wired' thing. I picked up the 'reading fast' habit when I was in a program that had me reading hundreds of pages of literature a week with the need to be able to discuss the texts at both a detail-oriented, "What does this line mean?" and a broad-scope, "What is the project of this text?" scale. Many people in my class had painstaking notes: I was able to build up an internal model nearly always. But maybe that's just me. Second, I think another big component was my involvement with academic competitive debate. This required learning how to process a lot of information, both verbal and written, as quickly as possible, and maintaining an internal map of how various 'nodes' of argumentation interrelated. Having to then organize that into extemporaneous speeches puts it into practice. Anyway, I don't have a good 'route to get here' because I didn't really catalog the transformation. A few things I do, though. First, I read paragraphs at a time (I also speak in paragraphs at a time: most people speak in sentence fragments at a time). I do this by tracking two points every 2-3 lines: one about 25% of the way in, the other about 75% of the way in. For a long time early on, I was reading with my index finger and pinkie finger touching the page tracing down as I read. I know people talk about "reading down the middle" but that's never really worked for me, but the 'double bounce' does. YMMV. I don't trace now because my hands just get in the way. Second, I learned to stop "saying" what I was reading. Now, for whatever reason I was never one of those people who said the words out loud while they read. But I was 'saying' them in my head and then translating them. I don't know how to express this clearly: I learned to 'listen' to my eyes, I guess, and I sortof mentally hang out in the 'what does this mean?' zone. So it's still being processed at the word/clause level, but it's 'preprocessed'. I think part of this is because I'm constantly asking "what's going on?" in the text, so there's always a context. The times that doesn't work well, though, is in more rapid dialog. I'll lose track of who is saying what. I also have a tendency to skip names (I'm bad with names in general) and so it becomes, say, "K-lady" instead of "Kahlan". (In my defense, Goodkind ends up making all his characters 'generic good' or 'generic bad' anyway.) Anyway, hope that helps. Feel free to ask questions: thinking about what I'm doing when I read isn't something I practice much. One thing I learned in high school was to not read where I sleep. I later learned the body gets 'confused' which sortof makes sense to me. I tend to read sitting up with the book at nearly eye level (not in my lap). I also read in the tub a lot (hope that's not TMI).
dlnovell 16y ago
Sorry, but that is absolutely not true. Notice that every statement you use to back up your premise contains "I". You may not be an effective speed reader or haven't been able to properly train yourself, but your blanket statement that speed reading "doesn't work to really understand anything" is completely absurd. The goal of speed reading is to increase the rate at which you can _comprehend_ what you read, not just increasing the number of words your read per minute. My dad practiced speed reading while getting his PhD in business management precisely so that he could read the mountains of dense, academic research he needed to in less time. He can read and comprehend fully around 600 wpm. Try telling him that it doesn't work to really understand anything. It's not something you can master in a week or even a month. It takes a long period of dedicated practice but it can definitely help anyone willing to commit to the training.
- brokenmindsets 16y ago
  Hi dlnovell, I am trying to learn this skill. Any advice or book recommendations? Do you speed read well also, or does your comment only pertain to your father? Thanks!
  - dlnovell 16y ago
    The program my dad used was developed by Evelyn Wood. It's old school, and one of the main techniques is underlining each line of text with your finger or a pen, so it doesn't really work as well for reading on a computer. However, once you train with underlining on paper, your speed without it will still be significantly faster than before. It would probably work normally on a kindle or ipad. I dabbled with it when I was in high school and had something like a 50% speed up after a week, but I'm not a particularly disciplined student. I'm sure that if I had kept with it I'd have been able to double or triple my reading speed.
    - brokenmindsets 16y ago
      Hi dlnovell, thank's for the response! I have a book on the Evelyn Wood technique named The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program which I believe was written by someone who used to work for Evelyn Wood rather than by Evelyn herself. I haven't been able to get my hands on the original Evelyn Wood training material as of yet. It is really great to hear feedback from someone that this technique has worked for. Thanks again.

by Gormo 16y ago

boredguy8 16y ago

Obviously 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 ago
hi 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!
- boredguy8 16y ago
  First, I think some of this is just a 'the way we're wired' thing. I picked up the 'reading fast' habit when I was in a program that had me reading hundreds of pages of literature a week with the need to be able to discuss the texts at both a detail-oriented, "What does this line mean?" and a broad-scope, "What is the project of this text?" scale. Many people in my class had painstaking notes: I was able to build up an internal model nearly always. But maybe that's just me. Second, I think another big component was my involvement with academic competitive debate. This required learning how to process a lot of information, both verbal and written, as quickly as possible, and maintaining an internal map of how various 'nodes' of argumentation interrelated. Having to then organize that into extemporaneous speeches puts it into practice. Anyway, I don't have a good 'route to get here' because I didn't really catalog the transformation. A few things I do, though. First, I read paragraphs at a time (I also speak in paragraphs at a time: most people speak in sentence fragments at a time). I do this by tracking two points every 2-3 lines: one about 25% of the way in, the other about 75% of the way in. For a long time early on, I was reading with my index finger and pinkie finger touching the page tracing down as I read. I know people talk about "reading down the middle" but that's never really worked for me, but the 'double bounce' does. YMMV. I don't trace now because my hands just get in the way. Second, I learned to stop "saying" what I was reading. Now, for whatever reason I was never one of those people who said the words out loud while they read. But I was 'saying' them in my head and then translating them. I don't know how to express this clearly: I learned to 'listen' to my eyes, I guess, and I sortof mentally hang out in the 'what does this mean?' zone. So it's still being processed at the word/clause level, but it's 'preprocessed'. I think part of this is because I'm constantly asking "what's going on?" in the text, so there's always a context. The times that doesn't work well, though, is in more rapid dialog. I'll lose track of who is saying what. I also have a tendency to skip names (I'm bad with names in general) and so it becomes, say, "K-lady" instead of "Kahlan". (In my defense, Goodkind ends up making all his characters 'generic good' or 'generic bad' anyway.) Anyway, hope that helps. Feel free to ask questions: thinking about what I'm doing when I read isn't something I practice much. One thing I learned in high school was to not read where I sleep. I later learned the body gets 'confused' which sortof makes sense to me. I tend to read sitting up with the book at nearly eye level (not in my lap). I also read in the tub a lot (hope that's not TMI).

dlnovell 16y ago

Sorry, but that is absolutely not true. Notice that every statement you use to back up your premise contains "I". You may not be an effective speed reader or haven't been able to properly train yourself, but your blanket statement that speed reading "doesn't work to really understand anything" is completely absurd. The goal of speed reading is to increase the rate at which you can _comprehend_ what you read, not just increasing the number of words your read per minute. My dad practiced speed reading while getting his PhD in business management precisely so that he could read the mountains of dense, academic research he needed to in less time. He can read and comprehend fully around 600 wpm. Try telling him that it doesn't work to really understand anything. It's not something you can master in a week or even a month. It takes a long period of dedicated practice but it can definitely help anyone willing to commit to the training.

brokenmindsets 16y ago
Hi dlnovell, I am trying to learn this skill. Any advice or book recommendations? Do you speed read well also, or does your comment only pertain to your father? Thanks!
- dlnovell 16y ago
  The program my dad used was developed by Evelyn Wood. It's old school, and one of the main techniques is underlining each line of text with your finger or a pen, so it doesn't really work as well for reading on a computer. However, once you train with underlining on paper, your speed without it will still be significantly faster than before. It would probably work normally on a kindle or ipad. I dabbled with it when I was in high school and had something like a 50% speed up after a week, but I'm not a particularly disciplined student. I'm sure that if I had kept with it I'd have been able to double or triple my reading speed.
  - brokenmindsets 16y ago
    Hi dlnovell, thank's for the response! I have a book on the Evelyn Wood technique named The Evelyn Wood Seven-Day Speed Reading and Learning Program which I believe was written by someone who used to work for Evelyn Wood rather than by Evelyn herself. I haven't been able to get my hands on the original Evelyn Wood training material as of yet. It is really great to hear feedback from someone that this technique has worked for. Thanks again.