![]() Where is your evidence that enrolling in such a course at a community college increases reading speed? And where is your evidence, incidentally, that community college would cost less? Where is your evidence that skimming is useless for studying physics or reading a novel? Where is your evidence that speed reading makes fiction less pleasurable? Why read fiction at all if you don’t want to enjoy the language and the ideas? Who would want to hire a physician or lawyer who skimmed rather than read his or her texts? Skimming makes both comprehension and taking pleasure in words or ideas next to impossible. They would also avoid the frustration that will be inevitable when they find that while they can skim through material at a greater rate than they can read it, the utility of such a skill is limited (good for most of what’s likely to be in the daily newspaper, for example, but not for studying physics or reading a good novel). It would cost them less, and they would not end up wasting their time trying to read 10 lines at a time, backward and forward. Those desiring to increase the speed of their reading would do better to enroll in a community college course devoted to building study skills, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. The Skepdic article on speed reading says this: On the other hand we have skeptics who cite a small handful of research studies on reading speed (some of which are also a little dodgy, in my opinion), and from these they jump prematurely to the conclusion that speed reading is complete bunk. They sell fluffy books or offer overpriced training programs that turn out to just be repackaged versions of what Evelyn Wood was selling decades ago. On the one hand we have speed reading gurus like Howard Berg and Tony Buzan making dodgy claims. Does speed reading work? Are the claims made in Remember Everything You Read true? Can people read at 2,927 WPM with 92% comprehension, like the student Max mentioned on p161 of the book? What I discovered was… frustrating. To summarize the main idea of the book, the goal of reading should be to absorb the meaning out of written passages, not to engage in the exercise of sounding out the words at 250 WPM for its own sake.Īfter reading the book (at high speed, incidentally) I decided to do research on speed reading. ![]() The point is not just to read faster, but to improve comprehension and retention. First you get an overview, then a preview, THEN you read it, then you do a post-view, and finally you do a review. It also tries to teach you to read vertically instead of linearly, and to read in layers. The motions guide your eyes and help you resist regressing over material you’ve already read (and actually understood just fine the first time). The Evelyn Wood approach also involves hand motions on the page while you read. “Accept visual, as opposed to auditory, reassurance as you read.” (p69) The Evelyn Wood technique is to stop reading phonetically. You are translating text into imaginary sounds, then translating the sounds into meaning, then assembling those meanings into bigger ideas. It is limited by the speed of your mental voice, and it activates parts of your brain that should be unnecessary for reading. Linear subvocal reading is obviously inefficient. We are told to “sound the words out” from the very start of our careers as readers, and we never stop. Why do we read this way? The book doesn’t speculate, but I would venture a guess: It is an artifact of being taught to read phonetically. It’s a book on speed reading.Īccording to the book, the way most of us read is called “linear subvocal reading.” We scan a line of text from left to right and sound out the words in our heads. Frank called Remember Everything You Read.
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