Speed Reading
August 28, 2004 7:37 PM   Subscribe

Is speed reading for real? Or is it just some gimmick? Have any of you managed to use specific techniques to significantly increase the pages/minute you read without much affecting comprehension or retention?
posted by tirade to Education (5 answers total)
 
Yes, but the devil is in the details of how you measure 'comprehension' and 'retention'.

Consider a popular novel. How much do you actually comprehend and retain when reading word for word, and how much do gloss over while your mind wanders? After a short speed reading course, I was reading popular fiction at the rate of 150 pages per hour with almost 95% retention. At my word-for-word reading rate, I retained only about 60%.

For studying for exams, however, speed reading helps identify areas of the book that need your further attention at a slower reading pace.
posted by mischief at 8:30 PM on August 28, 2004


Shaddup, gyan, you're not helping.

It's for real, but it's mostly a matter of learning to skim effectively. I generally find that I read the first ten or twenty pages of a new text much more slowly than I do the rest, until I've picked up the author's style... after that I've learned which bits I can safely skip. You'll always miss details when speed reading; it's only really useful for getting the gist of the argument.
posted by ook at 8:31 PM on August 28, 2004


I'm a speed reader, but a natural one. I read a speed-reading-how-to book for kicks once, and of the TOP TEN SPEED SUPER TECHNIQUES (or whatever), the only two that were part of the way I read were:

- Don't say the words aloud(?) in your head.
- Don't hop from word to word, keep your eyes moving smoothly over the page.

I don't 'skim' or anything like that. YMMV, of course.
posted by Jairus at 10:10 PM on August 28, 2004


There was a discussion of this a while ago that you might want to go over, too.
posted by LairBob at 5:06 AM on August 29, 2004


Moving from, say, 200 wpm to 600 wpm is totally doable and you will improve in comprehension. See earlier thread mentioned above. I used to teach a one-hour workshop at BYU.
posted by mecran01 at 10:37 AM on August 29, 2004


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