Comments on: Speed Reading http://researchist.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/speed-reading/ Notes on reading, books, literature, language and reader-response theory. Sat, 07 Nov 2009 15:54:17 +0000 http://wordpress.com/ hourly 1 By: More (Doubts) on Speed Reading « Legendumst http://researchist.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/speed-reading/#comment-123 More (Doubts) on Speed Reading « Legendumst Sun, 09 Nov 2008 19:54:41 +0000 http://researchist.wordpress.com/?p=7#comment-123 [...] derren brown, Harold Bloom, kim peek, reading, scepticism, speed reading My previous post on speed reading is by far the most popular on my blog, and so I decided to throw in another 2 cents. The promise of [...] [...] derren brown, Harold Bloom, kim peek, reading, scepticism, speed reading My previous post on speed reading is by far the most popular on my blog, and so I decided to throw in another 2 cents. The promise of [...]

]]> By: legendumst http://researchist.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/speed-reading/#comment-117 legendumst Thu, 23 Oct 2008 22:05:00 +0000 http://researchist.wordpress.com/?p=7#comment-117 Thanks for your comment, faruq. The problem with speed reading is the whole scam culture behind it. The alleged improvement reported by readers doing speed reading courses might simply be the result of skewed testing; easy texts that do not require close reading, for instance. When people try to make a living out of selling a product such as "amazing reading speed", chances are they are trying to make promises they cannot keep. Nonetheless, I believe there's something to the theory of "reading chunks", that is, the idea that you can read faster by recognizing words occurring frequently, on their own or together. We all read words such as "the", "a", "someone who", "all that" faster than a word such as "quixotic", not only because of the length but because we are so used to them; similarly, someone reading a lot of fairy tales reads the expression "once upon a time" as one chunk rather than four words and can process it faster. However, I'm more sceptical about claims of eye movement and subvocalization. I would really like to know whether these claims hold water or whether they are just myths. Thanks for your comment, faruq. The problem with speed reading is the whole scam culture behind it. The alleged improvement reported by readers doing speed reading courses might simply be the result of skewed testing; easy texts that do not require close reading, for instance. When people try to make a living out of selling a product such as “amazing reading speed”, chances are they are trying to make promises they cannot keep.
Nonetheless, I believe there’s something to the theory of “reading chunks”, that is, the idea that you can read faster by recognizing words occurring frequently, on their own or together. We all read words such as “the”, “a”, “someone who”, “all that” faster than a word such as “quixotic”, not only because of the length but because we are so used to them; similarly, someone reading a lot of fairy tales reads the expression “once upon a time” as one chunk rather than four words and can process it faster. However, I’m more sceptical about claims of eye movement and subvocalization. I would really like to know whether these claims hold water or whether they are just myths.

]]> By: faruq http://researchist.wordpress.com/2008/05/14/speed-reading/#comment-116 faruq Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:26:20 +0000 http://researchist.wordpress.com/?p=7#comment-116 just thought i'd say i've read your blog post and very interesting it is too. I've been looking into speed reading at the moment. And doing a bit of background reading. Most of the stuff i've discovered is pretty much the same but I found this bit quite interesting http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081019/Mirror/sundaytimesmirror.html just thought i’d say i’ve read your blog post and very interesting it is too. I’ve been looking into speed reading at the moment. And doing a bit of background reading. Most of the stuff i’ve discovered is pretty much the same but I found this bit quite interesting

http://www.sundaytimes.lk/081019/Mirror/sundaytimesmirror.html

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