Misplaced Pages

Speed reading

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by 136.199.34.157 (talk) at 17:21, 23 November 2004. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 17:21, 23 November 2004 by 136.199.34.157 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Speed reading is the skill of reading and comprehending text at a high rate.

On the average, a person with a college-level education reads at around 300 words per minute, assuming that the material is not of a technical nature. On the other hand, the fastest readers can read more than a thousand words per minute.

A measurement of reading speed is meaningful only when combined with information on how much of the text was understood by the reader. It has been found that people with higher reading speeds also have higher comprehension. Even more surprisingly, a person usually improves their comprehension as well when they improve their reading speed.

The result of high speed camera/eye studies show that a speed reader can read and comprehend a sentence with far fewer eye movements and eye fixations. A slow reader must move and fixate their eyes up to five times as much as an excellent reader. The process of reading, for a slow reader, requires much more ocular work—this can result in fatigue and much slower reading rates. A slow reader must toil to read information and they can easily become frustrated with the process of reading. Slower readers often read the bare minimum as reading is a unpleasant and difficult experience. The biggest hurdle of a slower reader is the time and effort it takes to absorb a sentence of information. Comprehension suffers because by the time the read a sentence they have expended considerable exertion and delay, and they remember much less of the information. Speed reading is a learned discipline. The key to speed reading is the elimination of poor reading habits or reading inhibitors that are commonplace in child and adult readers.

There are several factors that inhibit speed reading:

  1. Poor vocabulary
  2. Regression—going over the same material repeatedly.
  3. Word hopping—reading one word at a time (vocalization)
  4. Subvocalization—pronouncing the words in one's mind as one reads them
  5. Faulty perception—due to either faulty eye movement or slow perception time

Most casual readers can double or triple their reading speed by practicing speed reading. According to studies, the limit of reading speed for the vast majority of people is around 800 words per minute—speeds above this typically degenerate into low-comprehension skimming. However, for the average person who reads at around 230 words per minute, great improvements in reading speed are possible through speed reading training.

Techniques for increasing the speed include the following:

  1. Having an eye checkup
  2. Not vocalizing as one reads—one thinks much faster than one speaks
  3. Not hopping back and forth—disciplining one's eye movements
  4. Reading more than one word at a time

Undisciplined eye movement is perhaps the largest stumbling block to speed reading. Often slow readers hop between each word, making slow careful eye movements, reading only a few letters per fixation. Often, a single word may require a number of eye fixations for the slower reader. The slow reader will typically skip back and fixate on earlier parts of the sentence; this further confounds the reading rhythm. A speed reader has a smooth reading style, employs fewer eye fixations, and reads many more letters during each eye fixation. The maximum reading rate is also dependent on the reader's familiarity with the text; heavily technical documents require a speed reduction even for speed readers.

In general, reading employs various skills depending on the level of text and the intent behind the action. For example, if reading to obtain a general overview of a piece of text we might skim, or alternatively, if searching for an important quote or piece of technical information (where full understanding isn't important) we might scan.

See also

External links

Category: