How long does it take to master speed reading?

[Mr Rayon]

How long does it take to learn how to speed read? I've never learnt how to but I am deeply interested in increasing my reading speed from your average 125-250 wpm to 500-1000 wpm without decreasing comprehension. How long does it usually take to learn how to speed read? Have their been any scientific tests on this?

[Genecks]

I think speed reading is a form of critical reading that is often dependent on one's ability to quickly summarize and condense information (while having the summary keep the material's original meaning), sort through irrelevant material, and ability to create what I call "abstraction points." These abstraction points are generalizations that allow you to generate associative facts from a base ground in order to recall greater detail about things discussed in the reading material. That's my view, though. Speed reading is nice, but the real emphasis is on recall. I've found that sometimes it does me good to speed up my reading pace for some materials. I have this habit of keeping the same pace. But sometimes I'll notice that I can actually rush myself in certain materials and recall large amounts of information while not being under stress. Otherwise, I'll probably read at a "normal pace" without thinking that I could just as well read faster and remember the same amount of material in a shorter amount of time.

 

I think the more a person builds such critical reading skills, the easier it becomes to apply them and reap the benefits they are suppose to provide. The brain plasticizes around the method. That's my theory for the time being.

 

I think if there have been tests on reading speed, they would relate to cognitive science.

 

I know of one professor who is currently attempting to understand how people go about reading scientific texts and retaining/understanding the material. This professor received a $1 million USD grant, so I'm going to assume that perhaps not as much research as people would like to be in existence is out there. This isn't really reading speed.

 

http://tigger.uic.edu/~jwiley/eyelab.html

 

Now, I've met some people who will "speed read." And by that, they do just that. They move their eyeballs along the page and try to remember as much as they can while trying to keep their page-scanning eyeball movements at a decent pace. It's like force-feeding your brain. One guy I knew always carried a gym bag full of fiction books with him. That's another form of reading. He would speed read through fiction. This doesn't necessarily mean a person with such a technique can recall all the details. But such a person may get the gist of the story line and so forth. So, you have to decide what your goals are during reading. I think for a non-fiction reader, it would be memorization.

 

additional reading:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_(process)

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_thinking

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_mining

Edited June 4, 2010 by Genecks

[Mr Rayon]

Wow, what a long and detailed post! Thanks for that!

How quickly can you read? In about two month's time I'm going to do a very important test that would require a fair bit of reading. Do you think this would be sufficient time to become very fast at speed reading?

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Could watching foreign movies with subtitles help with speed reading in anyway?

[Idiaru Larry]

what is the importance of speed reading when one can not really grab the main information in the passage he is reading?Don't you think it will be better to give more concetration to what you are reading?

[Genecks]

Wow, what a long and detailed post! Thanks for that!

How quickly can you read? In about two month's time I'm going to do a very important test that would require a fair bit of reading. Do you think this would be sufficient time to become very fast at speed reading?

---

Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

Could watching foreign movies with subtitles help with speed reading in anyway?

 

Well, foreign language relates to the areas of the brain that involve reading. So, maybe it could help. If anything, it could probably help a person better memorize unfamiliar terms and words. While learning foreign languages, I found that I could better memorize weird, complex English words.

 

Learning a language can take a while. Maybe a few months... maybe a year or more... But without constant usage and learning, the plastic effects and benefits from plastic effects (I think) would more than likely wear off.

 

In two months, could I improve my reading speed? Well, I suspect I could run through a variety of literature and try my hand at reading, generalizing, and recalling material more often. Some people get lazy and do something else besides read each day. But if I were to practice the skills often enough, I suspect I'd have a slight increase, as the brain would plasticize to me constantly reading and how I would go about reading.

 

Some of my more recent views on reading, memorization, and recall relate to a person known as Kim Peek. I think it was around 2005(?) I learned about the guy and said to people on Hypography Forums that society needs to study this guy and figure out how his brain is different. He truly has a different neuroanatomy in relation to the occipital areas. NASA, I believe, gained his permission to take a look inside.

 

The plasticity that he underwent during development gave him the ability to read fast and recall fast. He's living proof that plastic effects can have serious gains. An important note is that he was somewhat of an idiot savant in that he couldn't take care of himself that well growing up. However, if he could maintain some basic aspects of living and worked on increasing those behaviors, then plastic effects would have occurred, and he would get better at maintaining living for himself...

 

Considering the idea of neural darwinism, the more you practice certain reading skills, the better you get at reading and understanding increasingly difficult levels of literature. As a child, I often questioned how exactly the human brain could tackle new levels of difficult material, from basic algebra to the mathematics of complex quantum physics. In the past few years, I've decided it's really neural darwinism and the benefits of plasticity caused by behavioral changes in a person (increased reading with emphasis on critical reading skills).

 

I think what I'm trying to emphasize here is that there would be a desire to kill off the worthless cells that don't help me read better. And the cells that help me read better get activated more often, thus leading to their survival.

 

additional reading:

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_darwinism

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroplasticity

Edited June 4, 2010 by Genecks

[Rickdog]

.......Could watching foreign movies with subtitles help with speed reading in anyway?

 

About the OP, I don`t really know, but if you somehow dominate the language of the film, it will only distract you since you`ll notice most of the time that the translations are not always correct, specially with the offensive words (), which most of the time will not make any sense and you will not understand what the characters are talking about and more on, by looking at the small little letters you loose some important scenes that afterwords when you watch the movie once again, you don`t understand what happened, it is annoying. I particularly, hate subtitles for this reason.

Edited June 5, 2010 by Rickdog
correction

[Mr Skeptic]

For me, subtitles don't detract from a film much because they can be read almost instantly. Sometimes I find it difficult to understand what people are saying without the subtitles. Occasionally the subtitle itself can block important information, especially if it was added afterward.

 

I've heard that speed readers sometimes have better recall of what they read then people just plodding along. Not sure if it was due to having less time to forget.

[Kaka]

A great application to test your speed reading http://www.spreeder.com/app.php My friends blog is also here

Edited June 7, 2010 by swansont
remove blog url

[michaelf]

I read over 500 wpm with 90% comprehension. Several months ago i read 200 wpm. I think the speed reading ability is very useful. I still pracitce with free online application on the fasterreader website. There are following free online applications to increasing speed reading;

 

http://www.fasterrea...ld-of-view.html

 

fasterreader.eu/pages/en/schultz-boards-generator-to-clicks.html

or

http://www.fasterrea...d-of-words.html

 

I suggest to start with:

 

http://www.fasterrea...ing-tester.html

 

and with:

 

http://www.fasterrea...-presenter.html

 

Text presenter allows set reading speed to 2000 words per minute.

 

The

 

http://www.fasterrea...ed-reading.html

 

describes basic speed reading techniques and contains speed reading free course

[Mr Rayon]

thx man, will check them out!

[Fastknowlegde]

(link deleted) oh wow never thought that this would actually work, but it totally does. Considered myself always as a quick reader and thought it was just a matter of "skill" but know after just a few easy steps i see how slow i read so far and how easy it is to improve! Just have to practice this a bit more and then i'll be good.

[swansont]

4 hours ago, Fastknowlegde said:

(link deleted) oh wow never thought that this would actually work, but it totally does. Considered myself always as a quick reader and thought it was just a matter of "skill" but know after just a few easy steps i see how slow i read so far and how easy it is to improve! Just have to practice this a bit more and then i'll be good.

!

Moderator Note

Link removed as it violates rule 2.7