www.todayifoundout.com: 95% of college educated individuals read at a rate between 200-400 words per minute according to extensive research done by University of Massachusetts Amherst professor Dr. Keith Rayner. However, there exists a small, but rather vocal subset of people who insist that they can read several times faster than this using various speed reading techniques. With very little searching, you’ll also find many-a-company claiming that after going through their program or using their app regularly, you can easily read even as many as 1,000 words per minute. Tim Ferriss of Four Hour Work Week fame offers a method for increasing speed in reading for free on his website, claiming with this method, you’ll see an average increase in reading speed of about 386% in just three hours of practice.
So is any of this really possible?
4 comments:
Speed reading is totally valid. However, this article is right in saying that speed reading doesn't actually mean you're reading and comprehending everything detail in the book. Speed reading should be used more for SAT and ACT tests or research papers. But if you're reading just for fun, then you should read it slowly to enjoy every moment of it. Maybe even pick it up and read it again if you'd like to. I alway thought that I could never ready fast, but when I read a book with my friend and then we discussed it afterwards, she kept bragging about how fast she read it. However, when we shared our thoughts, it seemed like she didn't understand everything that was going on in the story as much as I did. I always believe in enjoying the little things. One of those things includes enjoying a book for what it is, instead of speeding through it so you can say "you did it".
I find it interesting that the faster you read, the less you comprehend. I think that there is a bit more to that than just speed. Personally, reading when tired slows me down a lot. The connection to reading and tiredness is probably a large factor to the comprehension of text as well. When people are tired, their brain functions much slower due to the influx of dopamine. Reading takes a lot of energy and comprehension of words is even more brain power. That is why reading when tired is so difficult for most people. Writing is also much harder when tired for the same reason. People speak a lot faster than they can type, and so there is a lag between thinking of the words to write and actually typing/writing them. Writing is essentially the process of reading but in reverse for the brain. Comprehension of the sentences comes first, and then the words are read.
This article brings up many valid points about speed reading and the real reality of comprehension. What this article for me brings up is why do we feel the need and pressure to speed read? Someone took the time to finely craft the structure of words in front of us and yet we don’t fully want to recognize its real value. We as a society understand its importance in the information we need to absorb from it, but yet we don’t see it fully worth our time so we try to find method and ways to be able to cut back on the time and digest the information quickly so we can move on to the next thing. For me the inherent need we feel presents a problem with our society. Each generation we push to know more about the world around us and about the past of the people before us so that we can grow up faster and do even greater things than the people before us, but is that really going to bring us fulfillment and happiness. I have always seen the ultimate goal of humanity is to enjoy life and enjoy the journey we are on no matter where it takes us. Learning is important because it allows us to examine the world around us and discover the world around us in new ways each day. So the thought of trying to speed read the information given to us while still maintaining comprehension, which is the impossible challenge of today, is not representative of enjoying the world around us.
I’m not the fastest of readers, and it’s something that I’m kinda insecure about. During tests it’s scary to hear people turn pages while I’m still reading, and I find it weird to try to read an article on the same screen as someone else. When that happens and I’m the one with the mouse I don’t want to seem too slow so I typically scroll faster than I can read and end up missing some of the information. That article made me feel a lot better about my lack of speed reading abilities, because at least know I understand that it is something that can be worked on slightly, but also that the speed that someone reads isn’t that important. It would be nice to be a bit faster, but it’s definitely more important to be able to understand what is being read. Of course, I sometimes feel the need to reread sentences multiple times, which is something that leads to me reading at a much slower rate. It makes me feel a bit inadequate to read slower than my peers, but I think I’m also better at picking out typos than them, which I guess means that I’m getting it more (and I’m a bit more of a Dick).
Post a Comment