Speed Reading

[wacki]

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i dont think that reading (most) books is going to be more important than making sure that your children are restricted from certain things.

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If they work hard, and don't [censored] up, I will trust their judgement. A very wise person once said to me "You can't prevent them from doing something. You can only teach them the right way and hope they aren't stupid about it."

I want my kids to fall down when I am still around to help them get back up and not when I am on the opposite side of the country.

[drudman]

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"The gross generalization was made for succinctness. Obviously not everyone falls in those into those two categories. I was inaccurate, I apologize. "

No need to apologize, astroglide is just being stupid

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Bruiser, please explain. Are you saying you read a lot as a kid? Or were there other factors too?'

yah my parents read to me when i was little, classics such as, Clifford the Big Red Dog, Where The Wild Things Are, and my favorite (obviously), GOodnight Moon

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Twelve years old does not count as "little", Bruiser.

[toss]

I have a theory that kids who played old school RPGs did better in school. They were forced to read all the text and became better readers.

[Dan Kimberg]

I wrote:
"But anything much beyond about 250 words per minute and you're probably sacrificing comprehension."

Bruiser replied:
"I highly doubt this is true, when I"m reading and enjoying it the mostc coincides with when i am reading fastest. This is also what everything i've read on speed reading says. when you go slower you get bored, and when you get bored you go slower."

Well, certainly there isn't always that much to comprehend, and obviously if a text is simple and repetitive, you can read it very quickly and not miss anything. When you read 1000WPM (or whatever), you don't necessarily miss something important in everything you read. But if you read books that have meaningful details, you simply can't read leaps and bounds faster and still get everything. At least so the research suggests. I'm not sure what you've read on speed reading, but what I've seen comes from people who have seriously tried to find out if it works as advertised, and who I'm sure would kill to be able to read faster if they could do so without losing anything. They've made a sincere effort to see if the claims of speed reading advocates pan out, and they haven't had much luck. I will however admit I don't know much about the recent literature (speed reading was more of a hot topic 20 years ago than it is now).

Of course, the fact that you read quickly when you're enjoying yourself isn't inconsistent with this at all. Many people have this experience, and I do too to some extent (although sometimes I enjoy something that's so thought-provoking, I have to pause on practically every page). But it doesn't follow that you always get the most out of your reading that way. Sometimes the most enjoyable way to read something is also the most superficial. Sometimes the things you enjoy most are the things that dovetail so nicely with your way of thinking that the details are redundant. It's okay to miss out on details you already understand. That doesn't mean you have good comprehension of the text, it just means you didn't need good comprehension to get the most out of your reading experience. But skimming is liable to work a lot better with potboiler mysteries than with subtle or technical material, or even with books on poker. It's even liable to work well with the morning paper, which may be packed with details you just don't choose to care about.

None of this is to say that speed reading (or skimming) isn't valuable. But it looks to be a pretty intuitive trade-off.

dan

[CancerMan]

The real Rain Man can read two pages at once. His eyes move independently of eachother. [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[spoohunter]

This whole approach to reading as a science is very disheartening to me. Why on earth would you want to read FASTER? I am sad enough when a book ends as it is. Sit back and enjoy the ride. It is not a race to cum first, but a long slow roll in the sack.

[Cased Heel]

I am a very slow reader but my thought on the subject is this:

a)humans are taught to recognize words at a glance. We are not taught to recognize sentences at a glance due to the fact that they are rarely identically repeated. This is why when the normal person reads, their eyes bounce from word to word as quick as possible.

Now, typical American script is written with what? 10-15 words per line? This is too long. Your eyes are FORCED to move left to right to absorb each word.

I FEEL that if books were written with 3 or 4 words per line (say...15-20 characters), you could center your eyes in the middle of the line, absorb the line, and simply move your eyes down the page, in a straight line as fast as you could.

Of course, pages wouldn't get any narrower, so you'd see two colums of text on each page. Another problem with this is that there is more variance in cutting off words. The right edges of the text columns would be much more "zig-zagged" than they are with the current layout.

Does this make sense to anybody? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

My main point is that you can look at the center of 4 words and instantly know what is says, leaving you to simply move your eyes DOWN the page instead of across, then down, then across, then down, until your eyes are so tired from all the movement that you become drowsy (such is my case).

[theBruiser500]

i don't agree with your idea. even if a line has 15 words you can mentally group 4 words together. and when youd o it that way you an select 4 words that naturally go together and make sense. if it is 4 words per line you are forced into reading 4 words together that don't naturally do so

[SmileyEH]

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i don't agree with your idea. even if a line has 15 words you can mentally group 4 words together. and when youd o it that way you an select 4 words that naturally go together and make sense. if it is 4 words per line you are forced into reading 4 words together that don't naturally do so

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Good observation. I knew the idea wouldn't work for some reason - you definitely articulated it for me.

-SmileyEH

[Alex/Mugaaz]

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Just an FYI. Bruiser, when you have kids, force them to read. They have to read, and read a lot before the age of 12. The brain is rewiring itself during that stage in life and it will make a difference. For instance, people who learn a language before the age of 12 don't have an accent. Those who learn after 12 do.

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This is completely untrue. I had to learn a new language when I was 10/11 in 30 days. It had nothing to do with being young etc. It's because I had to sit in a room studying with my dad 10 #(*#&(*&$ hours a day, then go outside for 3-4 and attempt to talk with the other kids there. I still have an accent in English even though it was my first/primary language because I lived overseas. This kids XXXXX learn faster than adults stuff is complete hogwash. It's like the people who claim adults can't get good at chess quickly. It's all bologna.

Sorry for blowing up. I just see this stuff said all the time and it's complete crap. It's in the same category as people saying we use 10% of our brains. It should be on an episode of Penn & Teller.