Speed Reading

theBruiser500 · #1 07-10-2005, 01:23 AM

What is the deal with speed reading? I see that average readers read around 250 WPM, I can read at about 350 WPM but I do a lot of reading and feel like I should be able to read and more and want to learn to read more a minute. Trying to learn about speed reading, there are a few things going on. It looks like with a few basic techniques like conentrating and not rereaidng stff and using your finger a person can get up to 500-800 words and a minute, also reading words in groups.

The world champion in speed reading was at 2000 words a minute, then 2nd place and 3rd place wwere at 1100 or 1200 wpm. But then there is this Evelyn Wood speed reaing thing, she says she can read at a few thousand WPM. IN some book on this it syas that robert kenedy had evelyn wood or her people or whatever come in and teach his staff how to do read that way. PReseident carter supposedly using her method could read 1200 wpm.

some sites say teedy roosevelt used to read a couple books a day. some sites say the famous philosopher mills could "read as fast as he could turn the page". why are the world champion speed readers so slow then? and then there is another photo imaging methord where a person can read 25,000 words per minute. thoughts? your experience with speed reaidng?

kasey2004 · #2 07-10-2005, 01:58 AM

I attemted to learn speed reading a while ago, but i couldnt seem to get as much out of the material as i could reading naturally word for word. The basics of the speed reading i learned were just skimming the pages for meaningful words skipping over words like "the" & "and" ya know, and concentrating. I could never do it that great anyways, just not for me.

[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] Kasey [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]

drudman · #3 07-10-2005, 11:42 AM

Nice to hear from you again Daniel.

I've also been really interested in boosting my reading WPM, so hopefully some other people will chime in.

toss · #4 07-10-2005, 12:03 PM

25k words per minute? You have to be some kind of savant to read that fast. Thats like reading at Johnny 5 speed. Whenever I try to speed read I feel like I'm not absorbing the material fully.

imported_ncray · #5 07-10-2005, 12:10 PM

I too would like to know if there's anyone on the forums who is capable of that several hundred+ WPM reading/ comprehension. The only testimonials I've seen of actual methods working are those intended to market a product.

miajag81 · #6 07-10-2005, 12:14 PM

I have always been a very fast reader without any kind of speed-reading training. It just kind of comes naturally. I have noticed that what I do is instead of reading words one at a time I will see a whole sentence or paragraph at once and get the meaning of it. I can't really explain how to do it as it is sort of an innate ability. But I think if you are trying to learn how, that method might be a decent one.

Jman28 · #7 07-10-2005, 01:03 PM

I'm a terribly slow reader.

I've been told that to read faster, you aren't supposed to hear the words in your head (which I do). The way you do this is to practice reading very quickly, and let the comprehension eventually catch up with the speed.

Popinjay · #8 07-10-2005, 01:19 PM

speed reading software

If you are interested in reading faster I have to recommend this site. I actually never used the software but merely did the demo on the website. It trains your eyes to read peripherally instead of left to right word by word. Try the demo on the site you might be surprised.

theBruiser500 · #9 07-10-2005, 01:20 PM

I have a friend and a dad who read pretty fast, I think 500+ WPM, maybe faster. They're practice being that they read a lot.

PairTheBoard · #10 07-10-2005, 01:40 PM

I think the key to speed reading is being able to recognize and then just skip all the fluff and bs. I get through the Sklansky religious threads pretty fast that way.

PairTheBoard