Speed reading - is it worth investing time with?

Speed Reading is not a complete scam, if that's what you're thinking. But the benefits have been exaggerated. Speed reading is what you might call the Ronald Reagan approach to reading--you get the text's general drift while remaining largely innocent of the details, sometimes embarrassingly so.

Several trained speed readers were once asked to read a doctored text in which the even-numbered lines came from one source and the odd-numbered lines from another.

The speed readers read the material three times (average speed: 1,700 words per minute) and claimed to understand it. But they never noticed it consisted of two separate passages mixed together.

Claims that speed readers comprehend just as well as ordinary readers are probably spurious. In one early comprehension test speed readers scored a seemingly respectable 68 percent. But it turned out the test was so easy that people who had never read the material at all scored 57 percent.

To find out the truth about speed reading one may turn to researchers Marcel Just, Patricia Carpenter, and Michael Masson. All are spiritual graduates of the Cecil Adams Cut-the-Comedy School of Scientific Investigation.

Just and company tested three groups: speed readers, normal readers, and "skimmers"--that is, people who were told to read rapidly but had no special training.

The researchers found that the speed readers read a little faster than the skimmers (700 WPM versus 600 WPM) and much faster than the normal readers (240 WPM). But the speed readers' comprehension was invariably worse, often a lot worse, than that of the normal readers.

What's more, the speed readers out-comprehended the skimmers only when asked general questions about easy material. When asked about details, or when reading difficult material, the skimmers and speed readers tested equally poorly.

I'm currently in the middle of Tony Buzan's book on it. It seems to make more outlandish claims than supported facts. I'm doing his exercises now. I have an above average reading speed ( 350 wpm or so) with about 80-90% comprehension. This increases to about 400-500 wpm but comprehension drops to about 40-50%, so I'm not convinced. It is possible, like many other things in life, that the rewards will become evident much later on, but as a person with very limited time, I am a bit impatient and I don't want to waste my time on something that may not work.

Conclusion: speed reading might help you read TV cue cards faster, but for technical stuff, the kind speed-reading buffs want us to read faster so we can outsmart the Japanese, it's pretty useless.

Reading seems to be like losing weight--there's just no fast and easy way to do it.

Now, what seemed to be good take away??

The basic idea is that you need to stop reading with your larynx (i.e., trying to pronounce each word as you go, even if just mentally) and start reading with your eyes (i.e., the information is processed by the brain immediately as you see it).

The trick to shift from one to the other is try pronounce something as you read, like “aeiou” or “123.” Sounds weird, but for me it worked.

With this tip, Enjoy Reading at your own pace!!