I’ve got a thousand unread emails, dozens of books I never got around to, and my friends
just won’t stop sharing interesting articles Well, some of them are interesting.
Is speed reading the life hack to finally catch up on all of it?
Hello viewers, Julian for DNews.
If you’re like you, you probably prefer watching a video to reading an article and
you’re what keeps the lights on here at DNews.
But me?
I’d rather read.
But I have a problem: I am achingly, painfully, devastatingly slow at it.
I actually took a test while researching this and I read at 270 words per minute.
that’s 8% better than the national average, hooray!
But according to the test the average college student is at 450 words per minute.
Whenever I tell people this the response is always the same: Have you thought about learning
to speed read?
Now there are even apps that promise to double my speed with the wonders of technology.
It sounds too good to be true, how does it work???
Well first off there are a few different methods to up your words per minute count.
One of the most common methods advocated by speed readers is to eliminate your tendency
for sub-vocalization, which is when the little voice in your head that pronounces all the
words...
By the way whose voice is that anyway?
I know it’s not my own.
I’m going to start reading in Morgan Freeman’s voice.
Anyway after you eliminate the sub-vocalization there are a couple of other techniques speed
readers use.
There’s following the text with your finger or a pencil to keep you focused on where you’re
reading, there’s skimming, and there’s taking in large chunks of text at a glance.
Speed readers claim they can surpass 1500 words per minute with these methods.
But according to research not funded by people selling speed reading courses, their comprehension
really starts to suffer.
One study tested 16 speed readers and found they couldn’t understand more than 75% of
what they were reading at over 600 words per minute.
Obviously skimming is going to hurt your comprehension and retention, so what about the other methods?
Trying to take in big chunks of text using your peripheral vision and without moving
your eye isn’t really possible.
Keith Rainer, a psychologist who pioneered eye-tracking technology, explains that your
fovea, the area in your retina where vision is sharpest, needs to be focused on a word
to take it in.
You can only take in four or five letters with 100% accuracy, and letters outside the
fovea’s view become much harder discern pretty quickly.
Even the most basic step of eliminating sub-vocalization can really hurt your comprehension if the
text is complicated.
Now there are apps that promise to make reading quick and painless.
Many of them involve flashing the words at you to eliminate your eye’s need to track
across the page.
The apps claim their studies show no loss in comprehension, but they’re not letting
anyone see the research.
This is what’s known in the scientific community as a red flag.
I’ve actually tried an app or two like this and I can get up to about 600 words per minute,
but it’s exhausting to keep up and if I miss a word the whole operation falls apart.
Rayner is on my side on this point, saying reading this fast can overload your working
memory.
Plus you don’t get the chance to chew on an idea and really understand it.
So it looks like I’m just going to do what I’ve always done; light some candles, settle
into the bath, and have some quality time with a good book.
Maybe being a slow reader isn’t such a bad thing.