Hello my Socratica Friends!
We’re here to help you be a GREAT student!
Today, we’re going to focus on how you get information INTO YOUR BRAIN.
Well, one way.
By reading.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to read faster, and understand everything you read?
Doesn’t SPEED READING sound like a great idea?
You may have seen ads saying they can teach you how to read faster.
This is a real thing, but it’s not magic.
You’re not going to be able to read thousands of words per minute
or a whole book in an hour.
Let’s discuss how much speed reading can actually work for you.
Let me add a quick disclaimer, if you’ve been having trouble with your reading - if
you find it hard to focus on words, or letters get mixed up, and you’re really trying but
you can’t seem to improve...
There are reading difficulties, such as dyslexia, that are best handled by a specialist.
Also, keep in mind there will be some physical differences between people, that can affect
how fast they can read.
Some people have better vision than others.
And as you age, you may start to notice changes in your vision.
Check with your eye doctor to make sure you don’t need reading glasses,
before you get discouraged.
Now, on to speed reading.
First, we need to understand that “reading” is not just one thing you do.
There’s more to it than just how fast you can move your eyes down the page.
It involves how your eyes move, how they focus, and most importantly what goes on in your
brain when you read.
How would you speed each of these parts up?
Let’s take a closer look at each step.
Now this may surprise you - You can really only focus on one or two words at a time,
with maybe a few bonus letters on either side.
There’s a physical limit here - you’re not going to be able to actually read using
your peripheral vision - only this central region of your visual field, sometimes called
“foveal vision.”
As you read, you’ll linger on these couple of words for a short time - we’re talking
on the order of a few hundred milliseconds - and then
jump to the next few words in the sentence.
Depending on if a word is especially meaningful, you may linger a little longer.
We call this FIXATION.
If the word contains less meaning - words like the, an, to, etc. you jump away from
those words faster, because there isn’t much there to comprehend.
This “jumping” motion is called Eye Saccades or Saccadic Motion.
You many think that you continue on this way in a straightforward fashion, marching down
the page, but readers also jump back from time to time.
These are little episodes of review.
These regressions help you connect what you just read with something you read earlier.
Maybe you don’t quite remember... you need to check.. ah, right, so now you can move
on.
Again, this all happens in fractions of a second.
This isn’t you being undisciplined - it’s a normal part of the reading process.
What about the time spent jumping around?
Can that be improved or eliminated?
You can certainly get better at following a page with practice.
Do you remember, when you first learned to read, how you had to keep your finger on each
line in your book so you didn’t get lost?
Now, you probably don’t.
That’s a sign your skill has improved.
You’re better at tracking along a line of text and letting your eyes jump on their own,
without missing.
You may still miss occasionally, though, especially if the text is small and there isn’t a lot
of space between lines.
If you’re reading digital text, on a computer or an e-reader, you may be able to fiddle
around with the settings to better match your preferred text size and line spacing.
You don’t have this option with a paper copy of a book.
With that in mind, if you really want to keep on track, don’t feel bad about trailing
a finger or a pencil along as you read.
Hey, if that tool works, use it!
Remember, though, that need to backtrack, or “regress,”
that happens naturally in reading.
Don’t fight it too much.
When it happens, it’s probably for a good reason.
After all, your goal should be to understand what you’re reading, not
to race to the finish line.
This is one way that paper copies of books are easier for you to read than digital books.
When you open a book, you can see a lot - two entire pages.
On my e-reader, I’m lucky if I can see one whole paragraph.
That means I have to physically turn the page back once or twice if I need to check on something
I just read.
That really slows down your reading.
Maybe, one day, someone will come out with a nice electronic reader that displays as
much as a real book.
We can hope.
The most extreme solution to speeding up your eye saccades is to eliminate them altogether.
In this technique, you load your text into some specialized software, and one word at
a time is displayed right in the center of your visual field.
This is called Rapid Serial Visual Processing, or RSVP for short.
You can display individual words at a very fast rate, much faster than they’re going
here, and usually you can keep up with them.
The original equipment used for this technique was called a tachistoscope, which was a kind
of slide projector, rapidly showing images to train people
to very, very quickly recognize targets.
Like...enemy planes.
This military technology was adopted by educators for a while, to try to increase students’
reading speed.
It’s making a bit of a comeback now, in the form of some speed reading apps.
There’s no denying that you can get through the words faster this way - you don’t spend
any time jumping your eyes and refocusing.
But, you lose some of the native reading skill you bring to the table.
For instance, remember that you naturally focus a little longer on important words.
Content dense words.
And you zoom right over smaller connecting words that are less important.
These RSVP technologies typically show every word for the same amount of time, so you lose
that natural advantage.
I’m sure, we’ll eventually develop a smarter system where you group words together - a
big content word shown along with a little connecting word,
but I don’t think we’re there yet.
Another issue with this technique is it COMPLETELY eliminates the possibility to backtrack and
grab a line from a previous sentence or paragraph to help you understand what you just read.
Regressions, remember, are not all bad.
It’s not like a bad habit you need to completely eliminate.
It’s part of how we read to understand.
I really don’t see how we can resolve that issue.
The need to backtrack seems fundamentally incompatible with this technique.
Moving on from eye motions to the actual READING.
When you first learned to read, depending on your schooling, you most likely learned
to “sound out” words, using phonics.
“Fuh - aw - nicks…….Phonics.”
Sometimes you see people moving their lips a bit as they read, falling back into their
earliest reading habits.
Even if you don’t speak out loud, or move your lips, you probably still hear your own
voice inside your head.
In Kindergarten, we called this “reading to yourself.”
Many, if not all, readers continue to do this, to some degree.
The more technical term for this is “subvocalization.”
You’re actually using the auditory parts of your brain as you subvocalize, and you’re
sending signals to your vocal cords, as if you were speaking the words out loud (even
though to an outside observer, you’re reading silently).
There’s been some research to take advantage of subvocalization as a way to communicate
wordlessly - for instance, for astronauts, or soldiers who need to communicate in loud
or remote settings.
Many speed reading techniques focus on trying to eliminate subvocalization.
The thought is, reading out loud takes a lot longer than just visually taking in the words
and jumping on to the next word.
But it may not be possible to completely eliminate subvocalization.
Research has shown that even when readers are trying their best to not subvocalize,
and they’re speeding their eyes along the page, some signals are still going on in the
auditory parts of the brain, and signals are getting through to the vocal cords.
Furthermore, if you try to FORCE yourself to speed past every single word without subvocalizing
them, you will probably find that your comprehension goes down.
That slightly slower pace due to subvocalization seems to allow for a little time to better
process what you’re reading.
In any case, it makes sense, if you are interested in reading faster, not to INDULGE yourself
in a slow, plodding internal voice.
Don’t perform your reading as if you’re in a play, either, doing all the voices and
including dramatic pauses.
In other words, don’t get hung up on COMPLETELY eliminating subvocalization (because you’re
not going to be able to), but maybe try to minimize its impact on your reading speed.
Finally, let’s talk about that last stage of reading, comprehension, which is undoubtedly
the most important.
Unlike the earlier stages of reading, it seems much less mechanical - it’s a fluid process
and is ever-changing, and has to do with what you bring to the table when you read.
So much goes into reading comprehension.
Recognition of words and concepts, putting what you just read into context, deciding
if it answers outstanding questions you had, whether you were surprised by the information...and
your level of comprehension is different every time you read.
Just think - when you first started to read, every single line, every chapter, every book
you finished was a milestone.
The more books you read, the more experienced you grew as a reader.
This is a skill that takes a long, long time to build up.
You’re still developing that skill, because each time you gain information by reading
it, you have yet another reading experience to draw on.
The very best way to become a great reader is...to read.
A lot.
Read what you like, but make sure you read some challenging books as well.
In addition to just plain reading a lot, there are other concrete steps you can take to more
quickly improve your comprehension.
Build your working vocabulary.
If you’re reading something technical, make sure to consult a glossary for this subject.
If you keep finding yourself tripping up on the same few words, go back to our favourite
vocabulary building technique: flashcards, with spaced repetition.
Pretty soon, you’ll OWN those words, and you’ll be able to quickly understand sentences
where they appear.
One popular technique for reading textbooks more efficiently is pre-reading - taking a
sneak peek at the chapter by reading section headings, any boldface text,
and the chapter summaries.
You might call it skimming, especially if you dip in here and there.
Try reading the first and last sentences of each paragraph.
This way you’ll know what’s coming before you read the whole chapter.
A prepared mind is better equipped to take in new information.
Try it!
We’ll talk more about this and other techniques for reading textbooks in a separate video.
Now let’s try a little test.
We’ll put a link to a speed reading test in the description below.
Test yourself, then try some of these techniques we discussed today.
Give it a week.
Then re-test yourself.
What did you find?
Tell us about it in the comments.
And let us know if YOU have any secrets to improve your reading.
We all can become Great Students, together.
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Thank you for watching!