It’s kid of like dreaming, where you don’t necessarily “hear” words, and yet you know what was said. Kind of like when you dream about your friends – you don’t see their faces, but you know it’s them.
Think of the a movie scene and its dialogue. You remember the contents (i.e. Darth Vader is Luke’s father), and the way it was said, but when you recall it to the forefront of your mind, you don’t replay the whole 20 minute scene in your head – *in an instant, you remember the entirety of it. *
That’s what my visual-based reading is like. The contents of what I read is absorbed in it’s entirety – sight, sound, smell, emotions, words and intonnation – all at once. Boom!
If I need to, I can recall entire passages word for word, but my experience of reading it is like the memory recall described above. Kind of like *Slotar’s Fast Forward description.
I’ve thought about how I read before, and I’ve decided that when I read, there’s one part of me that is taking all the words on the page and sounding them out, while another part takes the resulting sentences and such and paints a picture. It’s kinda as though there were a storyteller telling the story to me, instead of me reading it.
It’s really neat when I read a good novel, because I can remember what a scene looked like after reading it, and can remember what went on as though it were a movie.
Of course, as soon as I think about this while reading, I focus on the words, and it takes me a bit to loose myself in the pictures. Then I don’t conciously notice the words being sounded out in my head, but they’re still being sounded out.
I guess it kinda resembles having dirty glasses. The dirt’s always there, but unless I think about it, I don’t even notice it, and everything appears perfectly clear (as I write this, the dirt on my glasses is starting to annoy me).
So how does this affect my reading speed? When I try to read quickly, I can chug along and maybe do a page of a novel in 30-45 seconds, but I have to conciously move quickly. Otherwise, I do a little under a page a minute, but enjoy it more. I’ve decided that I might as well take my time, if it’s a novel. If I’m reading a text book, I usually end up reading over everything carefully, at which point again I’m focusing on the meaning and not the words, but more slowly, speed entirely dependent on the difficulty of the text and my level of interest.
Yes, I “hear” the words when I read.
I definitely wouldn’t want to stop that, it livens up a story- especially a humorous story where you can just “hear” how the characters say their dialogue. I read faster than most people I know, and I read a lot.
I wouldn’t want to be a “speed reader” if it meant I couldn’t enjoy the voices I have for Hiro Protagonist or Granny Weatherwax.
Jeezy Creezy, I thought everyone heard the words in their head when they read. Now I’m jealous. I’d like to be able to do that Blitzkrieg reading where you look through a page and bam! you see it as a visual, aural, and odoriferous montage.
One thing that I haven’t been quite able to figure out is what the voice in my head sounds like. Although I ‘hear’ every word I read or write in the same voice (unless I am reading a story where I add accents, a la Harry Potter), I can’t quite describe it. I’m not sure it’s my voice at all, and if it isn’t - who’s is it? It’s similar to what Charmian said about dreaming of a friends face, but never really seeing it - just knowing that it’s your friend.
The other issue is that the voice in my head can’t pronounce epitome correctly…, the bastard.
Another “Yes, I hear the words when I read.” I’m a very fast reader, though - always have been. I remember in grammar school when we had to take the standardized test where you had to read a page of a story and fill in the appropriate words (multiple choice) as you went along. I was always among the first done, and I scored very high. I’m definitely an auditory rather than a visual learner.
i never do. I usually skim through the words but I’ve done that for as long as I can remember so I have no trouble remembering what I just read. If I pronounce the word it takes a while to read a paragraph and my mind becomes tired and lazy and I’m just like screw this so I keep on reading.I was really fast reading too. I remembered in class this year we read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and I shared this book with a girl named Karen. GOD DOES SHE READ FRIKKIN SLOW! I read the same page about 3 or 4 times before she turned the page. And then she’s like oh wait and re read a sentence. God people like that should die!
Nope, but I do so when writing. Although I usually pronounce some of them (especially English ones since this isn’t my mother language) horribly wrong (i.e. as if they were German words). This helps me a lot with spelling
Usually I drift off mentally into sub-topics based on the words and/or imagery.
So, it’s certainly not fast but it’s generally a very rich and enjoyable process. For example, the last book I read was Philip K. Dick’s a Scanner Darkly. So I hear Philip K. Dick (who sounds amazingly like me) reading to me. From this I get images, scenery, etc. From this I consider how Dick’s vision of the future is both correct (see cocaine, crack and most recently crystal meth epidemics) and incorrect in terms of police focus on drug eradication in to the exclusion of all else, etc.
What does this mean? It would seem that I have an auditory predisposition to process language and tend towards non-linear thought. My guess is that there are differing ways to process language and that certain approaches are advantageous for certain things. For example, I would be very bad at work that required plowing through vast amounts of reading, but I might be quite good at work that requires to solving problems that other people don’t even find.
When I read, I recognize words. I don’t sound them out, but as I see each word, its meaning and pronunciation spring to mind. I “hear” the words, but it isn’t an important factor to my comprehension of the text. As I read I form a mental image of what’s being described, not entirely unlike a movie.
Since I recognize words rather than sound them out, every misspelled word forces me to stop, sound it out, and determine which word the writer intended. As a result, poor spelling is a major pet peeve of mine.
