My HS experimentally offered a voluntary course in “study techniques”, open to the 10th graders (we were supposed to be the age that would get the most use). On the first day we got there… looked at each other… and finally one of the guys said “ok, our parents are ALL idiots.” We happened to be the twenty best students (of over 200); we also evidently happened to be the ones whose parents thought any grade below 1000% was bad and no, I haven’t miscounted zeros.
One of the study techniques was quick reading, so we had several sessions of doing exactly what you say. Another student and yours truly were already quick-readers before the lessons, doing as peccavi did (I hate misaligned margins or too-wide text because they slow me down). Our comprehension was always as good as that of the other students; the comprehension of those who moved from reading word by word to reading line by line didn’t waver. The comprehension check after each reading involved 10 open-ended questions; it was rare for anybody to fail more than one, and about half the group never failed any.
One thing to take into account is that we were all already good readers: being a good reader includes noticing when you haven’t understood something and going back. As the people who went from being regular readers to being quick readers adjusted, their speed would go up and down; their comprehension didn’t. But hell, the ability to realize when we’d missed something is part of the reason we were the good students.
The GRE’s reading comprehension section was much easier, I haven’t taken the ACT. I imagine the “much longer text” refers to the ACT, since I never said how long ours were: two-four DIN A5, longer than the ones in the GRE.
Yes, the ACT reading passages are far too short for this purpose.
But I’m not proposing to give the speed-readers equal time on the test. The speed-readers would only have one-fifth the amount of time to read it (calculating it such that each group could barely finish). Then (also unlike the ACT) the reading would be taken away before providing the questions and giving each group the same amount of time to answer those.
The speed readers took less time to do the test because we read faster. We read the texts, then we closed the texts booklet, opened the tests booklet and answered the questions.
Are you proposing that the speed readers
read multiple times instead of once,
spend several minutes with their texts already taken away waiting for the other people to finish their reading,
or
be given less and different starting times before everybody must hand over the texts and start answering the questions?
Or are you simply making assumptions about how the test took place rather than asking questions about any details that I haven’t mentioned because they didn’t seem relevant?
I’m not asking about the tests you took but proposing my own. The purpose of it is to see if you are really comprehending these texts as well as someone who has comparable intelligence but reads at a more conventional 200-300 wpm pace. Therefore the speed-readers’ time limit to finish the text must be much reduced compared to the conventional-reading group—that’s kind of the whole point.
So I’d want to figure out the IQ of each member of the speed-reading group, and then find a conventional-reading group matched as closely as possible except for reading speed. They would get five times as long to read the text (I’m not proposing giving them the test at the same time as the speed-reading group, which I think takes care of a couple of your questions). Both groups would have the text taken away before they got to see the questions, so they could not go back and hunt for answers. It would all be based on what they had retained in memory from reading (or speed-reading) the text.
The comprehension questions would vary in difficulty. Some of them would be so easy you’d only get them wrong if you just didn’t even really absorb a sentence at all. By contrast, the top end of difficulty would be hard enough that virtually no one could answer them correctly. Then there would be some that only the sharpest tacks in the bunch would be able to figure out, and so on. My point earlier was that if most everyone is getting all the questions right, it’s not a very precise instrument to measure, and thus compare, comprehension—kind of like a thermometer that only goes up to 60 degrees, so if it’s 70 or 80 or 90 it just reads 60.
Okay, now I’m signing off for the weekend; I’ll check back for replies sometime Monday.
^^This. I taught myself to speed read in 2nd grade. A buddy and I would have contests on who could read the assignment and answer the questions the fastest, with penalties for wrong answers. I can’t teach the technique to others - it’s just the way I learned to do things from the beginning.
Kindles have been a blessing to me. Now I don’t have to carry 12 lbs. of books along on a weekend trip!
[QUOTE=silenus;21195411Kindles have been a blessing to me. Now I don’t have to carry 12 lbs. of books along on a weekend trip![/QUOTE]
Yes! This is the hidden downside to speed reading.
Back in the day, I would never get onto a plane without at least two books, lest I “run out” of reading material during the flight. And even in the age of the Kindle et. al., when I’m reading a book I particularly enjoy there is a bit of sadness that I can’t prolong the experience.
If I am returning to an author or a series, no, not really, I know what I am getting into.
For a new author or series, I actually prefer to read the last few pages. All good stories started with an ending, and worked their way forward from there.
FWIW, Cecil wrote a column about speed reading, concluding that it’s “not a complete scam…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.”
in response to my first description of the speed reading class, I’d thought you meant the stuff I’d described. Apparently you talk like my mother: you know what is it you’re talking about, jump into things mid-conversation-with-yourself and everybody else should read your mind rather than pay attention to what you actually say.
The idea of reading the first pages of a novel to determine whether I’d be interested in reading it is odd. More accurately, I never do this because that’s just not the way I decide which books to read.
During my University studies I was introduced to dozens of authors. Some of whom I’ve read (but never their whole oeuvre), some I haven’t read at all. Based on the courses I had, time period, general reputation, etc. I have a fairly good idea of whether I may find their books worth reading.
Furthermore, I didn’t stop reading after I graduated. Each new book has led to my being introduced to other books I had never heard of before. In English. In French. In Russian. In Italian. In German. That’s one of the uses of introductory notes. Internet forums are a also a neverending source of discoveries.
As a result, I have an ever-growing list of books that I’d like to read. I buy almost all of my books in second-hand stores or in garage sales. Most of the times, I don’t find anything. Sometimes I do. Occasionally, I’ll dig a real gem, a book I’d been looking for for years (or decades even). So I buy it, no questions asked. What happens if I don’t like it ? Well, I just sell it. It’s not like the 0.5€-2€ it cost is going to bankrupt me.
I find it very odd that so many people say they DON’T read the first few pages. I would never dream of buying a book without reading a few pages first. Often I open the book at random and read a few pages here and there in the middle as well.
Sure, you can’t judge a whole book fairly that way. But you can eliminate authors with bad writing, and get a feel for the pacing, and style, and even characterisation. If it’s non-fiction you can get an idea of how deep or superficial the coverage of the subject is.
Blurbs on the cover mean nothing. Reviews… it all depends on the reviewer, often I’ll disagree with reviews. Reviews may draw my attention to a book that I may be interested in reading. If I look at a book on Amazon, I’ll typically read a few 5 star reviews and a few 1 star reviews, look at the preview, and then make up my mind if it’s worth reading.
The very, very few exceptions are when it’s an author I know well and the book is the next part of a series.
You missed the part about “the best students” then. We were the kind of people whose “bad grades” would have qualified them for any school in the world. And while we didn’t realize it at the time, we were the best in an unusually good year in an unusually good and unusually harsh school.
Think Olympic gymnasts, but at the HS student level: once we got to college, we all found ourselves at the top of our respective classes, in the kind of majors which have 50% dropout just in the first year. I finished my engineering degree one year faster than was normal, another classmate got a summa cum laude from Cambridge (the rest of the class wasn’t laughing about the little Spaniard any more, when those grades rolled in).
Right, but you didn’t say that in the OP. Surely by now you know that not everybody reads the entire thread before responding. Heck, if you make the thread title a question, some people don’t even read the OP.
I only read your OP and the first answers. I didn’t see your additional comment. Sorry, my bad.
I don’t buy many full price, newly published novels. I just have too much “old stuff”, say pre-1980, to read. But in a way, it’s the same process : internet forums, word-of-mouth, a general idea of who the author is and/or who they have been compared to have led me to believe that there’s a good chance I might like this or that book.
For the moment, I’m considering buying a full price edition of Pinocchio. Of course, it’s not a new book but the reason for that is specific : I want to get a bilingual one (Italian and French side to side) so that I can try and read the original text and have the translation at hand if I don’t understand a passage.