And did you see results? I read a lot but so slowly…
Then a good program will help you.
Several years ago I took a speed reading course at a college… I passed with and A but it never benefited me that much for I never was much on reading.
I did a free intro to a class once. They taught me to put my finger under the words and move my finger across the page as I was reading. It actually sped up my reading. But it wasn’t much fun so I quit doing it.
I bought a book on it (I forget the title) and used it. I managed to really improve my reading speed (mind you, I’m a fast reader already, so I didn’t really need it), but I found that I lost a lot of the “flavor” of the text, even if I remembered it in better detail. Even ten years later, I can still recall portions of the training text if I put my mind to it.
I did the $400 Evelyn Wood course. On the introductory session they taught me to trace under the line with my finger as Country said and I went from 200 wpm to 400. I was impressed so I did the course. The course was terrible. Believe it or not, I actually slowed down even further for years because I was focusing on the process of reading, not the content.
RadioOrange, questions asking for advice belong in IMHO.
I’ll move this for you.
-xash
General Questions Moderator
Your post comes to me on a propitious day. I just started reading again
Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics was constantly advertising on TV when I was a child in Atlanta in the early 70s. I always yearned to take that course - though, looking back, my biggest problem back then was running out of books, not failing to read what I had. I read in the tub, at the dinner table -everywhere. (I’m sure some SD’ers can sympathize.) You can imagine how psyched I was to find “speed reading” books in the public library.
I was a fast reader for my age, and picked up about 50% after my first aborted attempt to drag myself through (the first few chapters of) a speed reading book. Over the next three years, I stumbled through the first third or half of a few of those texts, and touched the 2000 wpm they promised on TV, but only on the tests!. My ‘real life’ reading settled at ca 800-1000 wpm, and maybe twice that if I pushed (faster still, if I was desperate: I read many classics entirely while walking to school on Thursdays for my weekly first-period English quiz, yet I still remember them fairly well.)
I never made it all the way through any of the speed-readings. ‘The method’ is definitely work - perhaps as much for someone who reads constantly for pleasure as for someone who struggles to keep up. Reading that way wasn’t fun, at least not for me.
I did make a substantial real-world gain with each aborted attempt, so I really can’t complain. Some of it might have happened anyway, simply from practice, but I think speed-reading principles changed my outlook
I read 5-10 books/week through college and my first career. Then came medical school, family, outside political activities, and a few years of debilitating illness (now cured, thanks for asking) I doubt I’ve read 5 books/year for pleasure since the 80s (though I did read a lot of of scentiific articles, and an uncountable amount on the computer.)
Today, I got some books for Christmas. [My friends and family have always refused to believe how little I read now] Since I’d promised myself I’d start reading again, I forced myself to use what I recalled of my childhood speed reading lessons, and finished my first book by noon, in bursts of 20-40 pages interspersed with domestic errands, emails, etc. Speed-reading wasn’t as tedious as I remembered. It was fun
So, I’d say it works, and stuck with me, 30 years after I started. It probably gave me substantial lasting speed in real-life reading (if not quite what I’d hoped) and the abilty to “go turbo” has undoubtedly helped me in my career. Like Tuckerfan, I feel like I lose some of the flavor when I push, but I’ve long felt that ‘flavor’ was more “contemplation between sentences”, which might not be a concern to all readers
My quibbles with speed-reading could just be my personality. I took a touch-typing course when I was 13, and I still have to force myself to use it.
Does speed reading’s effectiveness change with different subject matter (e.g., trash novels vs. The Economist articles vs. a Differential Equations textbook)?
Or, what if your mind tends to wander? As an example, I’m just now reading a book on beer, and it occurred to me…hm, just how exactly does fermentation work? What the hell is a yeast? How do you make/grow them? How does starch change into sugar into alcohol? No, I’m not asking anyone here to answer those questions; I’m just pointing out that these forays are what slow my reading down – which, of course, become less burdensome with increased internal knowledge, which comes from more reading…
Just in case anybody cares, Cecil has answered this question twice. 1). Does speed reading really work? and 2).Does speed reading training actually work?
Nope. I read about 500 WPM with no training whatsoever. I do tend to skip things; sometimes I’ll be reading some old favorite and come across a sentence or two that I’ve simply never seen before.
Using a finger would slow me down, I think. As for the rest of it, nah. I read plenty fast enough as it is.
I got the sense that the OP was asking for personal experiences, not so much whether it worked or not.
I have done it in the past, and I think IIRC (it was in HS) that it was the EW course. I did a different course later on in college. They did increase my speed, but as others have said, I didn’t like it for pleasure reading, it was distracting. If I have to read manuals or reports for work, I will sometimes do a modified version, but nowadays, it bothers my poor decrepit old eyes.
I took a speed reading course at a local university when in high school. They used the “block of words” method. I increased my speed fourfold, while retaining the same comprehension that I started with. Granted, 30+ years later, I don’t read quite as fast as I did, I still read faster than most, and it hasn’t decreased my pleasure of reading.
I would like to learn to read slower, comprehend what I’m reading better and enjoy it more. But I am strange.
Just to report on my progress in returning to reading: ten (skinny) books in five days, despite house guests, with just a modest effort to pushmy speed slightly. It’s been like reading a bike. The local library network and I are going to become good friends. Okay, maybe not ‘good’ friends - I’ll be more like that pesky friend it can’t ditch, who takes ruthless advantage and borrows all its stuff.
(Is everything nowadays ca 250 pages in roomy overspaced type? I know I preferred fat books as a kid [didn’t want the experience to end], but this is ridiculous. At my age, the letters should seem smaller, not larger. Sheesh!)
I fully agree that 500 wpm is easy without training (that was my reading speed when I started this odyssey, and I was just a avid grade-schooler. I can’t believe Cecil says 240wpm is normal, but I presume he has the figures to back it up.
Check out a speed reading book at the library, and work through it over time. Read more and push yourself slightly (nothing beats practice. It’s the main strategy of both the books and courses) If you’re only reading a couple of hundred words a minute, you’ll find that first speed boost to be very easy. [almost gimmicky, like those diets where you lose a lot of weight in the first week, regardless of the diet, just because you’re paying attention to what you eat]
I might not race along at 2000wpm except in emergencies, but if I read at under 500-600, I retain less because my mind isn’t as focused. In med school, it was tempting to slow down and wrestle with every word (especially near exams, when I was panicking over details), but by second semester, I realized I learned better (and enjoyed it more) if I read at my normal speed. By second year this was the concensus (leading up to Part I of the Boards we spent almost as much time discussing how to study and remember, as we did studying).
I’m a satisfied customer. And it didn’t cost me a cent.
i tried a self taught speed reading program i got from paperback books. It seemed to work when you started making mental images of what you were reading rather than just reading it (retention was always much more important to me than speed). I didnt keep track of my WPM rating, but i’d assume i had a 50% increase along with an increase of comprehension/retention due to using visualization to understand what i was reading.
problem was, this form of reading is very draining mentally. So i rarely ever do it unless i have to study for school, and even then i can’t really do the speed reading part for fear of missing details, just the visualization part.
Two interesting things I’ve found are the SQ3R method (taught in elementary school programs all across the country and free on the internet) and the PhotoReading course, which is like SQ3R mixed with some Creative Problem Solving strategies (a la Win Wegner) and NLP goofiness (about $200, which you may or may not be able to get your company to pay for…).
The basic idea behind both is that you read a given text multiple times, each time looking for something different. In both, you look first look at the way the article is structured, notice the main points the author has made (via headers and subheads, diagramms, etc.), formulate list of questions that you’re interested in learning about and then blowing through the thing (that is, skimming/“skittering”), stopping when you get to something you think is useful, readin that and going on. When you get done, you see if what you remember is what you wanted to know and then either stop or go back again, getting more specific.
The PR has a couple of extra steps, or at least the CPS/NLP ideas whereby you take notes in a peculiar fashion and attempt to draw as much of the information into your subconscious as possible.
My experience with PR has been OK - I get through a book about 2-3x faster than I would just reading it and have about the same level of comprenehsion as I would otherwise. I also have a set of notes that I took very quickly that are of varying value.
One thing that both of these methods teach you to do (and that’s where their main value, and difference from Wood-style speed reading. lies) is to quickly recognize filler (or passages that you don’t care about) in the book/article and skip over it. For that, it’s pretty useful.
It does work better on less-dense texts, but one can always break the text down into smaller sections, or go over it multiple times if the detail is very important.
I had a course in elementary school (4th grade?) that worked this way. They had a projector that put a story on the wall line by line, with the lines changing faster and faster as you improved your speed. And there was a comprehension test after each story to make sure you were still understanding and retaining what you’d read. I still read faster than pretty much anyone I know, almost 30 years later. It’s a very useful skill when reading business documents, but it does make supporting one’s reading-for-pleasure habit expensive to support.
And now I’m repeating myself because I didn’t read (quickly or slowly) my post before submitting it.)
Touble, There are always libraries…