Improving Reading Speed

Okay, THIS is a great advertisement for NOT growing up.

Free advice: go find a fun book. Anything by Carl Hiassen or Janet Evanovich or Sue Grafton or Brad Meltzer. Or Ender’s Shadow (after Ender’s Game, of course).

Or OSHA Compliance Safety and Health Officers Instruction CPL 2.103, Field Inspection Reference Manual.

Maybe you could release an edited version: LotR, The Good Parts Version, like Wm. Goldman did with The Princess Bride (S. Morgenstern’s original was full of long boring details like the list of clothes being packed for a voyage, etc…).

This is along the lines of what lime said - although I’m not sure I will explain it very well.

You can try silencing your inner voice. What I mean (or at least what I think I mean) is that you should try to read the words without having each one echo in your mind.

I’m still not able to do that, but there are times when I can and my reading speed goes up substantially - not unlike what you’ve described.

Do you then get a sort of gestalt sense of a passage’s meaning, without being conscious of specific words? Or how could that work?

I can lose consciousness of reading words, sometimes, when reading English subtitles to a foreign language film (if the subtitles are done just right, and the film itself is engrossing). But there’s still a linearity to it. I still understand words and phrases sequentially, with the rhythms of the other language.

Sorry, it is definitely sequential. I didn’t mean to imply otherwise. I think the speed reading courses that tell you to “read a block at a time” are bogus. I mean does that even mean anything? I don’t think so, but maybe that’s just me.

I guess there is a ‘gestalty’ feel to it but only in the sense that you are aware of the meaning without being aware of the words. If that makes any sense.

I seem to remember reading here of all places that tests reveal that skimmers tend to do just as well at retention as speed readers. That’s when I gave up on trying. I can skim well enough.

I would not consider you a slow reader, Curtis, if you can reach 200 words per minute, even if only occasionally. Slow readers tend to read slower than they can speak. Have you ever had to read out loud in school? Are there not people who have a harder time reading than you do?

I tested at 350 WPM before started a speed reading course and tested at 1500+ WPM 6 weeks later. YMMV but it is about reading larger groups of words and not going backwards to reread parts of the sentence.

The only slow readers of that level I know of are little kids who are just learning to read.

When I was younger I think I used to read with more abandon. Now, I find myself pausing often, thinking about the implications of what I’ve just read, following trains of thought. Maybe my mind is just too full to be able to dump the new stuff in; I have to stop and repack.