Ishmael wrote:MJNL wrote: And when I read words, I can't not hear them. Which is why I kind of don't understand how one speed reads. I read at marginally faster than I speak, because that's the most practical, enjoyable rate for me to hear the words at.
Well, it appears that a critical factor is 'eyespan'. This is how many words you can take in with one focussing of the eyes. When we are taught to read as children, we may well follow along a line with a finger, pointing to a word and then pronouncing it aloud. This involves focussing on every word, and of course in the very early stages a lot of these words will be one syllable - '"The cat sat on the mat' will involve six focusses and therefore will be read very slowly. Quite often the transition between reading aloud and 'reading to oneself' is managed rather badly. Many adults therefore continue to 'verbalise' - that is to speak the words in their heads, focussing on each word just as they did when reading aloud.
If you think about it, this is redundant. The brain recognises the word on the page and then instructs the speech centre to pronounce it (silently) in order for us to 'hear' it in our heads. From the point where the brain recognised the word, the verbalisation process is just a waste of time and slows down your reading speed.
Consider that whilst we focus six times on six one syllable words, a six syllable word - 'Totalitarian' - should be possible with only one focus. In principle there is not much difference between the two in terms of the number of items to be recognised by the brain. The skill is to get out of the habit of requiring a refocus every time you see a space between words.
Here endeth the second lesson.
Did I ever tell you how I once nearly got the gold medal in a boring competition? (A boring competition for old bores.)
I think that Ishmael is correct -- or at least mostly correct -- but leaves out something very fundamental in the difference between slow-reading and speed-reading.
>
> ... From the point where the brain recognised the word, the verbalisation process is just a waste of time and slows down your reading speed.
>
This is exactly correct.
However . . .
>
> ... it appears that a critical factor is 'eyespan'. ...
>
This is not completely correct.
Here's what I mean. When you see an "Exit" sign, you don't say: "That's an 'E' followed by an 'x,' an 'i,' and a 't'; oh, that means the sign says 'Exit.' " You see the entire word, all at once, and know that it says "Exit."
Likewise, it's not necessary to read each word in a sentence or paragraph, individually, to know what the sentence or paragraph says. With practice, you can take in the entire sentence or paragraph and know what it says.
It's not even necessary to read the words in a sentence or paragraph in order to understand what it says. Your brain takes it all in and makes sense of it, automatically.
For example, we all understood what Jedi master Yoda said when he spoke, even though he ordered the words in his sentences differently than English-speakers normally do. (Yoda-speak is, for the most part, English-language vocabulary imposed on Japanese grammar. Instead of the standard English {subject}-{verb}-{object}, Japanese sentences typically have {subject}-{object}-{verb} or {object}-{subject}-{verb}.)
Given this, it's not necessary to read the first line on a page left to right, then the second line left to right, then the third line left to right, etc.
You can glance and the first line left to right, then glance at the second line right to left, the third line left to right, the fourth line right to left, etc. And again, with practice, you can take it all in and understand what it says.
And then the next step is to glance at several lines at once from left to right, then the following several lines from right to left, etc.
And the more you practice, the larger number of lines you can take in with each left-to-right and right-to-left eye movement.
Here ends my synopsis of the principles of Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics.
I took the Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics course in the mid-1970s, during the summer between high school and college.
I can read fast -- really fast.
However, when I read fiction, I always slow-read -- reading each word in order, reading maybe two or three times speaking speed.
Reading fiction any faster kinda defeats the purpose.
If you want to speed-read fiction, why even bother. Just read a detailed summary. You'll get the essentials of what happened, though you'll miss out on the whole reading experience that makes reading fiction worthwhile.
Speed-reading if for the purpose of absorbing information. Enjoying fiction pretty much demands slow-reading.
Further, I read fiction submissions even slower than I read published fiction, reading at close to speaking speed. If the line-level writing is good, it should sound really good when spoken. And the slower you read, the more you notice the smoothness or clunkiness of the writing. While smooth writing isn't nearly as important as storytelling quality, it is still important enough to matter.
Sam
