3.2 • Do I Read Too Slowly?
This question does not relate directly to memory, but it is an important
question not only because people often want to memorize what they are
reading while they are reading it, but also because of fantastic claims from
people who say they can teach you to read thousands of words per minute -
i.e., Speed Reading. Therefore, I've included this document. I have no doubt
that one could devote a whole web site to this topic, and I don't want to
detract from the theme of memory improvement, so if you want to explore this
subject further I invite you to search the web on the subject of Speed
Reading or check your local library for books that exist on this subject.
Personally, I haven't had time to study the subject a lot myself.
Nevertheless, I've included my own opinion on the subject below, which is
based on logic and my own personal experience. But to give a more balanced,
fair view of this subject, I've also included the opinions of two others.
My Personal Opinion
Do I (the main author of the Memory Page) read too slowly? When I compare
myself to others, yes, I probably am "below average." But is this
good or bad? I can think of two possible conclusions:
- God made me a slower learner than other people, so I should
continue to read as I have been doing and not be intimidated
by peer pressure or other outside forces that want be to believe
that I am not reading fast enough.
- I really am reading slow because I am not reading properly
or efficiently. There must exist some techniques that I don't
know about for better reading that I should find and put into
practice.
Either one could be true, or the answer could be a little of both. As of
now, I guess I lean toward possibility #1, because I am a perfectionist and
this probably affects my learning style. I like to understand things, so it
is not enough that I just read something and accept it as true; I feel
better (and I retain a TON more) if I understand why something is
true. I also tend to "overlearn": this means I learn more than
what I need to know, which forces me to think about much more those things
that do I need to know (and to apply them), which causes me to retain
more.
I am not sure if what I am doing is "right" ... but it does seem
to be working for me, and I am getting A's. My undergraduate GPA was 3.88
and my graduate GPA was 4.00. I wonder if the speed-readers do this well.
But it's also possible that my high GPA is more a factor of my intelligence
rather than my reading technique; it's also possible that my reading
technique does work but there is a different technique that could
cause me to achieve the same success but in less time.
The bottom line: it is not an easy picture. Oh, well, I'll just do
the best I can. Really, the only time I feel bad is when I'm comparing
myself with someone else; if I just forget everyone else and focus only on
myself, then I enjoy reading, even if I am slow, and I don't feel bad about
it or intimidated. Maybe this is the secret. It still may be true that I
could be reading faster, but there isn't much I can do about it at
the moment... if someday someone explains to be a better method, I will be
very happy and I will accept that as an amazing gift; in the meantime, I
will just accept the status quo.
I guess that's true with my memory stuff. Until I learned the memory
techniques, I really wasn't that unhappy. Maybe I got a little frustrated at
times for forgetting things or for spending such a long time to learn stuff
for a test, but I just accepted it as part of life. And really, there wasn't
anything more I could do at the time. Then I discovered the memory
techniques, and it was really a great gift to me.
Greg A. Chulsky's View on Speed Reading
Greg A. Chulsky sent me the following Email on the subject of
Speed Reading:
"Without trying to sell anything, I will tell people that their reading speed
can be doubled in 20 minutes (though this might only work temporarily and
require high concentration) and permanently within a few days. The problem,
for most people, is that they cannot read without saying what they are
reading to themselves; they have to hear what they are reading.
The average person can talk at 200-300 words per minute comfortably, but the
average eye can catch 1800-2000 WORDS PER MINUTE! You can try to read
without talking, but this will be difficult and require high concentration.
The way to make this permanent is, whenever you read, deliberately say it to
yourself and force yourself to read slower than you can. In my
experiences, the brain rebelled and the talking vanished completely.
"Another interesting exercise is, try running your finger down the middle
of a page, at a speed faster than what you believe is a possible reading
speed. Follow your finger with your eyes, keeping them over the center
of the printed lines. Speed your finger up until you are spending 2
seconds per page, and then you will realize that although all you saw at
first was a blur, you end up picking up quite a few words!
"Oh, and one more thing! Most languages have some redundant words (in the
case of English, the, and,
or, and many others). You can therefore start reading not
quite from the beginning of each line, and jump to the next line a bit
before the end. This will further improve reading speed."
Ed Shanahan's View on Speed Reading
Ed Shanahan is the copy editor of Brill's
Content Magazine. He tried out Howard Stephen Berg's "Mega Speed
Reading" product and published his comments in the magazine in June
1999 (page 98) as a sidebar to a main article titled "King of the
Pitch", which focuses on Kevin Trudeau, the person who developed and
sold the entire "Mega" series.
I can't reproduce the entire sidebar here, lest I violate the magazine's
copyright, but the basic verdict from Mr. Shanahan is, "Four hours,
one videotape, and six audiotapes later, I'm stuck at my pathetic
420-words-a-minute rate, well below the 25,000 words a minute Berg claims
to devour using his 'revolutionary techniques'."
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Document last modified
11 Mar 00. (C) 1997-2000 by
Kevin Jay North; see also full
copyright notice & disclaimers..
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