Education Tips

What is Speed Reading?

Speed Reading is a technical method applied to increase the rate of reading manifold by various methods of selective application and shortened and re-christened text elements.

Commercial Speed Reading Programs

There are a lot of commercial houses and business outlets that provide full-time courses and do-it-yourself-manuals that promise people (interested ones) a super-speed at reading even complex text subjects. An average adult reader can read (with comprehension) up to 250 words per minute, which as per the claims of these afore-mentioned business houses can go up to 500 to 750 words a minute after undergoing the provided training process.

These business houses even claim that such tutorials are capable of helping you reach a reading speed of a mind-boggling 1000 words per minute, a feat every aspiring speed-reader would love to achieve.

Contests and competitions are also held for searching out the best in the business. Some have claimed reading up to 10,000 words per minute, but this is at the cost of comprehension, which for an average speed-reader is supposed to be at least 50%.

Intricacies of Speed-Reading

Speed-reading helps you cover text much faster than at normal pace. This may well help you read and cover subject matter of a huge quantity which wouldn’t have been possible had you not delved into the business of speed-reading.

But this virtue, like two sides of a coin, has a vice too. Speed-reading may help you develop speed but the comprehension level nose-dives and hence affects the clarity that normal reading may have given you. Also the concept of selective elimination and sub-vocalization erases the delight and delicate details of reading that an average book-reader enjoys, which actually IS the purpose of reading. Speed-reading may be compared to listening to a song on fast-forward. The melody is lost.

This delicate fact was presented by Woody Allen on a satirical note, “I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia!”

But even after all such dilemma, speed-reading remains a rage among the young and the old all the same.

Share This

Filed under: Speed Reading