Speed Reading Classes

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Tony Friedman from St. Louis, Missouri.

Hiya, Tony. Welcome.

Hi, Tony.

Hi. Well, I had a question. It’s not exactly a word question, but it’s one that’s been bothering me for some time.

The question is this. Are speed reading courses and speed reading techniques worthwhile, or are they a waste of time?

Oh. Have you taken some? Are you looking into it?

I have not, and I have looked into it, and I have only been more confused the more I look into it.

There’s a lot of claims out there, and it seems to me that a lot of them have to be bogus.

And I just don’t want to go down the rabbit hole if it is not worthwhile.

What are the bogus claims?

The bogus claims are that they can increase your reading speed to something upwards of 1,000 or 2,000 words a minute.

Whoa!

That’s fast.

You can read a novel in an afternoon.

Wouldn’t that be incredible?

Yeah.

And that would be worth a speed reading course if it were true.

I have experience doing this.

And I took a speed reading course many years ago, and it may work for other people, but it really messed me up.

What happened?

I have to say.

I got so—

Does this explain all your problems?

It explains certain problems, yeah.

I got so caught up in just the technique of it and thinking about all the things I was supposed to do

And how fast you were supposed to move your hand down the page.

And I just found it physically impossible, and then I would get frustrated.

You know, it sort of reminds me of, do you remember when all those apps started coming out that would help you organize your time and organize the tasks that you were going to do?

Yeah, the getting things done kind of stuff, the GTD stuff.

Yeah, and I got so caught up in the method that I just sort of forgot.

I just got messed up.

I couldn’t do it.

And honestly, this be-reading course that I took, I have to say, not only did I put out a bunch of money, but it messed me up for years.

Are there residual effects, any positive residual effects?

Only that I’m more selective in what I read.

But no, I was just thinking too much about the technique, and it didn’t help me.

Tony, is that some of what you were finding when you were looking around?

You know, that’s a lot of what I was finding,

Although I’ve never heard that you would need to unlearn what you did learn in a speed reading course.

So that makes me a little bit more nervous about looking into one.

Yeah, I found that people have these various techniques that they tout as the best solution.

Some of them involve moving your finger down the page.

There’s some involved training yourself to stop vocalizing internally the words as you read them.

And, you know, what it boiled down to me, it seemed like they were advocating an approach that is more like skimming text than reading text.

Yeah.

Bingo.

That’s it.

You get the gist, but not the particulars.

Exactly.

Yeah.

I think if you’re going to read well, you have to focus.

And I couldn’t focus because I was focusing so much on the technique itself.

Tony, but it sounds like we’re in sync.

I’m skeptical as well.

I’ve done similar digging that you’ve done.

And I’ve looked at the professional journal articles on this, and they agree that you can skim faster.

You can learn to skim very well, basically, is what’s happening.

To call it reading is a misnomer because you are not reading.

You are skimming.

And there are some things that it’s totally fine to do.

If you’re, for example, reading an autobiography, which is filled with anecdotes, and there’s kind of like the setup, and then the story, and then the follow-up.

And they’re kind of more or less repeating the same themes over and over.

Skimming is just fine.

If you’re reading dense legal text, forget it.

This is not going to work for you.

You cannot speed read dense legal text and get the gist.

I mean, maybe you can read the subject headers or the page headers or the section headers, that stuff.

But the main problem with my eyes is to think of it as reading because it isn’t.

Right. Okay. Well, that makes sense.

So maybe I shouldn’t waste my time then trying to go through a speed reading course.

It seems like at some point you will hit a wall where you just physically can’t move your eyes at that.

Exactly.

Let alone your brain comprehending what’s going on.

What I’d like to see is a speed comprehension course.

And that’s the place that we should be going.

How can I comprehend more better?

That’s right.

I mean, I’d like to speed read faster in order to read novels for pleasure.

And then in my work, I’m an attorney.

I’d like to read legal text and be able to comprehend everything.

But, you know, skimming is an important skill, and I think I’ve developed that skill well enough.

I might not be able to go much further with that, but, you know, they’re both skills.

And I think you’re absolutely right.

Speed comprehension is really what I’m after, not necessarily speed reading.

Exactly.

But we’ll put the word out and see if our listeners have different points of view, because I know this is kind of contentious.

You probably saw that as well.

There are some people who are probably already dialing the phone and sending the email.

Anyway, Tony, thanks for calling.

Really glad to hear from a St. Louisan.

Yeah, great speaking with the both of you.

Great fan.

Thanks a lot.

Take care.

Thanks, Tony.

Bye-bye.

Well, let’s hear from you.

877-929-9673 or send an email to words@waywordradio.org.