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winterberry
1-4-11, 3:45pm
What makes someone a "slow" reader or a "fast" reader? Have any of you learned to read faster? How?

I tried a popular speed reading program -- I forget the name of it -- when I was in about 7th grade (a very long time ago), but it didn't really help.

I want to read more books!

ApatheticNoMore
1-4-11, 5:45pm
It seems to me there is a trade-off between how fast information is read etc. and how deeply it is thought about/remembered/integrated. Maybe not.

Gina
1-4-11, 7:32pm
I have always been a slow reader, but if I'm concentrating will remember what I have read. It took forever to read school textbooks, so I rarely did.

The only time I read books now is if it's non-fiction and I have a great interest in the subject, then I'll devour it. Occasionally I'll read fiction if I am traveling and need to kill time in an airport, but I don't especially enjoy it - I find it rather boring, even books others have recommended. I think it's because the way I read, the story goes too slow to hold my interest. >8)

I wish I did read faster and enjoyed it, because I do think I've missed a lot. :(

Simplemind
1-5-11, 12:56am
Practice practice practice. Reading is a passion and a compulsion. I am a highly visual person. You can tell me something and I may forget it but if I see it printed it sticks. I prefer printed/visual directions and instructions. That was one of the things I loved about independant study in college, I could breeze through the classes as quick as I could get through the assignments. I was a geek kid that read the entire encylopedia.
I read and review reports all day. I have to be fast and accurate. When I come home I read for pleasure. The internet has been like heroin to me. Before when I ran across something that I wanted to explore more indepth I would have to go to the library. Now I can fall down the google rabbit hole for hours.

ljevtich
1-5-11, 2:49am
Totally true with Simplemind. I am the same way. I was the same way. And occasionally I read the dictionary even now. But I read everything. Fiction, non-fiction, science, nature, history, etc.

One of the things I have learned as a fast reader is that I do not read every single word. I look at the most important words in a sentence and decipher the meaning of the sentence that way. So that last sentence would be these words: Look Important Words Sentence Decipher Meaning Way. You take out the one and two letter words, the extraneous words like "and" and "the" and in the end, you read faster.

goldensmom
1-5-11, 8:14am
I'm a fast reader and don't know why, maybe genetics? The first time I remember realizing that I was a fast reader was in 3 grade and those tests we had to take. I was done really fast with the reading part and got a 99% on reading comprehension. My teacher told me I was one of those people who could skim a page and comprehend what it said. I didn't know why or that there was any other way to read!!

I think maybe I'm like <ljevtch> and just look at and comprehend the important words and skip the others. Glad to hear others read the dictionary too. Never hurts to learn a new word.

The Storyteller
1-5-11, 8:57am
I am a slow reader and have no desire to ever change. I absorb completely the books I read. Based on discussions in our book group, I get more out of a book than most people do. I think my pace is probably why.

A good book is like a fine wine. You could gulp it down, but why? It is so much better to drink it slowly, savoring each taste.

CathyA
1-5-11, 9:24am
I can't read much at all. It is very uncomfortable for me. I have come to the conclusion that I have a poor eye-to-brain connection when it comes to reading. Also, I think my eyes working together to read aren't very well coordinated. So....to answer your question, I think practice is important, but I also think there is a wide variation on how well our eyes work with our brains for reading. I really wish I could read better. I've never read a novel in my life.......its just too hard. Anything longer than a paragraph is too hard.

Bootsie
1-5-11, 10:48am
I'm curious why you want to read faster? What's the benefit?

I'm a fast reader and in the past few years I've trained myself to be a slower reader. I much prefer being a slower reader (unless reading pulp fiction when fast is fine).

Gina
1-5-11, 11:18am
Practicing usually will improve anything humans do. But like art and athletics, if you don't have the basic talent, it can improve one only so much.

Slight learning disabilites may also play a part for some slow readers. I believe myself to be slightly dyslexic. I am forever turning number order around, and when I was learning to write, it took forever to keep from writing certain letters and numbers backwards. And remembering in my head the proper order of a new telephone number? Forget it. I can rarely even repeat it once.

I do love reading things on the internet however - if the form is friendly. If something is written in very long, visually dense paragraphs, I usually skip most of it. For me it's much easier to read lots of short paragraphs with many visual gaps. Maybe that's true for everyone.

Crystal
1-5-11, 11:46am
I took that speed reading (and improved comprehension) course in 7th grade too. It worked for me. I was actually bumped down from a class where we were diagramming sentences. The first month we diagrammed sentences I was bored to tears, but thought okay, we'll go onto other things later. After a month I asked the teacher what else we would be doing in the class and when. Nothing. We were going to diagram sentences the entire @#$%$#@ year! I asked to be moved outta there. I liked the speed reading class because we set our own course and could go at our own pace.

catherine
1-5-11, 12:22pm
I'm a fast reader. I attribute part of it to the nuns in my Catholic grammar school who taught us to take in word groups as we read, rather than individual words. They would show us the word groups on a projector and would then move on to the next group more and more quickly. Maybe because this skill was taught to me when I was very young, it stuck--kind of like learning a language when you're young. Sounds like Crystal and I had similar experienes--lots of sentence diagramming in my background, too.

If I'm studying for an exam I slow down a lot, but for general purposes, I can read very quickly.

Simplemind
1-5-11, 1:16pm
ljevtich touched on something I didn't, which is a method. I have never tried to teach myself to read faster, it just is what it is.
I see patterns in everything. Once I have seen a persons handwriting I will always be able to identifity who wrote something. We have over 200 people writing reports and I can tell who is who without looking at the name. When coworkers can't read something they will bring it to me, I can almost always figure out what it is.
I often am asked to pull up a lengthy report and quickly find a specific part in it to read back. Like those word search puzzles I scan the entire page, I know this sounds weird, in a counter clockwise circular motion and can pop up the pattern of the words I am looking for without having to read every line left to right.

I collected childrens books for years hoping to share my joy of reading one day. God blessed me with a son who is the direct opposite of me. He gets no enjoyment out of reading. It frustrates him. If he hears something it will stick with him but you can leave him notes or post something on the calendar and he can not keep it in his head. He is a musician with a great ear. He knows how to read music but hates it. He will listen to a piece a couple of times and then be able to sit down a play it. We both wish we had the others skill.

The brain is beautiful and mysterious..............

CathyA
1-5-11, 4:20pm
Question for all you readers.......do you say each word "out loud" in your head? I can't seem to help but do that.

catherine
1-5-11, 4:33pm
Question for all you readers.......do you say each word "out loud" in your head? I can't seem to help but do that.

No way. Unless I'm reading a play.

The Storyteller
1-5-11, 9:06pm
Question for all you readers.......do you say each word "out loud" in your head?

It depends on the book and whether or not the words are important. Literature and poetry, most definitely. Lightweight fiction and how-to stuff, not so much. Using another metaphor, it is a little like food. If I just want to devour it, that is what I do. But if I want to taste each and every fine morsel, I slow down and chew.

iris lily
1-6-11, 12:20am
I used to be a fast reader with good comprehension. Now, in my old age, I'm a lazy fast reader--so I achieve only mediocre comprehension.

What I gained from fast reading in the early days was a very good sense of tone, narrator voice, point of view--in other words, the exterior shape of a novel. You get that when not paying attention to all of the details.

But now I may miss important bits of the novel.

I can relate to wanting to savor the occasional really good book but alas, my bad habit of speeding through books doesn't support that.

winterberry
1-6-11, 10:58pm
Thanks for all your thoughtful responses.

Bootsie asked why I want to read faster. Well, I just did the calculations and, assuming I live another 20 years (I am 62), at the rate I read (about 20 pages an hour when I really try), if I read for an hour a day I will be able to read about 480 books before I die, if they average 300 pages/book. Actually, I was surprised it was that many.

And what will it matter when I am dead and gone how many books I have read? I like the quotation under Storyteller's post: "There are too many books to read in a lifetime; you have to draw the line somewhere." (Where?)

But the immediate reason I want to read faster is something called The Tournament of Books.

http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/the_rooster/the_2011_tournament_of_books_long_list.php

Basically, there will be 16 books that will be pitted against each other and sometime in March one of them will win the tournament. It's just a fun thing, and I want to read all 16 of them. I think I should be able to read all of them, but at my speed I will probably only read 6 of them at most.

What I've gathered from reading all of the posts here, sadly, is that it probably does have to do with how our brains are wired, and maybe a little bit with how we were taught to read. I am going to practice, though, and I'll let you all know how it goes.

Greg44
1-7-11, 12:48pm
I would like to read more -- but I have always been a slow reader. I went to one of those "special classes" in grade school for poor readers. *sigh* In college it was a constant struggle. I remember getting to the first day of class and the professor would say, ahh chapters 1-3 are all review - we will start with chapter 4 on Wednesday. The first day I was like 150 pages behind!

Now with limited time to read - and sooooo many good books out there, I would like to read more. I try to find a happy balance between reading faster and comprehending what I have just read!

Years ago, I took an "adult education" class at the local community college on speed reading...but I don't remember any lasting improvement - but everyone is different.

Gina
1-7-11, 1:16pm
In college it was a constant struggle. I remember getting to the first day of class and the professor would say, ahh chapters 1-3 are all review - we will start with chapter 4 on Wednesday. The first day I was like 150 pages behind!
I totally identify. If a 30 page chapter was assigned, it took me hours and hours and hours to read. This is why I rarely if ever read the text books - not enough hours in the day. Thankfully my passion turned out to be a science which basically was common sense. I never would have surived history or English for example. I ultimately came to believe reading someone else's ideas would simply muck up my own creative meanderings. ;)


http://www.simplelivingforum.net/attachment.php?attachmentid=149&d=1294385589

Zoe Girl
1-9-11, 12:32am
Like someone else said I am naturally a fast reader and I don't know why. I have always been this way, but don't think that I want everyone to be a fast reader like me. There are some downsides, okay the biggest one is that we have such a narrow idea of what is a normal range and it is hard to be out of that range either way. I typically did reading assignments that we had time to read in class 3 times rather than tell the teacher I was done and bring attention to myself. I also see and intuit patterns easily and people often turn to me when they want to find information quickly. I had one job I at a bank and when I was there 6 months other peoplewith many years in their careers started asking me about regulations (when we were slow I read the banking regulations). Didn't actually win me any friends and my career has not prospered from any of this to this point but I really love reading so much! I get to a point about 3/4 through a novel where I know it is going to end and i already feel sad that my friendship with this book will be over, sigh. I am usually so hooked by then that I cannot help but push through.