How Wise is Speed Reading?
Fascination with speed reading skills is continuously increasing with the increasingly text-based communications. Most people interact with text-based sites and social forums practically every day. However, many people just read approximately 2.5 words a second. Many speed reading courses guarantee an average of between 500 and 600 words a minute. You might have encountered speed reading programs making claims that you are going to read more than 15 words per second, but a lot of people cannot achieve this reading rate. You might be right in being skeptical about excessive speed reading promises.
If you do not comprehend what you are reading, youre not really reading. As much as you speed up word intake, your mental deciphering needs to keep up. Your mind will only understand and commit information just so fast. Filtering out written text that does not at first seem important is a key to speed reading. Youll get faster as you learn how to quickly recognize the most vital information. Nonetheless, even the important text you speed read will only be partly retained. Speed reading teaches you how to pick what you remember and what you disregard. The degree to which this works varies by individual.
A few speed reading techniques put an emphasis on high comprehension level. You may not be able to flip the pages or scroll quicker than others, but youll become a more efficient reader. If you prefer more than that, youll likely have to sacrifice some comprehension. For applications like scanning the morning paper or reading about your friends vacation, fair comprehension is usually fine. However, when you are reading the instructions for your medication, you need to understand them fully. Most of what you will read will come between these extremes.
So usually, when you have no need for complete comprehension, but you do require decent comprehension, you can speed read. You could thoroughly read technical and crucial things while zipping through the simple or minor. It is not easy to learn to habitually vary reading styles. Youll find those who say they were at one time speed readers but forgot how to speed read without frequent practice. Other accomplished speed readers assert it becomes so automatic, they have trouble not speed reading. However ,, even if you are among the latter, if youre not consciously thinking about what type of reading youre doing you may find yourself speed reading.
When youve learned to speed read, youll find if you can or cant disable your speed reading to meet comprehension needs. The best way is to figure out how technical the majority of your reading is. If you find that you primarily read complex documents, it can be a bad idea to learn speed reading. If most of your reading is non-technical, it may be an useful skill. If you choose to study, try out your reading comprehension frequently at normal and accelerated rate. Any time you find reading comprehension decreasing, you should avoid speed reading for a period of time. You are the one that will need to live with the decision you make regarding whether to learn to speed read.
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