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Speed Reading for faster learning? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies | ( Topic Closed) |  |
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5583 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 1 of 49 30 September 2009 at 1:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I recently checked out a book from my local library about speed reading, saying that the average person reads about 150-400wpm (words per minute) it says that the world record is about 20,000wpm, and then tells a story about a guy ( I forget his name) that was to give a speech on someone famous, so he picked up his biography at a book store, and read it in 15 minutes. Then proceeded to give a full lecture on the man.
This feat (if possible) would unlock HUGE doors for studying (whether languages of school subjects). Has anyone dealt with speed reading? -Jordan 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| TerryW Senior Member United States Joined 6355 days ago 370 posts - 783 votes Speaks: English* | Message 2 of 49 30 September 2009 at 3:14am | IP Logged | ||
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I'll be interested in reading any replies to your post, but I really doubt it would unlock huge doors, and maybe not even open a soda can flip-top. ;-)
Getting good comprehension while reading a novel is one thing, but having good comprehension while reading technical material is another. If you read an English dictionary, for instance, at your normal rate of speed, and read through all of the words beginning with "A": Will you be able to remember the meaning for all the new A-words you just read about? Doubtful. Can you read through a math book and know how to do math problems without practicing them? I don't think so. So if you read through a dictionary or a math book very fast, or even slow, how much comprehension will you have? Learning technical things takes study and practice as well as time for your brain to assimilate it over days. I'd guess that all of this would be different for someone with a photographic memory, though. I'm saying all this just as an opinion, not as a technical expert, so anyone who knows differently, please respond. Edited by TerryW on 30 September 2009 at 3:19am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Hashimi Senior Member Oman Joined 6257 days ago 362 posts - 529 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)* Studies: English, Japanese | Message 3 of 49 30 September 2009 at 5:00am | IP Logged | ||
He is Howard Stephen Berg, or Mr. Reader! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Stephen_Berg http://www.mrreader.com 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tricoteuse Pentaglot Senior Member Norway littlang.blogspot.co Joined 6676 days ago 745 posts - 845 votes Speaks: Swedish*, Norwegian, EnglishC1, Russian, French Studies: Ukrainian, Bulgarian | Message 4 of 49 30 September 2009 at 9:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I did a project with speed reading this summer, but unfortunately I didn't have the time to continue with it once University started, so I can't give any answers really. As I see it, those cases who can achieve extraordinary reading speeds are very very rare. Even if you can learn how to read faster in a rather short amount of time it is much harder to achieve comprehension. Supposedly you are meant to get more comprehension at higher speeds, but I was never able to do this and I cannot read any of my books for university very quickly because if I do, I don't remember a thing even a minute after I stopped.
I am not really sure how this would help for language studies though since at least for me that is a completely different thing. Over all if you are supposed to get good at speed reading, I think you have to work at it for a very long time. Even those people who read really really fast must work on their skills all the time and it's not something that once you achieve it, it's effortless. At least according to what I have read and from my own experience. I don't think I got over 800 words a minute when I was at it, and that was with a level of comprehension that I was not really satisfied with. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 49 30 September 2009 at 10:27am | IP Logged | ||
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If you read something to find something specific then you can of course do speed reading, but if your goal is to learn a language then it is just about the most silly thing you can do. The principle behind speed reading is to pick out just enough of the text to be able to piece together the meaning, - and you should certainly not start looking at the formal side of the text. In other words you skip exactly those elements in the text that are relevant for a language learner.
Reading for general content is another matter, and I have done my share of that. The most extreme case was probably when I was writing my final dissertation at the university about a grammatical topic. If I needed an illustration of a certain phenomenon and I didn't have a suitable example in my notes then I would look through book after book, turning the pages at a rate at about one page per 2-3 seconds, first looking at the right side pages, then the left side pages. But this has nothing to do with language learning, and I didn't even notice the content. The fastest true 'pseudoreading' I have done was done while I studied literature and came unprepared for a lesson where I should have read a whole book (it happened fairly often as my interest in literature was waning already during my study years). In this situation you can actually zip through a few hundred pages of a standard paperback novel in 15-20 minutes, catching some of the plot, noting down some pages where there are things that probably will be discussed, getting a sense of the writing style in general and so on. This was actually enough to be able to participate in the discussion even at a university level course, and paradoxically I still remember some of the content of books I have peroused in this way. But it is clearly not enough to really learn anything new, and certainly not to learn anything of the language because you already have to know it to speed-read like that. Speed reading has its uses, but not in language learning. Edited by Iversen on 30 September 2009 at 10:31am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5583 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French | Message 6 of 49 30 September 2009 at 5:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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Iversen I can agree with you, If I were to build a foundation, I would want it to be very strong instead of "shortcuts" or anything of the sort. By the time I am 25 (7 years from now) I hope to have close to native fluency in both German and Spanish, and starting on Italian.
So the more I look at it, I guess I'm not in a hurry lol :D Your feats are amazing. I'm very impressed. :) Edited by datsunking1 on 01 October 2009 at 5:00pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| JasonChoi Diglot Senior Member Korea, South Joined 6357 days ago 274 posts - 298 votes Speaks: English*, Korean Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Latin | Message 7 of 49 01 October 2009 at 2:38am | IP Logged | ||
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A professor in the 1970s by the name of Vearl McBride taught students how to speed read, and even creatively found a way to apply it towards languages. Unfortunately, there is very little information about how he did it except for what's in his book, which is long out of print. The good news however is that someone made a review of McBride's book and it describes how he taught students to speed read in a foreign language with comprehension:
http://www.amazon.com/school-system-full-speed-ahead-Exposit ion-university/product-reviews/0682476951/ref=dp_top_cm_cr_a cr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1 Often it is assumed that speed reading is ineffective for language learning, but theoretically, speed reading activates the right side of the brain, which can absorb far more information than the left brain (which is what we typically use to learn languages). Some also claim that the reason babies learn languages so rapidly is because their right brains are very active, until around age 5 or 6, which is the time when children begin traditional reading - a left brain function. Interestingly, children learn to speed read far more rapidly than adults simply because their right brains are not as deconditioned. This is not to say they don't use their right brains, but certainly they aren't used as much. Personally, I think there is a strong connection between the right brain and language learning. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 8 of 49 01 October 2009 at 10:23am | IP Logged | ||
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McBride's claim comes as something of a surprise to me. I have read the review, and it actually says very little about the actual method. But the one thing it does say is quite relevant: the method is apparently used on the use of LOTS of parallel texts - and that is an element learning in language which several of us here at the forum have been quite enthousiastic about. So I suspect that the rise in the reading speed has more to do with a lot of training in passive skills in general in the target language - and that again would open the door for speed reading.
However it is difficult to react in a very specific way to something that essentially is a review of a book that has been out of print for ages. But I would definitely like to hear more about McBride's methods. The exclusive use of the left side of the brain for language processing is not quite as clearcut as it sometimes is stated - it is a known fact that prelearned chunks (mostly exclamations) can be recognized by the right half, but I question that a whole language can be learnt as exclamation-like chunks (i.e. without grammar). However some elements in language learning - for instance my use of physical position on a morphological 'green sheet' as a means to pinpoint a certain form - are probably tied to the right brain. And it is probably also involved in those memorization techniques that are based on smell, feeling, visual imagery and things like that. Edited by Iversen on 01 October 2009 at 10:26am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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