|
 |
On the merits of speed reading. | ||
Tags: Reading | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| DinaAlia Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 3783 days ago 24 posts - 49 votes Speaks: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian*, English, French Studies: Greek, Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Icelandic Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 1 of 15 02 March 2014 at 5:36pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
- You can read more in your foreign language.
- You will get more exposure to your foreign language. - You will end up reading things you understand faster. - Depending on the orthography, you will get some listening practice, too. The last one works on French and German, for me, and Spanish for that matter. English was trickier; it has the spelling-to-pronunciation relationship of a drunkard. On the plus side, English is pretty much a universal key to any Romance or Germanic language, so I'll give it a pass on the phonetic rules. If you know that relationship, you will read the pronunciation when you read the spelling. On the minus side, you can't really stop for dictionary checking while you read, because it will break the rhythm. It took me five read-throughs on "Vol de nuit" for me to realise that. Now I only read a chapter at a time. Regarding the second one, exposure is good because it allows your brain to form new connections to understand from context. Regarding practice, I took advice from a friend who said to practice speed reading in a language I am not learning and not planning to learn right now anyway. For me that is Finnish. The Finnish translation of the Iliad, "Ilias", is over a thousand pages long, so there's enough to read. It works. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5617 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes  Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 2 of 15 02 March 2014 at 7:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
As speed reading techniques emphasize ignoring function words and skimming/browsing techniques, I would dispute your claim. Speed-reading makes you practice speed-reading, but little else.
As you can't speed-read things you can't understand quickly.
... no? Apart from reading being the interpretation of a visual representation of the sounds of a language - some writing systems being relatively phonemic, others not so much - and so it doesn't produce any auditory resemblance of the written other than the one you can create based on how well you can interpret that writing system, speed reading aims at suppressing subvocalization as much as possible. Honestly, I personally would be appalled if I had to read any kind of text five times for any other reason than that I particularly enjoy reading that text. My rule of thumb is: for extensive reading, if I can't understand most of it the first time, the text is too difficult and will be tackled later. For intensive reading, I read twice; once with a dictionary/grammar and once without. For studying the content (usually non-language related, but also text analysis) it would be three times; once to get a general idea, once analyzing everything, taking notes etc, and then a third time to check if I hadn't overlooked anything. Edited by Bao on 02 March 2014 at 7:30pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5450 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 3 of 15 02 March 2014 at 9:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Do I understand you correctly: You read a thousand pages of a book in a language you do not understand at all, which is total gibberish to you, in order to fasten up your reading skills?! Well that is an ... unexpected concept.
PS. I thought speed reading is based on skipping function words and jumping from from content-bearing word-stem to the next. But you do not know in Finnish, which words belong to which category and whether you could grasp anything of it, if it were a language, you understand. Secondly, in order to read faster, you have to stop sounding out the words because you read faster that language could be articulated. So were is the listening practice? It is gone I think. Edited by Cabaire on 02 March 2014 at 9:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| DinaAlia Pentaglot Newbie Norway Joined 3783 days ago 24 posts - 49 votes Speaks: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian*, English, French Studies: Greek, Latin, Arabic (Egyptian), German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic (Written), Icelandic Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 15 02 March 2014 at 9:19pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Nope, it is there. Maybe it depends somewhat on how much a visual or aural thinker one is, but the information,
including how it sounds, is there in the word no matter how fast it goes. If I think it, I hear it. The exception to this is when I am unfamiliar with the alphabet, for obvious reasons. As for Ilias: yeah, I get the names, like "Atreun" or "Zeun", and certain words that show up in various forms such as "kuolema" ("death"), and they do stay in my mind for some time, but as I said I'm not currently learning Finnish, so it's not about that. At any rate, it is about reading ideas instead of separate words, yes. 200 pages is a lot for my brain to process at any one time, so I've chunked it down to the six or ten page chapters that the book consists of. I've found a useful way of going about it that is: first, speed through a paragraph using a guide like a capped pen or something to make your eyes move fast through the lines, for the words and not for understanding; second, read through it again, this time for understanding. I realise that the second step does not necessarily need to be speeded, but I do it anyway because fast equals fun. Now, I don't expect everyone to love this as much as I do, I'm not trying to persuade anyone to speed read, I just decided to share it in case somebody would find it useful. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5617 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 15 02 March 2014 at 9:28pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
See, I made this experience when I started learning Spanish. I read a lot. I could kind of guess at what things meant from knowing some Latin and very rudimentary Spanish, and from knowing literary traditions. I read, and read, even though it was difficult. Then, suddenly, everything seemed to become so clear, so easily understandable. I read on and every word made sense. It was so wonderful.
And then I woke up. 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6448 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 6 of 15 02 March 2014 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
I've recently discovered Spritz and speedreader.com. I would be definitely interested in an e-reader that uses these technologies, but you need to be used to reading in the language for that. As in at least recognizing the letter combinations and words visually. Not sure how much understanding is needed, as when I briefly tried the demo I found 400 wpm in Spanish pretty comfortable. I've read about two books in Spanish. Looking forward to trying out the second site with my Super Challenge languages.
4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5617 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 7 of 15 02 March 2014 at 10:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
Isn't 400 wpm normal reading speed?
1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6448 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 8 of 15 02 March 2014 at 11:42pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
|
By default they start with 250 wpm, which is roughly equivalent to one page per minute. (and certainly more than my normal speed in Spanish) Edited by Serpent on 02 March 2014 at 11:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
