00:03 Speed reading can enable reading at over 4,200 words per minute. 01:34 Speed reading with peripheral vision is biologically impossible. 03:03 Speed reading claims are questionable 04:34 The inner voice plays a vital role in speed reading. 06:03 Speed reading requires understanding the trade-off between speed and comprehension 07:26 Reading speed not limited by eye movement, but cognitive processing 09:01 Skimming is a useful but potentially costly speed reading technique 10:25 Speed readers have advanced language processing skills
Listening to an audiobook in conjunction with reading tbe physical copy. I have ADHD and listening at increased speeds helps nots to not only compleyte the text faster, but forces me to focus on what I’m reading. It’s speedreading for me as it would otherwise take weeks to finish a book, as opppsed to days. My primary challenge is when I encounter a word/phrase/subject I am unfamiliar with and want to pause or note the location for further review.
Lmao it’s so funny how people label themselves to an arbitrary diagnosis when in reality you just lack discipline and focus. Get a grip and stop using a fake diagnosis as an excuse. It’s not really something to be proud of to lack disicpline.
Wow! The best method that helped me ace a Shakespeare drama course. Grab a recording, read along with the performance. I could get through three plays per day, remembered which character said what and in which play! The three things the prof tested. Like taking candy from a baby. I took several of these courses where one had to read a play. Did the same for Restoration lit. Plus get the benefit of listening to master performers. Be well.
My secret for better reading is... reading more! The more I read the less fatiguing it became. I always thought of it as a muscle that required strengthening, but your presentation on language processing make sense; the more words and phrases I understand, the less processing required, the less fatiguing the process.
@@jonocodes Reading shouldnt be fast, it is a slow process and it needs to be slow , otherwise you wont understand anything. Sure you can read 3 times as fast and you can tell everyone how fast you can read and how many books you have red, but what is the point , when you dont remember and understand what you read.
@@jonocodes Sometimes I read quick sometimes I don't, sometimes I can't focus, some times I can't put the book down. I just think enjoy your books and aim to finish them without a time goal.
You did homework on existing research, you presented an illustrated précis of the research. You told us about the physical and psychological processes of reading. You told us what speed readers' claims of improvement areas are, then gave us reasons why they fail. All interesting information. Your retort to the argument is read more. You did not clarify how they get it done. In my opinion. But I am subscribing because your channel's quality control in consistently good, especially your transcript. High marks for your native language coding! Shows respect for your viewers' intelligence. Other RU-vidrs should take your videos as a lesson in the value of not-minimal-energy output as a demand multiplier in a [video] market. Cheers.
1) I have found that reading with intent for a specific purpose/question in mind speeds up my reading astronomically. But if I am reading with my purpose completely open to whatever the author writes, my reading slows to a rate that is as inverse-proportionally slow as my reading with a specific purpose/question is fast, with both purposeful and purposeless reading resulting in the same level of comprehension. 2) Having a specific purpose, outcome, or goal in mind that you truly care to arrive at helps tremendously. Translation: Be a good cheerleader for your own efforts?
One way to practice reading with a specific purpose is to read click-bait articles. Not all of them. Avoid the ones that are "slideshows" in which you have to click on a button each time you want to see the next in the top 200 albums of all time according to the janitor at a major recording studio. There's another kind. Look for Famous Band Who You Thought Retired a Decade Ago Names The Song They Enjoy Performing Live the Most. The point is that you start to develop a strategy for finding the name of the song in those articles. There will definitely be at least one ad first.
I have 3 modes of reading in my arsenal: "Quick", "Slow (normal)", "Immersive". I can switch those by my desire. The quick one isn't so quick like those reading champion, but it certainly 5x faster than the Slow mode. I don't disable my internal voice, I just let it speak faster, to the point where it mumbles words. I also process half a sentence by looking at one word. So in one second, I can read 4 lines of text in B5 paper with full comprehension. But the trade off is severe headache and dry eyeballs. If it's familiar topics, I think I can read like 8x speed, by actually skipping words that doesn't contribute to context. Slow mode is just reading as normal, but I'm normally slower than most people, so I call it slow. Immersive mode is reading with imagination, it doesn't feel like reading, it's more like dreaming or reincarnation. I think it's the slowest, but sometimes, I just fly through pages. And because I live in the book, the comprehension level feels like 1st hand experience.
I've been practicing speed reading for the past year and this is pretty on par with what I have observed. I couldn't reduce the vocalization or take in entire paragraphs, but as I sped up my reading, I was getting better at focusing my eyes on the key parts of a sentence. It reminds me of how the "Attention is All You Need" paper laid out the framework for the LLM Transformer, with more important relations getting more attention to define the context.
Yes, if you can find the verb and object in a sentence subject can be quickly inferred and modifiers ignored. But I find this approach best for scanning subjects I know well, like papers in my field, or to find what to read more deeply in a text. Is this your experience?
That's exactly how I do it to, most of the text doesn't hold and importantance to the meaning, it's just filler. Look at this, I can write the phrase above with way less words but same meanining: Exactly how I do it, most of text is filler.
A few years ago I encountered the idea that you can radically increase your reading speed for some kinds of books by shifting into a mode where you aim to visualize the actions in the book as a movie playing in your mind. This could work better for books that tell a story (e.g., fiction, sci-fi, biographies) but not so well for technical books.
Purpose of reading is to get the message from the symbols on the page and not the reading itself. Reading at 1000 words a minutes is a waste, if you don't know what you just read and the details. After deacades of speed courses, what I've learned is that speed reading is possible but not at the wild claims made by those selling you their courses. What makes one book easier to read compared to another comes down how it's layed out on the pagae. Font style, size of text, the spacing of the text matters greatly. If the text is too big or too small (ant writing) than the reading will be difficult. Know paragraph and sentence structure. Slowly read the topic sentence and the support stuff afterward quickly (especially when the author starts going on tangents about their Aunt Sally in WWII on a subject like Physics.) Sentence structure...there are main words (S-V)and the rest either are adjectives to describe or articles that don't add anything like "The", "A", "An" etc. Just reading groups of words two or three at a glance and focus on topic sentences will improve your reading a lot and the . Also, you have to have a quiet area to read...no music or distractions. Ambient noise is okay. Prof Kaplan (YT channel) said, "Reading is a scam." He talked about hand scanning and skimming. I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. All it takes is practice...lots of practice. Avoid speed reading scam co'urses because they don't work. Reading 700 pages an hour...yeah ,if there were only one word on each page. (700 words a minute) 😆
Thank you for your comment. 700 words per minute is realistic? That's about more then twice my current pace. And right now I can't increase even when I use all the techniques.
how much can you remember from what you read? it is usually not a lot so focusing on comprehension instead of understanding the text fully helps reading more material. which in turn helps with reading more because you can expose yourself to more new stuff. I realize the books where I tried to grasp as much as I can are gone off my head. sacrifice comprehension for speed a bit to find what you really want to focus on. there are infinitely more books then we can read in a life time so we better use our time effectively
"Purpose of reading is to get the message from the symbols on the page and not the reading itself." YESS! I don't get the point of reading faster just for the sake of it. You read 6 books instead of 1? Cool, but did you actually engage with the content and become a better version of yourself?
I've subscribed, your obsidian video introduced me to your channel but wow, so much amazing stuff and the way you explain things is the best i've seen.
There is a "speed reading" technique that works: skipping Most prose and story lines fairly redundant and follow a few patterns. By picking up 20-30 words by scanning a page diagonally you can get a quick and rough overview of what is on the page.
Something we're taught not to do in elementary school helps me--using my finger (or a pointer). Eyes naturally follow motion, so the pointer reduces the level of battle between my mind and my eyes. Plus it doesn't stop me from re-reading or slowing down for more difficult words.
I read on a kindle and I have found that I started reading faster by reducing the margins on the pages, this making every line shorter. I don't know if there is some evidence for this, but it works in my experience. Also, I think that if you read/watch/listen a summary of the book you are about to read beforehand then you can also read faster because you are already familiar with the text or language used there.
I was about to write similar experience. When I have a kindle I can set larger font, bigger gaps between lines and bigger margins. This way I can literally scan the page (even there is more of them per one page in physical book) in very fast pace when compared to ordinary book where text can be quite compressed to large number of sentences per pages and whole page looks huge sometimes. So technically the text is same but I feel that on Kindle I am reading much faster. SO from my point of view it almost looks like I am able to process more of smaller chunks of text faster rather than one huge page.
I think we should not forget about the social aspect of those speed readings "experts", or even "gurus" now. We need to examine the conditions in which there skills are evaluated too. For instance, are the sets of questions always the same ? Do they check for long term comprehension ? Etc. As an example, the speedreading championships are often organized by the companies of the speed reading coaches.
10 месяцев назад
Congratulations on the video. It was fascinating and really well structured. I was hoping for something a little more flashy beyond ‘skimming’ as the big reveal but I guess it’s good to know I’m on the right track when trying to get through more text in less time. I’d be interested to know what reading speeds for normal individuals are vs people who (like me) have worked as editors and copy-editors. I find myself constantly slowed down, and my comprehension suffers because I cannot quiet the voice in my head that wants to rant about how poorly whatever it is that I’m reading was written and supplement what it should say instead. As you might be able to imagine, I am not a lot of fun at dinner parties😑
Thank you for this video. You helpfully suggest at the end to 'work on [one's] language processing' along with reading as much as possible as a possible means of increasing reading speed. Have you perhaps come across any materials giving advice on how to improve language processing competence/skill? Or perhaps you might wish to consider doing a short follow-up video on this? Have only just 'discovered' your channel and have been enjoying your content.
This video reminds me of a concept called the reading system, a term I heard in middle school, which suggests that 95 percent of the books in the present world were just a rearranged, simplified regurgitation of the essential 5 percent, meaning that those who are familiar with the 5 percent can rapidly locate the new insight in the 95 percent and practically drain the value of the book in a short period, and as a result, some people can appear as a speed reader with a deep comprehension of the material that they skimmed in a short time, making people believe that speed can also improve comprehension.
You perfectly explained what I experienced all my life: No matter how much I read, I'm not getting any faster, because my brain is just too slow to process a faster reading speed. This makes reading speed a metric for brain performance or at least for the ability to concentrate. Which of course is much harder to train.
Subject matter is an important factor in speed of reading. Record timings would be vastly different for Math-heavy STEM books, which tends to be very information dense compared to autobiography books.
I read not only for information but also for enjoyment. When I read a book I find important, let's say 'The Power of Now' by Eckhart Tolle, I will not even try to speed up my reading but will re-read passages and even the whole book. Not a waste of time. BUT, for example, reading a book, whilst listening to the audiobook at a speed of, for example, 1.25 will result in speed reading, without loss of information. My two pence... I hope it helps someone. Bless 🙏
Thanks for doing my homework. I'm not interested in speed reading as such, I'm interested in increasing the speed of my second language reading, and you've got a couple of hints in there: be more familiar with more words, is probably the biggie. Saccades probably work differently in languages with radically different grammars, so that needs some thought, perhaps. Garden path sentences in English will be different beasts from garden path sentences in Japanese. Skimming isn't of interest, I want to enjoy the writing of the great writers: Yukio Mishima's writing is insanely complex and subtle*, but I do need to finish the damn book before hell freezes over. As you can tell, I think speed reading is a really bad idea. The author went to the effort of doing the writing, and it's either worth reading carefully, or not worth reading at all. But speed reading itself is such a monster cultural meme in the English speaking universe that it needs to be dealt with. So, good on you, and nicely done, by the way. *: One of his longer novels changes style in the middle. The literary criticism folks agonized about what the meaning/intent of that change was. Papers were written. Someone finally buttonholed Mishima and asked. "I wrtote the first half carefully, but by the time I got half way through, I was almost at the deadline for publication, so I didn't have time to polish the tesxt."
I believe for many people the point of speed reading is to be able to read more in your free time. My personal method of dealing with this is just usinf audiobooks. Ive been reading audio books as my primary method of reading since I was in college so I dont believe it has a negitive effect on my comprehention. I also over time have been able to increase the speed I can listen to more and more bridging the gap between my listening speed and the average readers reading speed. Additionaly being a python developer ive created scripts for scraping text from webpages I want to read and converting them to audio I can drop on my phone. The biggest advantage to this is that I can now overcome the speed of reading hurdel by usinf volume. Reading while I get 10k steps in a day and while I commute to work in addition to just leasure reading allows me to cover well over 1000 hours of reading a year. Most of this I use for fiction though so thats worth noting.
It is a good way to multitask. I usually listen to the audio and read the books at the same time as @bobbyv3 posted. I think I still need the double-channel confirmation, as English is not my native language.
In my experience over this topic, there are parts of text that are just to generate context and are very easy to comprehend, those can use a lot of words, thus time and energy.... so I read fast, jump words and lose a few points. But not as to loose the points of the conversation. When while speed reading something comes up that is actually relevant, then I slow down and make sure that I comprehend fullly because is important and the main reason of the text to exist.
haha i'm fifty seconds into the video and i gotta say you are more & more a director rather than just a videomaker. Don't be taken aback by these 'haha" at the beginning. It's just to show that you went even further with the direction of yours. And of course i mean it in a positive way.
You can really improve peripheral vision. It has nothing to do with the maximum angle of the high definition area of your eyes, otherwise the solution would consist in simply reading from a bigger distance. The problem we all have in the amount of information we can process in that area.
Using evidence that these techniques reduce comprehension as an evidence against speed reading, is like using evidence that running make you tired as an evidence against possibilities to run large marathons. Of course you will struggle when you force yourself to a new hard task, that's why you need practice before you get experienced.
A counter example: Peripheral vision can be useful when you read a hieroglyphics language like Chinese, other than an alphabet language such as English. The shape of the words represent their meanings, and my brain can still process them under lower resolution.
Basically, if you know the difference meaning of one word and connect the meaning of previous word/ sentence, you can just skip the not so important word in between it, thus making you read faster. If you can make the technique more efficient, your reading speed become faster too
This video reads like the opposite of "BOOKSTORES: How to Read More Books in the Golden Age of Content" by Max Jospehs. Much of that video was commendably focused on improving reading speed and comprehension, and I have always struggled with it. I'm not a great speaker, but the now obvious connection to speaking skills and language comprehension makes sense as why many people struggle to read.
This is good content, but it's moot. Get a digital copy, and maybe an app like Calibre that can convert between formats. The feed the text to your favorite LLM, and ask for summary. Summaries can be longer or shorter, focused or general depending on your prompt. You're not speed reading per se. But a focused and efficient summary achieves that same result as speed reading.
When I read I don't heard my inner voice. I have a strong habit of reading. I am not a genius. If I could read faster I wouldn't because when I am very commited and focus I can do this for two or three days but after that I have to rest. And I do this for finding aswers to my studies, not to absorve all the knowledge, that is my first method. When I have to absorve all the knowledge I read one chapter, then I use my inner voice to speak to myself and see if I learned, then I read it again. One week later I read it again to memorize in the long run, that is my second method. My third method is to enjoy what I am reading, like when I'm reading Hobbit kind of stuff and the reading process it is a pleasure by itself, I don't need to speed up.
I've read an article that says reading aloud is better for comprehension than subvocalization or reading in my head. As a non-native English speaker, I found this not to be true. When I read things out loud, I'm more focused on making sure my accent sounds right. Is this the case for native English speakers too? or is reading aloud better for your comprehension?
Speed reading never worked for me, and I don’t think it ever will. When I read a work of literature, I want to savour the language, feel the pulse of the words, tune in to the rhythm of the sentences. When I read a (well-written) airport novel, I like to identify with the characters, and live through the plot with them. When I read non-fiction, I wish to grapple with new concepts, and broaden my horizons. None of this can be accomplished if I skim over the words or shut down my inner voice. So the only time that speed reading appears to be a viable method - and incidentally the only time I am able to do it - is when I read something in which I am already well-versed. But then the process of reading itself loses its ‘soul’ and is degraded to a mere information-gathering device. So I guess the real reason I have never been able to increase my average reading speed after the age of 10 or so is that I am not interested in doing so - nothing you can skim is worth reading, it seems.
I noticed that my mother was sub-vocalizing as she read. She has been doing it that way for 88 years. It takes tremendous amounts of time to form the mouth shapes to read the words out loud. If you are reading this way, stop immediately. You will only be able to read as fast as you talk and it's holding you back. Once you don't have to put your mouth in gear while you read, your speed will increase dramatically. If you are having problems getting this down, consider gently holding a pencil between your lips while you read. If you sub-vocalize, the pencil will fall out of your mouth. If you already have the bad habit of sub-vocalizing, you may have naturally gravitated to reading novels with a lot of dialogue. An example would be romance novels. Books with dialogue will be comfortable for you to read. Once your true speed potential is realized, you will be able to read much more complex books.
I think you can read two short words at a time, with long words is not possible obviously, so it all depends on the length of the words in a sentence. I think that's the only reasonable technique for reading faster without sacrificing any comprehension
so for all the parents who constantly tell their kids they should read more and said kids reply it takes too long to read, you should tell them reading more gives you super reading speed power
4:12 - well this does me in. I have aphantasia. I cannot silence the reading voice in my head because I don't recognize words by sight, only by sound. If I don't say it in my head, I have no idea what word I am looking at.
We don't need to read or write anymore because we have AI to do that for us now. In fact, youtube is going to eliminate the Comments section on each video by the year 2030. And no more CC, either. "Dave, stop it. Stop, will you? Stop Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop Dave. I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it." By the way, our fovea sees the line above and below the line we are reading. This is how we get a heads up for what is ahead in the text. Pay attention to that and use it, but don't become distracted by it.
squelching the inner-voice does work, but apparently everybody's been using the wrong-resolution to discover what's key to its working?? Please read Kegan & Lahey's "Immunity to Change", in-which they give us the means of understanding the 3 unconscious-mind development-stages that nearly-all adults are in. I call them Kegan-3, which begins after adolescence, and is centered on being liked, belonging, getting-along, minimizing social-difficulty, and is *essentially* the absorption stage of one's unconscious-mind's development ( cows, among herdbeasts, are in this mode btw, though Kegan doesn't consider that valid, it seems ). Kegan-4 is the pushing-stuff-out from one's unconscious-mind stage, I call it either Kegan-4 or "BULLING BOSS" mode, because it is the "alpha bull" stage of our limbic-mind, ditto about the non-acceptance of Kegan himself. Kegan-5 is the systems-of-systems mode, which only humans, not any mere-animals, have, it is Kahneman's System-2 ( from his "Thinking Fast & Slow" book, the most important psychology book in our world, right-now, as System-1, imprint->reaction IS fundamentalism, atheist, theist, Scientism, social-status, authority-worshipper, moneyarchist, political, ALL of them are Kahneman System-1 + some cultural "makeup" ) Now, knowing that there are these 3 unconscious-mind modes that nearly-all adults are in, understand that many never leave Kegan-3: they just remain in it, until old age gets 'em. Now, does silencing the inner-voice work *for all kinds of minds, identically*?? Bogus question, isn't it? Does it work for puppies? They have mind.. Obviously not. I contend that it cannot work for Kegan-3's. I *suspect* that it can much-more-consistently work for Kegan-5's. They found that only 1%-ish of the WEIRD professionals they were studying, in Western Europe ( iirc ) were in Kegan-5, and around 50% were in Kegan-3. So, I'm saying that *only a tiny percentage of people are in the correct mental-configuration for it to work*, and that a categorical "it is bunk" is rooted in ignoring the completely-different *kind of* sentience in the different stages of unconscious-mind-development. I've experienced it, I've experienced it working, but couldn't sustain it for more than a few seconds, but that was some years ago. It *did* work, but it was above my mental-development, at that time. Now, having been reminded of it, it's going to be one of my trainings. _ /\ _
How do we know the level of comprehension attained by super-fast readers when confronted with a sight-unseen book, and is there a way of testing this against those who read at a more 'normal' pace? Additionally, is there a difference in the speeds attainable in effectively reading fiction versus narrative non-fiction, such as biographies or history books?
Do you know of people studied the effect of content (fiction/nonfiction) on reading speed? Nonfiction is typically less dense, so even if you skip a page or two you often still get the story.
I would offer this proven example that it is possible to read perhaps not one page but two at time. Kim Peek (Rain Man) with a proven word per word memory of 98%.
@@adrianfisher3349 eat more McD burgers faster, whilst minimised the 'sentence' doesn't get a full or wide diversity in nutrition - neither does reading 'fast' for the sack of 'fast'. ; )))
First point can be easily debunked. You can train your eyes to focus on larger text. Stare at a paragraph and shift your focus wider to make a wider sharp cone. When your first study sucks, I know the rest of the video won't be any good. Real research is done when people stop reading studies and take on research themselves.
I wonder if Chinese readers can read faster because the ideographs are not connected to spoken language (or don't have to be). I guess the corollary would be, if subvocalization actually improves comprehension, do the Chinese have to work harder in order to comprehend what they are reading (assuming they've achieved proficiency in the ideographic written language)?
Well I learned what doesn't work and little about what does! Why don't researches just ask Ann Jones how she does it and try to get inside her head to see what she is doing? If she is totally familiar with the Harry Potter ecosystem that is 80% of the answer.
This video doesn't respect why some people need to read faster or their ability to judge when to use faster technique or not. It acknowledges that some studies have found average speeds but doesn't respect slow readers' ability to judge when they need to fix a problem and which intake or processing problem they may need to fix. When it gets to techniques, it treats each one in a vacuum without looking at which issues a reader may be working on. Apparently the stats on the effectiveness show poor results. Well, alright. But why are you measuring people's skills using a medical-style study? Maybe the small numbers of people who benefit from certain techniques are the people who need those techniques. Plus there is no acknowledgement of using combined techniques or managing intake speed against brain arousal. The video places a high burden of proof on each "speed reading" technique but then makes a cavalier assumption that all casual-level readers are just not reading enough and have poor vocabularies. There is a difference between finding an aspect of reading that all people can improve vs claiming that is the only problem that anyone has. It's also lazy to assume that everyone who wants to read faster wants to get all the way up to the speed of a hyperfast reader. Using sciencey-sounding rhetoric to treat hyperfast readers as magical was a nice touch. Frankly, this video is disrespectful.
In the early 1990s, I bought Howard Berg's course on speed reading. I returned it. I no longer believe in speed reading. I wish James Randi were still alive.
If you need to read really fast, AI will be / is way more efficient than learning to speed reading techniques. On the other hand, for deep / comprehensive learning, read slowly... think... re-read.... take notes....
Depends what your reading. If its something ~ density functional theory in quantum physics and advanced materials.... speed reading doesn't help vs. Just nice English folk story.
The repetition of the focus person of the biography. Reminded me of the bitcoin scamstreams that plopped up when youtubers got their accounts hacked. And the Ai generated art gives me similar vibes. But the actual focus on the video gave me stuff to think about which I appreciate.
