Studies challenge legitimacy of speed reading [Archive]

View Full Version : Studies challenge legitimacy of speed reading

Dustin Kesselberg

21st March 2007, 05:19 AM

When you read, your eyes act like spotlights on a stage. The construction of your eyes only allows them to focus on one small area on the page at a time, so the idea of speed reading is bunk, according to several studies published in the Journal of Vision this month.

Link (http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070320/sc_livescience/speedreadingjustagimmick)

Wolfman

21st March 2007, 05:53 AM

Dustin Kesselberg

21st March 2007, 06:08 AM

Just thinking

21st March 2007, 06:25 AM

MortFurd

21st March 2007, 07:05 AM

I have heard it said (no, I cannot recall the source) that speed reading is 100% useless for technical material (especially that which is new to the reader) -- in other words, material requiring deeper comprehension than what's needed to simply store facts.
If I'm reading technical stuff, then it's usually because I need a particular piece of information. Speed read to find the correct spot, slow down and cross coordinate that info with stuff already in my head to settle the new stuff into its relationship to what I already know.

Speed read to blast by the chaff that fills large swatches of the text, then read more slowly for comprehension of the passages that are informative.

Just thinking

21st March 2007, 07:10 AM

Speed read to blast by the chaff that fills large swatches of the text, then read more slowly for comprehension of the passages that are informative.

Yes ... that's pretty much what I posted -- one cannot speed through that which requires much thought or analysis. The fluff is ... well, pretty much that, fluff.

Solus

21st March 2007, 07:13 AM

Because of the constraints of the visual span, reading more than 300 words per minute is almost impossible.

I beg to defer with that statement. I've never been seriously tested on it but even with junk like this : reading speed (http://www.readingsoft.com/). Seems I read over 400 words per minute with 85% "comprehension". I guess that ruins the statement above? I was also slowed down by the math they had in their which takes more time for my brain to process. I would have gone even faster if they had left out the numbers.

Lets try another online test... http://www.turboread.com/Ok on this poorly written titanic one I got 432 words per minute. Now give me a common novel and I'll pass over 600 I bet.

Both websites designed to sell a product so take that for what it's worth. I shouldn't have been able to do well on their test but I did. I don't know whether speed reading is bunk or not and I don't really care.

casebro

21st March 2007, 09:29 AM

343 wpm, 91%. Without my reading glasses. Which have prism in them, as I tend to be wall-eyed. So I see a wider field, but have to shift my 'master eye' back and forth. Like I'm constantly changing the camera angle. So I don't know whether I would prove or disprove this guy's theory.

My GED test said I'm 98th percentile on comprehension, and I was first to turn in my test paper. But this is the first speed test I've taken. No classes.

andyandy

21st March 2007, 09:33 AM

i've seen articles, tv documentaries on the autistic savant kim peek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Peek) in which it was claimed that he could memorize an entire page in a couple of seconds....now that's speed reading :)

i'm sure his abilities have been scientifically studied so there should be some verification of that feat somewhere on t'web.

Wudang

21st March 2007, 10:12 AM

Not enough detail to properly judge the research but what were the materials? For instance, it's common for many people to miss typos in words like "the" because you don't read "the" you recognise the general shape of the whole word. The researcher seems to assume a very naive model of reading where words are read one at a time instead of the complex of hueristic algorithms that we seem to develop as experienced readers. Shame that Sandford and Garrod's "Understanding written language" is out of print as it was one of my textbooks at Uni in the Late Mediaeval.

JoeTheJuggler

21st March 2007, 10:20 AM

I'd say the technique of not subvocalizing can be useful to scan through when you're looking for a small part (like a sentence or a paragraph) in something larger. Otherwise, I'm pretty skeptical.

Ever heard a blind person scan through a digital recording (like messages or audio books--not music)? It's definitely a skill.

Dave1001

21st March 2007, 01:05 PM

Well, let's start with a list of the top studies and researchers in this field. What are they?

Marc L

21st March 2007, 01:41 PM

I am not a speed reader by any means. I do, however, read faster than many people I know (excepting Mrs. L, who just scares me), and I'm able to retain it. So, while I can't speak to actual speed reading, I do know some people can read faster than others.

Marc

Soapy Sam

21st March 2007, 02:03 PM

I skimmed the link.

I didn't get much out of it.

fuelair

21st March 2007, 04:44 PM

Sounds to me like these people are relying too much on theoretical experiment, and not enough on practical reality. Nowhere in this article does it mention actually testing people who have taken speed reading courses, to see if they are actually able to read (and comprehend) as fast as they claim.

I took a speed reading course myself when I was younger; while I don't claim the super-fast speeds some claim (I do think that those who claim to read an entire page in one glance are bunk), I can certainly read faster than this article claims.

A simple example; one of the tools that I used to learn to speed read was a simple little device which had a variable speed shutter, that would reveal a word, phrase, or sentence for a brief period of time. You could set it as low as 1/2 second, as fast as 1/25 second. By the time I was finished, I could read an entire sentence (25-40 letters) at the fastest setting.

Compare this with the claim in the article:

In regards to the claim that "reading more than 300 words per minute is almost impossible", I routinely read at at least twice that speed (without pushing myself, this is a comfortable speed for me), and if I really concentrate, I can do it even faster (although this would not be a comfortable practice for simply reading and enjoying a book).

I'm not talking about scanning here (just running your eyes over the text, picking out key words/phrases/concepts); I read and comprehend every word. But I quite certainly can read faster than this article claims is possible; and so do quite a few other people I know.

Sounds to me like people who have come up with neat theoretical data, and consider that superior to actual observed fact.
You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

ETA: the boy I worked with had already been tested on three of the ASAs collection ( that is the 78% figure as average. The low 80's one was my seperate test.

Wolfman

21st March 2007, 08:50 PM

Or maybe you're deluding yourself?
ROTFLMAO

Yes, that's it. Forget silly things like actually testing the people who make these claims; just come up with some neat little theory, don't test anyone, and then simply state that anyone who claims otherwise is "deluding themselves"!

Alternate possibility -- you're one of those people who is quite happy drawing their own conclusions based on limited information, and then simply dismissing all other claims without bothering to test them, since they don't fit your personal theory and are therefore, by definition, "wrong".

Dustin Kesselberg

21st March 2007, 11:28 PM

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

ETA: the boy I worked with had already been tested on three of the ASAs collection ( that is the 78% figure as average. The low 80's one was my seperate test.

You claim you can read 10,000 words per minute with about 80% comprehension? Here is your post copied and pasted over and over until it reaches 10,000 words. This is the amount of material you claim you can read every minute...

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try something new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, ….No one …

Wait, Don't tell me...Did you get your superpowers from a blast of gamma rays or martins?

rudar

22nd March 2007, 12:42 AM

I beg to defer with that statement. I've never been seriously tested on it but even with junk like this : reading speed (http://www.readingsoft.com/). Seems I read over 400 words per minute with 85% "comprehension". I guess that ruins the statement above? I was also slowed down by the math they had in their which takes more time for my brain to process. I would have gone even faster if they had left out the numbers.

Well, with ``junk like that'', I got bored after skimming the first paragraph, scrolled down, clocked 1432 wpm for a speed, and managed a 91% ``comprehension'' just by guessing what they were after. So...

Wudang

22nd March 2007, 02:49 AM

Well, let's start with a list of the top studies and researchers in this field. What are they?

I thought this is quite a good intro to a few issues; http://www.linguistics.rub.de/FallSchool/Courses/slides-psychol/01Bochum05Intro-2up.pdf

since it addresses a lot of the issues that I recall from over 20 years ago that this article fails to address. In fact if you read this book summary you'll see he's on one extreme of a range http://www.amazon.com/Movements-Information-Processing-during-Reading/dp/184169956X
You can try googling on "human information processing" and "psycholinguistics".

fuelair

22nd March 2007, 05:15 AM

You can make all the suggestions you want, Dustin has made a decision - like the CTers and the Scooby/DJs- and all the counter data in the world is not going to change his/their minds. I ASSUME that someone over/important to him at some point in his life made fun of him for his reading or praised someone who he envied for their reading or even misapplied reading speed to intelligence to his detriment since this is not an area where there is normally much controversy, yet he has latched on to one study which shows something already known BUT does not go from that to what is also known that can quickly overcome that: yes, when most people learn to read they are concentrating on a very small area - but the eyes can actually see - at one time - about 170 degrees (including peripheral) and 90+degrees clearly. That is quite wide enough at normal reading distance to encompass a page or two and then it is just a matter of learning to make the brain work a bit better at processing what the eye sees (eliminating sub-vocalization is a BIG step towards that since sub v. almost forces the eyes to look at smaller groups of letters/words). I decided during the last run at this that it is pointless to argue with Dustin so I am just passing this on and otherwise won't bother - by the by there is an earlier thread on this where Dustin also printed out a thing or two to demonstrate what several thousand words looks like. If he is doing it for my sake, it is a waste of time. I know what several thousand word looks like - I have been reading since I was three (60 now) and teaching (for pay) about 35 years on and off. (Please feel free to tell me no three year old can read.)

Dustin Kesselberg

22nd March 2007, 08:24 AM

Modified

22nd March 2007, 02:25 PM

Lets try another online test... http://www.turboread.com/Ok on this poorly written titanic one ...

I just read the Titanic article aloud at 353 word per minute the first time through. If I didn't need to breathe I could do a bit better.

drkitten

22nd March 2007, 02:38 PM

Well, with ``junk like that'', I got bored after skimming the first paragraph, scrolled down, clocked 1432 wpm for a speed, and managed a 91% ``comprehension'' just by guessing what they were after. So...

Which more or less disproves Dustin's point.

What do you think speed-reading is? It's specifically about not bothering to read every word, because much of the writing can be grasped from contextual anchors.

The cited research suggests that people can, physically, look at about 300 wpm. Accepting this at face value, that doesn't mean that people must therefore take at least two minutes to read a 600-word article. They can read 300 words -- but which 300?

As Legge points out, people jump around in texts. They don't read consecutive words. Simply by not reading prepositions (almost all of which can be inferred from context) -- by not jumping to where your peripheral vision tells you there is a preposition (which are easily recognizable by their length, even with peripheral vision) -- you can probably add 10-20% to your reading speed.

I'm afraid that Dustin's interpretation of the research simply doesn't hold up.

rudar

22nd March 2007, 03:12 PM

Sure; I've done ``useful'' speed-reading when re-reading a book I had read before but needed to refresh myself on the form of the argument. Glancing at the first sentence of each paragraph was enough to re-build the general shape of their argument in my mind, and I rushed through two or three hundred pages in a couple of hours. I probably couldn't attain that level of speeding on my first read through a book, nor on one that wasn't structured in a very topic-sentence-explanation-new-paragraph sort of way.

My point in posting my stats from the online test was that assessing ``reading comprehension'' is also difficult, and merely by knowing that that's a site selling software, I could figure what they thought the ``right'' answers were, without having read any of the text I was supposedly comprehending and remembering. So any stats from such things on how well you're comprehending the text you're speed reading are completely meaningless. I didn't read the titanic one, but considering we all know a fair bit about the titanic already, I'd hazard one could probably score well on that comprehension test without reading the article, too.

Irony

22nd March 2007, 03:21 PM

Sure, if you actually pause to focus your eye on every single word, read every single to, the, and of, and sound out the words in your head you'll have trouble reading over 300 wpm.

Speed readers don't bend the laws of physics, they just read more efficiently.

Cuddles

22nd March 2007, 03:31 PM

murphyr

22nd March 2007, 03:48 PM

I didn't read the titanic one, but considering we all know a fair bit about the titanic already, I'd hazard one could probably score well on that comprehension test without reading the article, too.

The content is a bit more obscure than most people are probably familiar with, but you could control for that by just filling the story with lies, couldn't you?

Alternate possibility -- you're one of those people who is quite happy drawing their own conclusions based on limited information, and then simply dismissing all other claims without bothering to test them, since they don't fit your personal theory and are therefore, by definition, "wrong".All you gave was your anecdotal assessment of how well you do something and how well the people around you do the same thing. The possibility of you misassessing your abilities exists, which I think was all he was pointing out. I'd be open to it being possible that you can read faster than this one article claims, but you would, as you suggest, have to test for it under controlled conditions.

Dave1001

22nd March 2007, 04:02 PM

A couple of my parent's friends got into speed reading, with all funny techniques for scanning pages in different ways and picking out important words. They were really disappointed when they found out that I still read at least three times faster than them while reading every single word in order. Personally I can't see the point of speed reading. The whole point of reading is that you're supposed to enjoy it. If you're going to skip through a book at 10 times normal speed without reading 2/3 of the words, why would you bother reading it in the first place?

The whole point of reading is not always that you're supposed to enjoy it. It would be very useful to be able to read 20,000 words per minute, including of fresh technical writings in a field that's new to the reader. But are variations of that possible? I'm actually intuitively open to it being possible -not necessarily for the person of median intelligence, but for very smart people (or for very positively deviant people in terms of reading ability). But what does the empirical evidence say?

I'm hoping that scientists in this field (which would be called what?) have a more developed vocabulary capturing the various distinctions in types of reading, types of reading speed, and types of material to be read than do the participants in this thread.

Dave1001

22nd March 2007, 04:04 PM

The content is a bit more obscure than most people are probably familiar with, but you could control for that by just filling the story with lies, couldn't you?

Great point. That's why I love this message board (and would love to cull the best participants to a new one). I think that would be a good control. Also one could control by simply giving the same test before and after the reading. Or to a control group that never reads it, and a group that does read it. etc.

All you gave was your anecdotal assessment of how well you do something and how well the people around you do the same thing. The possibility of you misassessing your abilities exists, which I think was all he was pointing out. I'd be open to it being possible that you can read faster than this one article claims, but you would, as you suggest, have to test for it under controlled conditions.

thank you. another empiricism/scientific method nerd.

jimbob

22nd March 2007, 04:14 PM

As in a "Where's Waldo" puzzle, crowded objects limit our ability to find targets in the visual scene.

Motter, along with his colleague, Diglio Simoni, looked specifically at people's ability to search for images on a computer screen. They showed that the proximity of objects that surround what a viewer is trying to focus on also determines how quickly a viewer can search out the target object.

But text is *structured* so the layout can *help* pick out images. It is not the same as a "Where's Wally/Waldo" problem.

I am sure that I use my peripheral vision and context to prime myself for what the words are probably going to be...

I would find it hard to believe that people can only read at about twice the speed of a fast typist (http://web.syr.edu/~rcranger/blackburn.htm).

Or indeed the fastest talker (http://members.fortunecity.com/talker2/talk.htm)

I Hold the current World Record for fast talking, I can speak at 637 words per minute, which is 10.25 words per second.

Check it out in the 1999 Guiness Book of World records

These online tests are probably conservative, as it is far easier to read 900dpi print than text on a screen, which is why I print out so much at work, as it is so much easier to absorb information from paper.

For me, speed opf reading is dependent on a good clear typeface and firmatting, including justified paragraphs and short sentances.

As murphyr says, there is no controlled evidence, just many people stating similar speeds, but from my personal
experience I do not find claims of 1000 wpm to be unbelievable at all.

When I was at secondary school we had some test on our reading speed, and was measured at 800-odd wpm with 80% comprehension. I did have a serious book habit as a kid, probably because I developed a speed reading technique by chance... I am *bad* at reading aloud, as I only recognise shapes of words, and if I come across an unfamiliar name will just make an approximation without stoppiog to sound it out. I also jump about the page, so sometimes come to a dead stop whilst I refind where my miouth is...

I am also pish at proof reading, unless I read really slowly.

Jim

parrotslave

22nd March 2007, 05:23 PM

In high school I signed up for an experimental reading class that they were using to try new techniques for learning. Part of it we got to use those speed reading machines. I made it my goal to max the machine out by the end of class. The teacher was pissed as hell at me and told me I wasn't really reading that fast, just skimming, despite getting 97% comprehension on the tests.

fuelair

22nd March 2007, 05:42 PM

You claim you can read 10,000 words per minute with about 80% comprehension? Here is your post copied and pasted over and over until it reaches 10,000 words. This is the amount of material you claim you can read every minute...

Wait, Don't tell me...Did you get your superpowers from a blast of gamma rays or martins?

How did you know about the martinis - that's a trade secret!!!:eek:

We have a small misunderstanding here, based on your comment slightly later. Where did you get the idea that I thought this (reading speed )made me special? There sre lot's of things about me that make me special, but the reading speed isn't one of them, it is just a tool to make learning quicker. I have described the training not with any goal of acclaim - any more than I would be looking for that over my weapons use skills, they are tools to help me accomplish real things that I wish/feel compelled to accomplish - and as a matter of fact, it specifically came up - in the first thread becuase you seemed annoyed that I read a lot. That is one of the ways I learn, and frankly I even find it difficult under most circumstances to sit down to eat or "watch" television without something to read (I have been -humorously_ harassed for reading cereal boxes when nothing else was available) and the speed simply lets me read more. Tool. (oh, if it isn't clear,
it's my knowledge of a large number of fields of interest that it serves and that I value).

fuelair

22nd March 2007, 06:14 PM

This really is my last post on this. It is me quoting myself in a response where you confused my stated reading speed with the 15 year old students'. In both cases you claimed i gave that as my speed. I never mentioned mine in this thread but you stated it as 10,000wpm and 80% comp - which was what the boys' was.
Here is mine again from that other thread - where I also point out that you are misstating what I said:
[QUOTE]
Dustin, where did I say I read at 8000wpm? I believe I said my top was 5500 -the kid I helped train was about twice my speed - but that is not 8000 either. I said 850 when first tested in elementary, around 1450 on testing when joining ASA staff and 5500 after training. In addition, I may have said something that milead you to believe I normally read at the higher rate(not sure what or where, but...), I normally read at 1000 to 1500 wpm - unless I am data mining. Reading above that takes the enjoyment of the words and their flow away (notice how people who talk very fast tend to sound monotonous - it's the same with words in print. You see them, you remember them, but you do not have time to construct a view in your mind.). I was giving the speedreading details because you seem upset that this skill exists. It is not magic, I am not superhuman - nor are people who have perfect pitch, or can remember perfectly every word on every page they see (I wish I had that one!) (eidetic memory, slipped by me at first).

Added as edit: I said 5500 because that is what my last timed reading at ASA was. Not 6000, not 5217 (They used blocks of 50 above 1000 for ease of math I assume). I believe in accuracy - in the use and selection of words, the use of numbers, and in my statements. I will now tell you something I always tell my students at the beginning of each year:" I will not bother lying to you." The astute among them -1 or 2 a year -will catch that this has a possible meaning/interpretation of "it is not a bother to lie to you" and I tell them truthfully-that one iis not what I mean. In all my years teaching, only one student caught it (the real meaning): to lie to someone, you must care enough (unless you are a pathological liar) about them/their attitude/ feelings about you to want to look better in their eyes. I do not.[/QUOTE/]

Fnord

22nd March 2007, 06:27 PM

I was tested in the Navy at about 600 wpm.

The test results were averaged over a six-week period.

I can not recall any details of what I read, 12 years later.

I was virtually addicted to caffeine at the time.

I've groan mor stoopidder sinse then.

Dave1001

22nd March 2007, 07:55 PM

How did you know about the martinis - that's a trade secret!!!:eek:

We have a small misunderstanding here, based on your comment slightly later. Where did you get the idea that I thought this (reading speed )made me special? There sre lot's of things about me that make me special, but the reading speed isn't one of them, it is just a tool to make learning quicker. I have described the training not with any goal of acclaim - any more than I would be looking for that over my weapons use skills, they are tools to help me accomplish real things that I wish/feel compelled to accomplish - and as a matter of fact, it specifically came up - in the first thread becuase you seemed annoyed that I read a lot. That is one of the ways I learn, and frankly I even find it difficult under most circumstances to sit down to eat or "watch" television without something to read (I have been -humorously_ harassed for reading cereal boxes when nothing else was available) and the speed simply lets me read more. Tool. (oh, if it isn't clear,
it's my knowledge of a large number of fields of interest that it serves and that I value).

I share Dustin's skepticism that you can read 10,000 wpm of fresh material with 80% comprehension on a topic which you're not already an expert, even if it's non-technical material.

Unlike Dustin, I don't think it's possible that no one in the world can -it would be more plausible to me if you came across as one of the most intellectually nimble posters on this message board. No offense, but you don't -though you do seem like a smart person.

Doesn't mean you don't have your claimed ability -but a little more evidence would be great.

Maybe we could do an on-line test: have you skim a 10,000 word document on the web, then give you a quick comprehension test that would be difficult to answer without having read the document for 80% comprehension.

Are you game, fuelair?

Ben Tilly

22nd March 2007, 10:05 PM

In regards to the claim that "reading more than 300 words per minute is almost impossible", I routinely read at at least twice that speed (without pushing myself, this is a comfortable speed for me), and if I really concentrate, I can do it even faster (although this would not be a comfortable practice for simply reading and enjoying a book).

Let me join the chorus on this one. Anyone who honestly believes that people can't read much over 300 wpm is seriously out of touch with reality.

The one time that I measured my reading speed was back in highschool. I often would read in the bath, so I grabbed a copy of Clan of the Cave Bear and started to read. The book was better than I expected, so I finished it before finishing my bath. (This became, admittedly, a rather long bath.)

My mother wanted to know what I'd been doing in there, so I produced the book and said that I'd read that book. The whole thing? The whole thing. She didn't believe me, so I handed the book to her, asked her to flip open and start reading. She began reading, I stopped her after about 3 sentences and told her what section of the book that was in, and what was going on, and that I could find that section. She closed the book, handed it to me, and I found the passage. Wash, rinse, and repeat several times. She was convinced that I really had read the book.

She asked how long I took. I told her when the bath started and stopped. She proceeded to estimate words per line, then words per page, then (knowing how many pages there were) how many words in the book.

Turned out that I'd read that book at 900 WPM.

My reading speed has fluctuated over the years. I think it is significantly slower than that now. (And, of course, reading on a monitor is slower than reading a book.) But even so, every so often I'll get caught up by a book and finish it in a single sitting.

I should note that I've never taken any speed reading class. I've read about how to do it, and tried it. I did cover material faster. I did understand most of it. But it caused me more strain and was less satisfying than just reading straight through.

Cheers,
Ben

Ben Tilly

22nd March 2007, 10:13 PM

I have heard it said (no, I cannot recall the source) that speed reading is 100% useless for technical material (especially that which is new to the reader) -- in other words, material requiring deeper comprehension than what's needed to simply store facts.

It doesn't matter what the source is, the statement is self-evident to anyone who has had to read a lot of technical material. It doesn't matter how fast you read, your brain still thinks at the same speed. For an extreme example, the slowest type of reading that I've personally encountered are math publications. A rate of one page a day is about par. There aren't that many words, but trying to figure out what they mean and fill in the gaps between them is very hard.

Cheers,
Ben

Solus

23rd March 2007, 12:00 AM

Well, with ``junk like that'', I got bored after skimming the first paragraph, scrolled down, clocked 1432 wpm for a speed, and managed a 91% ``comprehension'' just by guessing what they were after. So...

CHEATER! :mad: You skimmed it you're supposed to actively read it. :D
I if just skim through, 2283 WPM for one over 3000 WPM for the other. ;)
80% comprehension.

Solus

23rd March 2007, 12:06 AM

Let me join the chorus on this one. Anyone who honestly believes that people can't read much over 300 wpm is seriously out of touch with reality.

The one time that I measured my reading speed was back in highschool. I often would read in the bath, so I grabbed a copy of Clan of the Cave Bear and started to read. The book was better than I expected, so I finished it before finishing my bath. (This became, admittedly, a rather long bath.)

My mother wanted to know what I'd been doing in there, so I produced the book and said that I'd read that book. The whole thing? The whole thing. She didn't believe me, so I handed the book to her, asked her to flip open and start reading. She began reading, I stopped her after about 3 sentences and told her what section of the book that was in, and what was going on, and that I could find that section. She closed the book, handed it to me, and I found the passage. Wash, rinse, and repeat several times. She was convinced that I really had read the book.

She asked how long I took. I told her when the bath started and stopped. She proceeded to estimate words per line, then words per page, then (knowing how many pages there were) how many words in the book.

Turned out that I'd read that book at 900 WPM.

My reading speed has fluctuated over the years. I think it is significantly slower than that now. (And, of course, reading on a monitor is slower than reading a book.) But even so, every so often I'll get caught up by a book and finish it in a single sitting.

I should note that I've never taken any speed reading class. I've read about how to do it, and tried it. I did cover material faster. I did understand most of it. But it caused me more strain and was less satisfying than just reading straight through.

Cheers,
Ben

Over 3000 WPM, is not fun but it's apparently doable as just did right now. I just skimmed the material and hit the right answers, helps to know what is going to be important and what's not, on the little test given. I just remembered the names and whatever details I saw as relevant.

Wudang

23rd March 2007, 03:40 AM

I'm hoping that scientists in this field (which would be called what?)

It falls under a number of fields but is often lumped under "human information processing" and is researched by people if the fields of visual perception, cognitive science, psycholinguistics, neurology and others.

fuelair

23rd March 2007, 05:32 AM

I share Dustin's skepticism that you can read 10,000 wpm of fresh material with 80% comprehension on a topic which you're not already an expert, even if it's non-technical material.

Unlike Dustin, I don't think it's possible that no one in the world can -it would be more plausible to me if you came across as one of the most intellectually nimble posters on this message board. No offense, but you don't -though you do seem like a smart person.

Doesn't mean you don't have your claimed ability -but a little more evidence would be great.

Maybe we could do an on-line test: have you skim a 10,000 word document on the web, then give you a quick comprehension test that would be difficult to answer without having read the document for 80% comprehension.

Are you game, fuelair?
Uh, Dave have you read all the posts here (especially post 23 above yours - which I have copied here)? I ask because, to the best of my knowledge, I have not claimed anywhere to be able to read 10,000 wpm. That would be because I cannot and never have been able to. The fastest (timed anyway) that I have ever read was the 5500wpm I read when I did my last ASA test. The ten thousands were the 15 year old student (78-82% comp) and the Evelyn Woods person on tv. If you are not clear on that, go to search, type in speedreading (or speed reading) and mark the posts box - that will take you to the previous thread on this where you can see if you can find where Dustin got that speed - 'cause it sure isn't in this one - what you will find is that he has twice mis-read, mis-interpreted or just made up a claim about my speed. In each case I called him on it. In each case (as far as I could locate on a fast re-read) he did not respond in any functional way to the correction.

Dustin Kesselberg

23rd March 2007, 05:34 AM

Which more or less disproves Dustin's point.

What do you think speed-reading is? It's specifically about not bothering to read every word, because much of the writing can be grasped from contextual anchors.

The cited research suggests that people can, physically, look at about 300 wpm. Accepting this at face value, that doesn't mean that people must therefore take at least two minutes to read a 600-word article. They can read 300 words -- but which 300?

As Legge points out, people jump around in texts. They don't read consecutive words. Simply by not reading prepositions (almost all of which can be inferred from context) -- by not jumping to where your peripheral vision tells you there is a preposition (which are easily recognizable by their length, even with peripheral vision) -- you can probably add 10-20% to your reading speed.

I'm afraid that Dustin's interpretation of the research simply doesn't hold up.

Reading is not equal to Skimming

Dustin Kesselberg

23rd March 2007, 05:38 AM

Dustin Kesselberg

23rd March 2007, 05:41 AM

Dustin, where did I say I read at 8000wpm? I believe I said my top was 5500 -the kid I helped train was about twice my speed - but that is not 8000 either. I said 850 when first tested in elementary, around 1450 on testing when joining ASA staff and 5500 after training. In addition, I may have said something that milead you to believe I normally read at the higher rate(not sure what or where, but...), I normally read at 1000 to 1500 wpm - unless I am data mining. Reading above that takes the enjoyment of the words and their flow away (notice how people who talk very fast tend to sound monotonous - it's the same with words in print. You see them, you remember them, but you do not have time to construct a view in your mind.). I was giving the speedreading details because you seem upset that this skill exists. It is not magic, I am not superhuman - nor are people who have perfect pitch, or can remember perfectly every word on every page they see (I wish I had that one!) (eidetic memory, slipped by me at first).

Added as edit: I said 5500 because that is what my last timed reading at ASA was. Not 6000, not 5217 (They used blocks of 50 above 1000 for ease of math I assume). I believe in accuracy - in the use and selection of words, the use of numbers, and in my statements. I will now tell you something I always tell my students at the beginning of each year:" I will not bother lying to you." The astute among them -1 or 2 a year -will catch that this has a possible meaning/interpretation of "it is not a bother to lie to you" and I tell them truthfully-that one iis not what I mean. In all my years teaching, only one student caught it (the real meaning): to lie to someone, you must care enough (unless you are a pathological liar) about them/their attitude/ feelings about you to want to look better in their eyes. I do not.

If you're going to re-post your response from the other thread then how about reading my response to that in the other thread?

Dustin Kesselberg

23rd March 2007, 05:46 AM

Uh, Dave have you read all the posts here (especially post 23 above yours - which I have copied here)? I ask because, to the best of my knowledge, I have not claimed anywhere to be able to read 10,000 wpm. That would be because I cannot and never have been able to. The fastest (timed anyway) that I have ever read was the 5500wpm I read when I did my last ASA test. The ten thousands were the 15 year old student (78-82% comp) and the Evelyn Woods person on tv. If you are not clear on that, go to search, type in speedreading (or speed reading) and mark the posts box - that will take you to the previous thread on this where you can see if you can find where Dustin got that speed - 'cause it sure isn't in this one - what you will find is that he has twice mis-read, mis-interpreted or just made up a claim about my speed. In each case I called him on it. In each case (as far as I could locate on a fast re-read) he did not respond in any functional way to the correction.

If you want to backtrack then fine....

Here's your previous post copied and pasted until it gets to the size of what about 5550 words looks like. (5538 to be exact).

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on the level he could read and understand (not War and Peace or Moby Dick - a YA title so we are talking about a gigantic jump in speed and a reasonable jump in comprehension. Since I trained in the method, I know it ran my speed up - though he was faster (but then, I wear glasses). By the by, the one thing I dispute through personal knowledge anecdotal or not is that ridiculous 300 wpm limit. I was first tested in the fourth grade and had a slightly over 800 wpm rate. The article was about a man driving a jeep in desert country (probably South Africa, but I don't remember that) and finding small rocks stuck in the treads of his tires - the rocks turned out to be diamonds........

You were trained with (or with a facsimile of) the Evelyn Wood method - There was at least one technique better developed by the American Speedreading Academy (though I have seen on TV -so rigged set up was possible - a gentleman in the late 50's early 60' who hit 10,000 or so who had been EW trained) as just one of the students using it - who I was working with during the time I started working with ASA about 30 years ago- also hit 10,000 with about 78% comprehension. Obviously this is anecdotal, and if Dustin is who I think he is (different avatar) then as soon as he saw my name he decided this is a lie. He's wrong, but for some reason he want's/need's to believe that high rates of reading are not possible. Anyway, we got the boy in because his parents were tired of his poor grades and decided to try this. His initial speed was 70 - 80 wpm with about 55% comp (and given the simplicity of what we were using - given age and info) it should have been higher on both . He was large (not fat, large), friendly and eager to please which meant he paid attention and followed the instructions and, fortunately, he did not tend to get upset when he had a little regression. Our program was designed for app 10 weeks - with the proviso that if you were not happy with your results, you could continue to come in with no further charge. At the end of the ten weeks, since I had been working with him primarily, and the owners knew I had an interest in really determining how/whether the program worked, they let me try siomething new - Instead of using the reasonably large selection of books they had (with question sets already prepared), I brought in a book and question set of my own (for those who have not heard, I am a teacher - and am quite good at constructing test questions). No one had any idea what book I was bringing in and no one knew what the questions were. He read the book at an average rate of 10,ooo wpm and scored in the low 80's on comprehension. Now the book was a novel - on th