just won’t stop sharing interesting articles Well, some of them are interesting. Is speed

reading the life hack to finally catch up on all of it?

Hello viewers, Julian for DNews. If you’re like you, you probably prefer watching a video

to reading an article and you’re what keeps the lights on here at DNews. But me? I’d

rather read. But I have a problem: I am achingly, painfully, devastatingly slow at it. I actually

took a test while researching this and I read at 270 words per minute. that’s 8% better

than the national average, hooray! But according to the test the average college student is

at 450 words per minute.

Whenever I tell people this the response is always the same: Have you thought about learning

to speed read? Now there are even apps that promise to double my speed with the wonders

of technology. It sounds too good to be true, how does it work???

Well first off there are a few different methods to up your words per minute count. One of

the most common methods advocated by speed readers is to eliminate your tendency for

sub-vocalization, which is when the little voice in your head that pronounces all the

words... By the way whose voice is that anyway? I know it’s not my own. I’m going to start

reading in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

Anyway after you eliminate the sub-vocalization there are a couple of other techniques speed

readers use. There’s following the text with your finger or a pencil to keep you focused

on where you’re reading, there’s skimming, and there’s taking in large chunks of text

at a glance. Speed readers claim they can surpass 1500 words per minute with these methods.

But according to research not funded by people selling speed reading courses, their comprehension

really starts to suffer. One study tested 16 speed readers and found they couldn’t

understand more than 75% of what they were reading at over 600 words per minute.

Obviously skimming is going to hurt your comprehension and retention, so what about the other methods?

Trying to take in big chunks of text using your peripheral vision and without moving

your eye isn’t really possible. Keith Rainer, a psychologist who pioneered eye-tracking

technology, explains that your fovea, the area in your retina where vision is sharpest,

needs to be focused on a word to take it in. You can only take in four or five letters

with 100% accuracy, and letters outside the fovea’s view become much harder discern

pretty quickly. Even the most basic step of eliminating sub-vocalization

can really hurt your comprehension if the text is complicated.

Now there are apps that promise to make reading quick and painless. Many of them involve flashing

the words at you to eliminate your eye’s need to track across the page. The apps claim

their studies show no loss in comprehension, but they’re not letting anyone see the research.

This is what’s known in the scientific community as a red flag. I’ve actually tried an app

or two like this and I can get up to about 600 words per minute, but it’s exhausting

to keep up and if I miss a word the whole operation falls apart. Rayner is on my side

on this point, saying reading this fast can overload your working memory. Plus you don’t

get the chance to chew on an idea and really understand it. So it looks like I’m just

going to do what I’ve always done; light some candles, settle into the bath, and have

some quality time with a good book. Maybe being a slow reader isn’t such a bad thing.