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  • Just finished reading my sixth book this week!

  • Man, I just love reading books, 'cause they're so

  • like, packed full of knowledge, you know?

  • Luckily for me, I know secret speed reading

  • techniques passed down from a 22nd degree

  • black belt kung fu master who reached

  • enlightenment by eating an entire library.

  • And if you wanna learn those same secrets

  • and read 18 books a week, just like me,

  • take my speed reading course.

  • Only 14 easy payments, and one hard payment of 19.99!

  • Tax, title, license fee, shipping, handling,

  • and itching powder removal fee not included.

  • Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to get back to

  • gaining vast amounts of knowledge.

  • (hardcore dance music)

  • Ok, let's be real here.

  • The idea that you could learn to speed read,

  • that is, learn to drastically increase your reading speeds

  • and plow through more books than you ever thought possible

  • has been around for quite a long time.

  • If you're in college, you'll probably see a flyer on

  • campus at some point advertising a speed reading seminar

  • that can teach you how to read at 900 words per minute,

  • 1,200 words per minute, or even beyond that, and

  • countless bloggers have talked about the supposed

  • techniques you can use to learn how to speed read.

  • And so much of it is BS.

  • So I wanted to create a little series to set

  • the record straight on speed reading, and also show

  • you how you can actually realistically increase your

  • reading speeds, and what I want to do with this video

  • in particular is lay out the science of

  • how reading actually works.

  • Now, reading is possible through, wait for it, eye movement.

  • I know, crazy, right? But there are actually several

  • different types of eye movement.

  • For instance, there's something called smooth pursuit,

  • which our eyes do when we're tracking a moving subject.

  • And you can do it right now, just follow my finger

  • on screen, and you might be feeling a little bit sleepy,

  • which, in that case, (coughs) give me all your money.

  • There's also vergence, which is what happens

  • when your eyes move closer together to focus on

  • a subject in the middle of your field of vision,

  • and also something called vestibular eye movement,

  • which is what happens when your eyes are fixed upon

  • a fixed subject, but your head moves, and your eyes

  • compensate for the head movement.

  • When reading, though, our eyes move in quick,

  • jerky movements called saccades.

  • When we're reading silently to ourselves,

  • the average saccades length is about two visual degrees,

  • which equates to about eight letters on a page.

  • And this takes about 30 milliseconds to do.

  • Now, when your eye stops and focuses on

  • the text, that's called a fixation.

  • To understand fixations, first you need to know

  • about the three ranges of vision your eyes have.

  • First, there's the foveal, which spans about

  • two visual degrees right in the center of the retina,

  • then the parafoveal, which goes about five degrees

  • on either side of any given fixation,

  • and finally, your peripheral vision.

  • Your peripheral vision is pretty blurry,

  • you can make out shapes and movement,

  • but it can't really pick up a whole lot of detail.

  • The foveal, by contrast, picks up detail really well,

  • and this is absolutely critical for reading.

  • Most of what you can understand in any given fixation

  • needs to be in that foveal range.

  • Maybe one or two letters can be in

  • the parafoveal range, but that's it.

  • And the average fixation when you're reading silently

  • takes about 225 milliseconds, though this is an average.

  • The range is typically anywhere from

  • 100 milliseconds to 500 milliseconds.

  • Furthermore, your reading speed isn't

  • just determined by fixations and saccades.

  • There's also the actual cognitive processing time

  • that you have to go through in order to

  • understand what you just read.

  • We'll get more into cognition and how your brain learns

  • in future videos, but for now, I wanna make a brief note

  • about your working memory, which is

  • what you're using when you read.

  • Research has shown that our working memory can really

  • only handle about four chunks of

  • information at any given time,

  • a chunk being a bundle of information that

  • is loosely connected through meaning.

  • Chunks for difficult material or things you're

  • unfamiliar with will be small, whereas chunks for things

  • that you are familiar with will be bigger,

  • but for both, the concept here is the same.

  • Your brain can only handle so many at a time,

  • and reading too quickly can result in

  • a loss of comprehension.

  • That being said, a good figure to keep in mind

  • is that pauses for comprehension while you're reading

  • will generally take between 300 and 500 milliseconds.

  • So essentially, reading breaks down

  • into a three-step process, we have the

  • saccade that moves on to the fixation,

  • and finally, the cognitive processing pause.

  • Now, even though we have average duration data

  • for all three of these things, it's not like we can just

  • add it up together and get an average reading speed.

  • A number of other factors come into play,

  • including the fact that when we read we actually skip

  • a lot of the words on the page.

  • Words can be separated into two different types,

  • there's content words, the words that actually

  • express the ideas you're reading about,

  • and function words, words that express

  • the grammatical relationships between those content words.

  • Research has shown that readers fixate on

  • about 85% of the content words in any given text,

  • while they only focus on about 35% of the function words.

  • On the other hand, reading also includes a lot of

  • regression, going back to read over previously read words.

  • Some regressions are small corrections when

  • a saccade's distance is too long, whereas longer

  • regressions will be to go over material that you already

  • read once, but didn't really understand the first time.

  • For skilled readers, about 15% of their reading time

  • will be made up of these regressions.

  • Now that you have a grasp of the main

  • factors that go into the process of reading,

  • let's look at what a realistic reading speed really is.

  • Some speed reading "experts" will tell you

  • that you can boost your reading rate

  • to around 1,200 words per minute,

  • which is a figure that many people cite

  • John F. Kennedy reading at, and some even say

  • you can get higher than that.

  • But, according to Keith Rayner, who's a psycholinguist

  • at the University of Massachusetts Amherst,

  • and who did a huge study on 20 years of research

  • in both eye movement tracking and reading speed studies,

  • observations of college level readers show that

  • most people read between 200 and 400 words per minute.

  • And lastly, there's the concept of

  • reading flexibility, a lot of the advice on speed reading

  • assumes that you should be reading at a constant rate,

  • but in the real world, this really isn't the case.

  • When you're reading something where the concepts

  • are presented more closely, or the material's

  • more difficult, you're gonna slow your

  • reading rate down so you can keep

  • understanding what it is you're reading.

  • And by contrast, when you're reading something

  • where the concepts are more spaced out,

  • or you're already familiar with what it is you're reading,

  • you can increase that reading rate without

  • a huge loss of comprehension.

  • So here's the final conclusion that I want you to

  • take from this first video in the speed reading series.

  • If you're reading between 200 and

  • 400 words per minute already, you're in the norm.

  • You're fine.

  • My friend Shane, who runs the incredibly smart blog

  • Farnam Street, is a great example of this.

  • Shane reads about three to five books a week,

  • but he's very clear on his site that

  • he reads at an average pace.

  • Speed readers who claim that they can do

  • any more than 400, maybe 500 words per minute tops,

  • are doing so at a loss of comprehension.

  • In general, reading at lower comprehension rates

  • should be considered skimming.

  • And that's what speed reading is.

  • It's skimming.

  • After a certain reasonable point, you get an inverse

  • relationship between your reading speed

  • and your level of comprehension.

  • Which one is more important to you?

  • So, that is where we're gonna end this video,

  • if you'd like to dig a little bit deeper into

  • the research I did for it, I've linked to a lot of sources

  • in the companion blog post for this video,

  • so you can click the card right now,

  • or the link down in the description to read them.

  • Next week, we're gonna look at some of

  • the common techniques that speed readers

  • claim will increase your reading speed,

  • and see if there's any validity whatsoever to them,

  • and then after that, we're gonna do a video on

  • how you can actually increase your reading speeds.

  • So stay tuned for those videos coming in

  • the next couple of weeks, if you enjoyed this video,

  • giving it a like definitely helps this channel,

  • and I will see you in the next video.

  • (energetic dance music)

  • Hey guys, thanks so much for watching

  • this first video of my speed reading series.

  • Now, if you want to get new videos every single week

  • on being a more effective student,

  • including the further speed reading videos,

  • you can click that big red subscribe button right there.

  • Also, if you want to read a book on

  • how to earn better grades, I wrote one,

  • it's absolutely free, and I'll send you a copy

  • if you click a picture of the book right there!

  • Like I said, if you want to get the sources

  • that I used for the research in this video,

  • and there are a lot of them, as well as a summary,

  • you can go to the companion blog post

  • by clicking the orange logo right there!

  • Last week was a little bit more of a

  • philosophical video on how we should

  • give more appreciation to people in

  • all sorts of different jobs, so check that out if

  • you haven't seen it, and if you want to connect with me,

  • I'm on Twitter @TomFrankly,

  • or you can leave a comment below.

  • Thanks for watchin'!

Just finished reading my sixth book this week!

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B1 中級 美國腔

閱讀速度背後的科學原理--高校資訊極客。 (The Science Behind Reading Speed - College Info Geek)

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    Steven Wu 發佈於 2021 年 01 月 14 日
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