Speed Reading Training, part IX (final).
Monday, September 18, 2006
Speed Reading Training (Index).
I finally got a chance to complete the speed reading program I started a few weeks ago.
Did it work? Well, I have mix feelings about it. I can actually read some passages faster, however, my recollection is very limited. So whenever I am reading something of importance or something I need to actually understand, I have to read it in a "normal" reading speed--I'm guessing my normal reading speed is around 200 WPM.
The program I used suggest that by training the eye muscles, one can indeed strengthen them to read faster. I don't know if I buy the argument, as I haven't seen any scientific evidence to support the claim, except for the lab-coat guys in the introductory video. Note that I'm too lazy to google it and find out how the eye muscles work :)
Will I use the techniques learnt? I actually use them when I'm reading magazine articles. The column break down of paragraph in magazines makes it very easy to go from left to right and top to bottom very quickly. For regular books, I think I will stick to normal reading, unless I can train myself to remember more.
One of the main problems I had with the last 2 sessions of the program is that you are required to look at the center of a 4 line block of text and try to "read" the whole thing in one glance. For some reason, I can only see and recognize the 4 words in a vertical line of my focus point, and I can only "read" about 2 words to the left of the middle line. I don't know why I have a hard time "looking" and "reading" words at a glance on the right side of my focal point.
I do wonder, however, if anyone can in fact read 4 lines at a time. Even with the training I just went through I can't do it, but maybe I should try the whole program again.
Which program did I use? You can email me if you want to find out. I will not actually promote any products in my site (for free, that is).
The final graph's result:
Note that my results went from ~640 to ~540 wpm. I think it is because I didn't train for 2 weeks between the last two sessions--perhaps consistency would have put my score around the 700 wpm.
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