SPEED READING – TWO CAMPS

Speed reading that came into vogue after President Kennedy prescribed it for the White House staff over four decades years ago, is no longer a fad but a part of modern American work life just like the computer.

The argument over whether speed reading works, while far from resolved, has died down. The "learned" have settled into two camps: the believers, who see the technique as a liberating skill for people burdened with too much required reading, and the non­believers, who say it is nothing but a scam.

Meanwhile, thousands of students, professionals and businessmen, seemingly unconcerned about what the experts say are attending speed reading classes and taking correspondence courses like never before. In the hope of learning to read with good understanding at a rate two to five times faster than the average American's 250 to 300 words a minute, the students are more than willing to spend a couple of hundred dollars for a class.

Few controlled, scientific studies of the effectiveness of speed reading exist, and the findings of those that do exist appear to be contradictory. Nevertheless, results such as those apparently achieved by the original Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics institute, founded in the late 1950s, have spurred an estimated 2 million Americans to become speed readers.

Speed reading, as it is commonly conceived, is the ability to read printed or electronic text like books, newspapers, magazines and websites at rates up to about 1,000 to 1,500 words a minute. In the 1970s, the Evelyn Wood institutes reported rates approaching 10,000 words a minute. How much truth there is to these figures we can't say. All the original 150+ Evelyn Wood institutes are now gone. Perhaps they attempted to take speed reading further than the average person could handle and lost credibility? Rates in the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of words a minute are not generally taken seriously.

Essentially, speed reading aims to break habits that are said to slow up a reader; habits such as stopping too long at one word, going back over passages twice, and saying words under the breath, or "subvocalizing." Various methods are used to "pace" the eyes at increasingly faster speeds. In addition, the reader is urged to concentrate, not on single words, but on groups of words, sentences, paragraphs and the like, that make up units of thought.

Traditional speed reading methods, like the tachistoscope, used mechanical devices such as film strips or mechanical pacers to enable the reader to go faster through printed matter. These machines allow less flexibility should a student want to read passages at varying speeds. This is seen as being important in modern speed reading programs, where flexibility – using varying speeds for varying kinds of material – is one of the goals.

There is wide agreement among reading experts that a person's normal reading speed can be easily doubled with no loss in comprehension. Beyond that, there is no general agreement. Some authorities dismiss that reading efficiency can be tripled, or better, without a drop in comprehension. Others contend that, as long as people are willing to practice, they can accelerate their reading rates by four to five times, and still maintain comprehension.

The team behind The Speed Reading Review agrees with to the latter opinion. According to the in-depth tests we have conducted with our students, there is not a shadow of a doubt in our minds that almost anybody can learn to read three, four or even five times faster with good comprehension.