Re:Ask HN: Do you guys use speed reading techniques?
by ph0rque on Monday January 05, 2009 @11:52AM
(#420671)
The parent and grandparent posts don't disprove the slate article's claim, however:
> ...you end up with about 95 percent of all college-level readers reading between 200 and 400 words per minute.
So you both might be in the <5% group who reads faster than that.
Re:Ask HN: Do you guys use speed reading techniques?
by mightybyte on Monday January 05, 2009 @12:25PM
(#420726)
Actually it does. Here are two quotes from the article, both of them emphasized in the original.
"Studies show that people who read at or above the college level all read at about the same speed when they read for pleasure."
"the fastest college-level reader will read, at best, twice as fast as the slowest college-level reader."
The article isn't talking about 95% of college-level readers, it's talking about the best college-level readers. The above posts (as well as my observations outlined below) refute it quite well.
I'm on the other end of the spectrum -- originally grew up in a Punjabi-speaking household (immigrant family in The States), moved to English around the time of Kindergarten.
I think it's got to do with the innate redundancy in grammar. You can focus on blocks of text and only get partial data from each, but reconstruct the entire thing in your mind in real time. With practice, of course.