Is Speed Reading a Good Thing?

Currently, I have a student that I am tutoring in "Advanced Reading," which is actually a course designed to increase the student's comprehended words per minute. It is designed for high school students who plan to attend college, and are preparing for exams like SAT and ACT. It helps students increase their reading rate by learning to read in "chunks" of words and ending bad habits like "saying" the words they read inside their heads even when they do not read out loud.

I have always read fast. My dad taught me to read the newspaper with him when I was three years old. I've always loved reading, and as far back as I can remember, I have comprehended those "chunks" of words as a whole. Many of the skills I teach in this course are habits I formed so long ago that I don't remember forming them.

I never thought of this as a possible negative until I began studying fields like philosophy and theology, where one often has to deal with entire pages with only one or two sentences per page. I would find myself in the position described by the writers of this course, where I would read an entire page and then realize I had not retained a word of it. After a while, I learned to read between commas instead of caps and periods (one of the skills taught in the course.)

Anyway, what I'm wondering is, how valuable is this skill when it comes to appreciating literature? Do we want to read works like Huckleberry Finn or Ellery Queen or Cold Mountain so fast? Or do we lose something in the process?

When my children were small, I read nearly every one of Louis L'Amour's westerns. They were good books for me at the time, because I could read them with one eye while I watched the kids with the other. And I could read one during a fast sitting.

But is speed reading a good thing when we are reading quality literature or serious works?

What do you think?

Ann

I skim read posts on the forum. If I read a book, I read every word. When I start skim reading a book, it has lost my undivided attention -- I want the plot, story line and ending as soon as possible. My mother jumps to the last chapter!

I think you have to read text books slowly for comprehension. I read every nonfiction book like I'm going to take a final exam on it.

I read fiction very fast, in one sitting. I want the whole story right away, and sometimes take a peek at the last chapter to know where it is going.

I took a course in college in 18th Century German Literature. There were four people in the class. Two were from Latvia, one was number one in our overall class and then there was me. We were given whole books to read in German. And at first I read them looking up words and making sure I understood it all.

The two from Latvia had no problem with the class as they were familiar with several languages. The one who was first in the class just read and kept on reading, not looking up words, but would get the idea of the book.

So I began doing as the smartest person in the class did, because otherwise I wasn't going to get through the semester, and with such a small class you felt the need to do the assigned homework each week which was usually some whole book.

It was the most difficult class I've ever taken, and it did not in any way shape or form improve my grasp of the German language, except that I read some interesting books.

So one can read as I began to read the books in German, or as I did later.

I am a teacher for a correspondence course and usually I skim what people have written first, and then go back and read slowly while making comments.

It is what we learn, what we read, the habits we form, and yes I think we can read too fast sometimes, but it might also be necessary to get the work done.

Carol

Speed reading is necessary for a busy person. Short paragraphs get more attention.
Like Shelagh, posts on the forum get skimmed unless they are short. A novel is entirely different. I want the details, however trying to learn what happens next does tend to increase the speed. I never go to the end of the book to see how it turns out. That would kill my interest in the story.
As for non-fiction, especially historical novels, we often know the ending but wish to know the details of how it all happened.

I read slowly, yet can cover a lot of territory in a short time.
If a person speed reads fiction, they lose the skillful way the writer put words together. If a writer speed reads, he is not picking up the lessons available but is merely learning the outcome of the story. A writer could speed read every book and story in his or her field without learning a thing that could help them improve their own skill.
Writing sports, and reading the best in the field, taught me the importance of painting word pictures. Even the color of the uniforms is important if the reader is to "see" the action. Many times readers told me they enjoyed my stories because "it was almost like being there." A speed reader would not fully appeciate that but would know who won the game. The effort I put into making the reader "see" the action was wasted on them, but not on the person who wanted to feel what happened as well as learn the outcome.

Here is an example of what I mean. Grantland Rice's story of a 1924 Army-Notre Dame game paints a vivid picture, but his skill at putting words together would be lost by speed reading. There is much for a writer to learn by reading the words and then reading them again until some of Rice's skill soaked in. Here is the lead paragraph:

Outlined against a blue-gray October sky the Four Horsemen rode again. In dramatic lore they are known as famine, pestilence, destruction and death. These are only aliases. Their real names are: Stuhldreher, Miller, Crowley and Layden. They formed the crest of the South Bend cyclone before which another fighting Army team was swept over the precipice at the Polo Grounds this afternoon as 55,000 spectators peered down upon the bewildering panorama spread out upon the green plain below.

However, I agree that if something is poorly written or offers superfluous detail, then speed reading has its place.
An intersting development from Rice's story was a famous photo in which the four men in the Notre Dame backfield were mounted on horses. To show that they too were part of the team the linemen posed sitting on mules - the seven mules who cleared the way for the glamor boys on horseback.

I snuggle down and wallow in the words. Sometimes, I read a sentence twice because it was written so beautifully. I guess I am a slow reader. Why read if you do not see the words. Watch a movie instead.

Love,
Betty

I only speed read things on the internet. With novels, I like to take as much time as possible to soak in the subtelty in every scene and picture the action. I often stop to look up words on my Collins Gem dictionary as I read...that takes time and I'm very slow at reading.