Reading With the Right Brain: Read Faster by Reading Ideas Instead of Just Words (26 page)

Fifteen days later,
two thousand miles
farther off,
the Helvetia,
of
the Compagnie-Nationale,
and the Shannon,
of the Royal Mail
Steamship Company,
sailing to windward
in that portion
of the Atlantic
lying between
the United States
and Europe,
respectively
signaled the monster
to each other
in 42° 15’ N. latitude
and 60° 35’ W. longitude.
In these
simultaneous observations
they thought themselves
justified in estimating
the minimum length
of the mammal
at more than
three hundred
and fifty feet,
as the
Shannon and Helvetia
were of smaller
dimensions than it,
though they measured
three hundred feet
over all.

Now the largest whales,
those which
frequent
those parts of the sea
round the Aleutian,
Kulammak,
and Umgullich Islands,
have never exceeded
the length
of sixty yards,
if they attain that.

In every place
of great resort
the monster
was the fashion.
They sang of it
in the cafes,
ridiculed it
in the papers,
and represented it
on the stage.
All kinds of stories
were circulated
regarding it.
There appeared
in the papers
caricatures
of every gigantic
and imaginary creature,
from the white whale,
the terrible
“Moby Dick”
of sub-arctic regions,
to the immense kraken,
whose tentacles could
entangle a ship
of five hundred tons
and hurry it
into the abyss
of the ocean.
The legends
of ancient times
were even revived.

Then burst forth
the unending argument
between the believers
and the unbelievers
in the societies
of the wise
and
the scientific journals.
“The question of the monster” inflamed all minds. Editors of scientific journals, quarrelling with believers in the supernatural, spilled seas of ink during this memorable campaign, some even drawing blood; for from the sea-serpent they came to direct personalities.

During the first months of the year 1867 the question seemed buried, never to revive, when new facts were brought before the public. It was then no longer a scientific problem to be solved, but a real danger seriously to be avoided. The question took quite another shape. The monster became a small island, a rock, a reef, but a reef of indefinite and shifting proportions.

On the 5th of March, 1867, the Moravian, of the Montreal Ocean Company, finding herself during the night in 27° 30’ latitude and 72° 15’ longitude, struck on her starboard quarter a rock, marked in no chart for that part of the sea. Under the combined efforts of the wind and its four hundred horse power, it was going at the rate of thirteen knots. Had it not been for the superior strength of the hull of the Moravian, she would have been broken…

Chapter 15: Reading Speeds

Averages

What reading speed would you like to achieve?

Although the average reading speed is two hundred fifty words per minute, more than half of the people read below that speed. If it seems like a discrepancy that more than half read below average, it’s only because those very rare, really fast readers are pulling up the overall average of everyone else.

For example, if in a group of eight people, seven people read at 200 WPM and one person reads at 600 WPM, then the average for all eight people would be 250 WPM, because (200 x 7 + 600) / 8 = 250. So in this example, even though the average is two hundred fifty, most people are still reading below average, at only two hundred words per minute.

The chart below gives you an approximate idea of the distribution of adult reading speeds.

As you can see, half the readers (the left half of the chart) are reading below two hundred words per minute. And although there is a gradual increase in faster readers to the right, there are only a very few who are reading above four hundred words per minute, fewer still who read above six hundred (the generally accepted “speed reading” level), and an absolutely microscopic number of people who reach one thousand words per minute.

For college students, the average speed is slightly higher at three hundred words per minute, with most students reading between two hundred and four hundred words per minute. But only one in twenty college students reads faster than four hundred words per minute.

Of course we’re talking here about
real
reading, reading for content and comprehension. Other types of text consumption and their associated average college-level speeds are below:

• Scanning: 600 WPM
  
• Skimming: 450 WPM
  
• Reading: 300 WPM
  
• Learning: 200 WPM
  
• Memorizing: 130 WPM
  

In fact, for real reading, the upper limits are usually much lower than most people are aware (especially compared to the inflated claims of many “speed reading” courses).

Ronald Carver, author of the 1990 book
The Causes of High and Low Reading Achievement
, has done extensive testing of readers and reading speeds, thoroughly examining the various speed reading techniques and actual improvements likely to be gained. One test he completed pitted four groups of the fastest readers he could find against each other. The groups consisted of champion speed readers, fast college readers, successful professionals whose jobs required a lot of reading, and students who had scored highest on speed reading tests. Carver found that of his superstars, none could read faster than six hundred words per minute with more than a seventy-five percent retention rate.

Even though the claims of most speed reading courses offer more hype than hope, there is still plenty of room for honest and impressive improvement. For most people, this means they are very possibly able to double or triple their reading speed. If your reading rate falls in the middle of the average reading speeds, and you double your speed from two hundred to four hundred words per minute, this could be life-changing, because reading quickly is a very different experience than reading slowly. Faster reading is much more interesting, more memorable, and less frustrating.

And just consider the time savings. If someone who read two hundred words per minute picked up an average novel of eighty thousand words, it would take that person six hours and forty minutes of reading time to reach the end of the novel—that’s spending most of a whole day reading. But at four hundred words per minute, it would only take three hours and twenty minutes to finish that same book, leaving the rest of the day free for anything else.

What if you didn’t want to finish the book in one sitting, though? How about reading one chapter? Assuming an average page of three hundred words and an average chapter of twenty pages, the chapter would take either a half an hour or fifteen minutes if you read two hundred or four hundred words per minute. Or you could look at it is the difference between reading forty pages per hour versus eighty pages per hour.

OK, that’s a lot of numbers, but hopefully they give you an idea of what even a modest speed increase can do for you. If you think about the ability to read eighty pages per hour, you will realize that you will read more, not just because you are saving time, but because a lot more reading will be worth your effort with that lower time requirement.

Also, note that all of these figures are average numbers. Average people are not reading thought-units. Most fast reading is done simply by pushing the reading speeds, basically applying brute force to the task. Reading phrases is about training your mind to read in your imagination instead of in your ears, learning to use a different part of your brain and use it in a different way. But learning to do this takes a completely different way of looking at reading and a different way of thinking about the process. So even though the averages may be slower than many people realize, using a different approach to reading will make it easier to reach the higher speeds of those rare speed readers.

But still, please remember that increased reading speed can only come as a result of faster comprehension. If you forget this, you will concentrate on the wrong thing. To learn to read faster, you must learn to comprehend faster.

Flexibility

As mentioned in chapter nine, conceptual processing is the part of reading which takes the most time. This is the weakest link in reading and is also where the largest variations in speed occur.

Most of this speed variation is due to the difficulty of
—
or your preexisting knowledge about
—
the material. A useful analogy is to imagine riding a bicycle over a changing terrain.

If you were riding over a nice, smooth, level, and familiar terrain, you could switch into a higher gear and ride much faster. Similar to this, when you are reading easy or more familiar text, you can take in larger word-groups at a time and at higher speeds.

When you encounter harder or unfamiliar material, you need to automatically slow down and also read shorter word-groups, just as you would switch to a lower gear and cover less distance with each rotation of your bicycle pedal.

Writing style can also slow you down. A text that is strangely worded or full of unusual words may require you to slow way down, as you would when riding on an uneven or bumpy road.

And then there are the occasional unknown words or even grammatical errors where you must slow down and be even more careful, like riding over an old rutted dirt road.

In fact there are many reading situations which will constantly impact your speed:

• Lists
  
• Names
  
• Dialogue
  
• Narration
  
• New words
  
• Convoluted sentences
  
• Spelling or grammar errors
  
• Passive versus active sentences
  
• Beginnings of sentences, paragraphs, and chapters
  

You can never read at a constant static speed and expect your comprehension to adjust. Instead you must let comprehension take the lead, and allow your speed adjust.

Contextual Reading

One tip that will help you find your comprehension speed is to make sure you have a firm grasp on what you are reading as you get started. Regardless of the reading terrain, you should always start off slow, in first gear. This gives you time to get your balance and to establish traction while you get a firm grip on the subject and context of what you are reading.

Starting off slowly is helpful, but it can also be awfully hard to remember because we can be so anxious to read fast that we kind of forget
why
we are reading (to understand the text, right?). But each time you start reading, you usually need to go slow for a bit until you pick up the thread of the ideas. This can also be useful, to a lesser degree, at the beginning of paragraphs and sentences.

So, if you concentrate on the ideas and not on your speed, you will find your speed will increase when it’s ready. Of course, concentration on visualization and conceptualization will go a long way to automatically accommodate these changes; the information itself determines the time it takes for you to visualize and conceptualize and will therefore automatically control your reading speed.

By allowing yourself time to make a connection with your reading, you will start to “see” the ideas and your reading will begin to flow. Forcing the speed too quickly will only leave you skimming over the material without comprehension. This can be a difficult habit to overcome, because you will want to push your speed, but you have to get connected, and stay connected, to the material before you can read fast.

Maintaining this contextual connection while reading can have a major effect on what the text means to you. For example, look at how the first phrase changes your perception of the second in these two combinations:

1. Wash dishes. Polish silverware.
   
2. German dishes. Polish silverware.
   

"Polish silverware" means something quite different in example two than it does in example one. This is why taking a little more time when you first start to read will give you a strong enough context to better anticipate the proper meaning.

Thinking Ahead

Similar to contextual reading; is anticipatory reading. Anticipatory reading lets you get in sync with the material to more easily anticipate upcoming phrases. When you do this, you can fly past those anticipated phrases as you merely need to verify your predictions.