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Speed Reading: Do I Want to Read at 500 words per minute?

by Beverley Paine

This morning I had a look at an article that enticed me to use an app that would increase my reading speed: This Insane New App Will Allow You To Read Novels In Under 90 Minutes.

I was a little skeptical, especially looking at the exceptionally light weight novel in the image - few adults I know read novels with less than 300 pages, so it wasn't your typical novel they were highlighting with that graphic! But I gave the little reading exercise on the page a go anyway, curious.

At 350 words per minute I was missing seeing some key words in the sentences. At 500 words per minute my brain wasn't taking in the message. Reading comprehension is my concern with reading at increased speeds.

I find that people (including me) often don't take the time to read what is written, often scanning the sentence and making assumptions about the meaning, direction or content of the communication. They do the same when listening to verbal communication too. This is an attention problem. It leads to miscommunication.

The quality of written text is being degraded considerably due to speed writing (texting enables this but is not the only cause - I believe an emphasis on writing exactly what we think or how we speak is also doing this). What will happen to the efficacy of communication when speed writing is combined with speed reading?

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