Courses aimed at improved reading efficiency

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 33095, 9 December 1972, Page 12

Courses aimed at improved reading efficiency

(By

ROBIN MITCHELL.

» tutor, Christchurch Technical -Institute)

Do you read efficiently? Do you get the maximum amount of information in the time you can devote to reading, and do you get the information that is of maximum use to you, rather than a miscellaneous collection of oddments that may or may not come in useful?

Many people would readily answer “No" to these questions; and a considerable number, having thought about the implications, seek a course to improve their reading. To meet the need, classes are now held by various educational organisations in Christchurch, including the university, the Workers’ Educational Association, and the technical institute. The Christchurch Technical Institute runs day - time courses in efficient reading for its full time students and evening courses for the public. The public courses comprise eight weekly two-hour sessions. This year all but two of the 31 persons who enrolled for the public courses satisfactorily completed their course. Next year courses are planned tentatively to start in February, June and September, and there is likely also to be an advanced course for the first time. A feature of the Technical Institute course (I cannot speak for those run else-

where) is that the starting level of each course member is unimportant. Those who took the course this year included housewives, apprentices, students, business people, teachers, and university lecturers. Some started with good reading habits and a relatively fast speed, others with faulty skills and a slow speed. The aim was to achieve not a common standard but a common degree of improvement, and this was largely attained. Four types The basis of the course is a recognition of four types of reading: normal reading, for novels, magazines, and leisure - time reading in general; skimming and scanning, two methods of tackling material which may not have to be properly read; and study reading, applicable to text-books, instruction booklets, legal documents, and the like.

The effectiveness of normal reading is judged in the institute course by the speed and comprehension level. The average member of a course starts with a reading rate of 250 to 350 words a minute and a comprehension level of about 80 per cent; during the course he gains 50 to 70 per cent in his reading rate at a loss of 2 per cent or 3 per cent in comprehension. Some reach 1400 words a minute at 90 per cent comprehension; the highest in these classes, a teen-age girl, reached well over 2000 words

a minute at 95 per cent comprehension. In general, the fastest readers have the highest comprehension level, bearing out one of the basic precepts of speed reading.

Speed reading The precept that understanding improves with reading speed (up to a limit set by eye-efficiency) is based on the theory that the mind can organise ideas more effectively if they are presented in short order rather than fed in over a period, and that in any case the original organisation of the material is more likely to be preserved when it is absorbed quickly. The usual slight loss in comprehension during the course is acceptable because of a second precept—that in normal reading 100 per cent comprehension is an extravagance, because time given to working over a piece of unimportant reading matter to gain 100 per cent or even 90 per cent comprehension would be more efficiently spent in reading something else. The high comprehension rate is not, of course, in itself undesirable: it is only so if achieved at the expense of speed. A third precept of speed reading is that the subconscious absorbs more than is consciously realised, which leads to another main emphasis of the normal-reading section of the course, to try to cure the habit many people have of “regressing” —going back over what has been read.

Skimming is a technique for getting the thread of an article without properly reading it. In each paragraph, only so much is read as is necessary to grasp the theme. Scanning has the same aim, but relies on finding a summary of the article. This involves a study of the various styles of printed material. A newspaper news article, for example, differs ftmdamentally from a feature article, and there are differences again between each of these and a paper in a scientific journal, a magazine article, a textbook, and a novel.

Study reading techniques combine those of normal reading and skimming or scanning. A typical technique, for example, is to scan the material to be studied and then read through it at “normal” speed. These readings would be accompanied by questioning and followed by revision. In the institute course, regression is tackled by machines called reading accelerators. These have a blind which comes down over what has already been read, at a speed controlled by the reader. Other equipment includes material for fast study-reading practice, with which each session begins, and a “tachisroscope”—a projector which flashes words and phrases on a screen for a set fraction of a second. Speed and comprehension in normal reading are assessed from a series of graded exercises, the weekly results being recorded on a graph.