Monday, August 30, 2010

Does speed reading training actually work?

What's the straight dope on speed reading? Evelyn Wood commercials in the late 70s showed people casually zipping through impressive-looking tomes, apparently having benefited from one of Evy's speed-reading courses. The concept, as I recall it, was that one learned to read not word-by-word but line-by-line and eventually paragraph-by-paragraph. It was claimed that in spite of the breakneck speeds you would "achieve a higher level of comprehension." It all seemed a bit implausible at the time. Anyway, speed reading seemed to disappear until recently, when it was reintroduced on those late night mail order "infomercials." What's the scoop?

No comments:

Post a Comment