Speed reading: what it actually is

Let me start with what speed reading does not do. It will not let you swallow a book in an hour and remember all of it. Promises of that kind are a sign that what is being sold is a trick, not lessons.

Real speed reading is more modest and more useful.

What it actually gives you

First: not going back with your eyes. Most people reread the same line several times without noticing, and it eats something close to a third of the time.

Second: not saying the words to yourself. The inner voice caps your reading speed at the speed of speech — and the eye is capable of far more.

Third, and most important: reading in different ways. A textbook, a contract and a novel call for three different kinds of reading, and being able to switch between them matters more than any speed.

For children it is usually not about speed

Parents arrive saying «he reads slowly», and the real trouble is more often «he reads it and remembers nothing». Speed does not cure that; understanding does — and a good teacher starts there.

Ask in the first lesson what will be measured: speed or understanding. The right answer is both, with understanding first.

School tests and the move up to secondary

One case deserves its own paragraph, because it is the one people arrive with most often: primary-school assessments and the move up to secondary school. Parents call it «he reads slowly», but slowness is rarely the trouble.

In a test a child loses marks not because they ran out of time but because they read the question partway, or read it wrong. «Write out» instead of «underline», two examples instead of one, the actual question buried in the middle of a long instruction. To an adult it looks like carelessness; it is really the inability to read a text in which every word carries weight.

And in the first year of secondary school the reading load jumps all at once: one teacher becomes eight subjects, short exercises become chapters. A child who read perfectly well until then suddenly cannot keep up — and again it is not speed but not knowing how to read differently: a textbook and a story ask for different reading.

So ask not «how many weeks to get the speed up» but «what will you do about understanding the question». A good answer sounds dull: go through how tasks are worded, learn to find the point in the instruction, retell what was read in one's own words.

Memory technique is next door, but not the same thing

Speed reading is about taking things in. Memory technique is about holding on to them: methods that look like conjuring until you see how they are built. It is a skill, and it trains like any other.

Often the same person teaches both, and together they work better. But they are different skills, and it is worth asking which one you are being taught.

How to read the reviews here

The reviews here are thank-yous, so look at the problem the person solved. «My son started retelling what he had read» and «I finally keep up with my work email» are different stories.

See who does this: speed reading and memory technique.