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Don't vocalize words in mind as read?

D

Del

New Member
You shouldn't vocalize words in your mind. This is what all the speedreading material I've read says, but how do you learn not to do this and actually understand what you're reading? I read at a moderate pace -- 500 words/m -- but I would really like to read much faster. I think vocalizing words in my head is what's limiting me, but I can't stop doing it. Suggestions?
 
Martin said:
That is fast!

Cheers, Martin :cool:
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Many people read in the thousands of words a minute, so it's not that fast in comparison. Supposedly reading faster also increases your retention as a result of higher concentration.

I want to read faster so I can read novels like War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov in fewer sittings.
 
I would think writers vocalize words in their mind before they are written down, so why shouldn't they be received by the reader in the same way?
Enjoy the prose as it is meant to sound!

I am a terribly slow reader. I suppose I average about 2 minutes per page. It's purely a concentration thing and I wish I could read faster but a wandering mind is a difficult thing to tame :eek:
 
2 minutes a page sounds about right, yeah. And with me it's not a concentration-thing, it's just my speed. Nothing to do about it.

Cheers, Martin :cool:
 
I'm a pretty fast reader, never timed how fast though. But to me speed reading has always seemed the preserve of people who don't really enjoy reading. Otherwise why would they want the chore to be over so quickly? I can understand wanting to read quickly if you've got to read for work, so for skimming through journals and things it's handy. But if you seriously want to remember what it is you've read then the key is repetition, not speed.

If a book is worth reading then it's worth spending time over and giving some thought to what's going on as it happens, not just racing through to the end. Yes, War and Peace is a hefty book, but to look at it as something to get through as quickly as possible I don't think is the right attitude to take. If you enjoy it, then you'll find you read it faster anyway.

As for vocalising words in your head, I don't think I do that. It's a hard thing to analyse, and a harder thing to explain, but I think I take in whole sentences rather than words, and then that is translated into 'action' in my head, pretty much instantaneously, and as the story progresses, so do the images in my head.
 
As for vocalising words in your head, I don't think I do that. It's a hard thing to analyse, and a harder thing to explain, but I think I take in whole sentences rather than words, and then that is translated into 'action' in my head, pretty much instantaneously, and as the story progresses, so do the images in my head.
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Well said. I think I have that too. Still slow as shit, though :( But I don't mind, I like reading, I do it for fun, so there's no sense in rushing through a novel.

Cheers, Martin :cool:
 
Litany said:
I'm a pretty fast reader, never timed how fast though. But to me speed reading has always seemed the preserve of people who don't really enjoy reading. Otherwise why would they want the chore to be over so quickly? I can understand wanting to read quickly if you've got to read for work, so for skimming through journals and things it's handy. But if you seriously want to remember what it is you've read then the key is repetition, not speed.

If a book is worth reading then it's worth spending time over and giving some thought to what's going on as it happens, not just racing through to the end. Yes, War and Peace is a hefty book, but to look at it as something to get through as quickly as possible I don't think is the right attitude to take. If you enjoy it, then you'll find you read it faster anyway.

As for vocalising words in your head, I don't think I do that. It's a hard thing to analyse, and a harder thing to explain, but I think I take in whole sentences rather than words, and then that is translated into 'action' in my head, pretty much instantaneously, and as the story progresses, so do the images in my head.
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I actually love to read and that's why I want to be able to read much faster. The faster you read, the more books you can read. You don't watch movies with a lower FPS to enjoy them more, do you?
 
Del said:
I want to read faster so I can read novels like War and Peace and The Brothers Karamazov in fewer sittings.
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Thinking about the first chapter in War in Peace: can you speed read in French? ;)
 
I vocalise the words in my mind but I read them slightly faster than I would speak them. I don't speed read novels, especially well written and poetic ones, that's for textbook reading. I find it beneficial for a lot of things, your general vocabulary, your own writing and your ability to use words.
 
If that is how you like to read then by all means vocalize them in your head.

As for reading faster, I guess practice makes perfect :) , but there are also some audio tapes and books out there that can help you read faster(I do not know if these work).

As for me, I naturally never vocalized the words in my mind.
 
-- i think it's what you called "oral reading",and I'm having a hard time to do that,sometimes when I read books to my son, I notice myself that I didn't utter the words anymore,and he asked me to read louder! :D
 
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