I get questions and challenges from reading tutors and coaches sometimes, questioning the legitimacy of speed reading. After having been surrounded by an educational system with assumptions and techniques that seem to be designed to slow people down, it is no surprise.
People struggle with reading for a variety of issues. Some are social, some are emotional, and some are purely educational and process oriented. In my experience, mass education is often the culprit. Students whose learning style falls a little outside the expected norm are classified challenged and usually labeled, then ignored, punished, or even sometimes medicated.
But nearly everyone who is taught to read in the West is challenged because the process used in nearly every school ignores the natural power of the brain and uses techniques and assumptions that are primitive at best. When children are taught to sound out words in their head, they are essentially being given a ball and chain that diminishes their reading speed and comprehension potential by 50 percent.
Speed reading changes the input strategies most people are saddled with in school to ones that 1) are used by people who speed read naturally without instruction and 2) more closely match the way education and neurological research shows the brain wants it.
Did you know that the "QWERTY" keyboard was intentionally designed because it is the most counter-intuitive layout possible? It was designed to slow people down so that the original mechanical typewriters wouldn't jam as much. Now we have computers capable of lightning fast responses and the keyboard is the same!
I have seen thousands of people experience the joy that comes from letting go of the assumptions that shackle their learning. I have seen teenagers labeled ADD, slow, struggling, and a host of other terms blossom with these techniques.
You don't have to have worldly knowledge or an excellent vocabulary. In speed reading, context takes center stage as we holistically take in the conversation that the author intended.
Happy speed reading!
