Speed reading was very much in fashion one-tenth of a generation before me. I remember seeing the signs for speed reading cram schools (There are some weird cram schools in Korea.) dotting the building facades. The fad was dying down by the time I was learning to read and as far as I know, and no one in my generation learned to speed-read anymore.
Then when I was in seventh grade, I saw this kid. We were supposed to read Hobbit and discuss it in class. I found it weird because he was confidently getting everything wrong. At the end of the class, the teacher pulled him aside and asked, “Did you learn to speed read?” He nodded, and then the teacher said he shouldn’t speed-read materials for discussion.
I remembered this episode because I could only find articles that concluded that speed reading is not suitable for quality reading where the material is new and more difficult. They say that even if we overcome the speed at which we take in textual data by eliminating subvocalization (phenomenon where we are reading out loud in our mind.) and increasing peripheral vision so that we read in more words at a time, the bottleneck would be the speed at which we process the information.
I decided to write about this very tangentially related topic because I wanted to learn more about what have people done with speed reading that has been or could be adapted for the dyslexic population. It is hard to find quality scientific review articles for laymen who is not a cognitive scientist that are not pop science. I want to learn more about how textual learning happens and how it can be improved. Which modules within the brain wired differently that results in dyslexia?
Reference:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/is-speed-reading-possible/284326/
http://lifehacker.com/the-truth-about-speed-reading-1542508398
Interesting post, but what did you learn that could be applied to dyslexia? You are asking an excellent question, and doing great research… now I want to know the answer! In the future, you may also want to incorporate some images, videos, or external links into your posts to really bring them alive.