Speed reading

The speed reading (or reading expert , sometimes comparable with the total reading ) is a method aiming at reading much more quickly while retaining the important aspects (taking into consideration objective that the reader set) of a text. It can be implemented for the Apprentissage of the reading, or for the training of adults or teenagers already knowing to read.

The detractors of the global method estimate that the children learn the orthography badly or include/understand less what they read.

Methods

They rest all on:

a speed reading and regular, avoiding the subvocalisation (one does not pronounce the words mentally whom one reads, but one directly apprehends the direction of word groups or sentences);
of the technical of mental concentration and education of the glance, aiming to:

to widen the field of visual perception (known as “empan” ),
to limit the useless movements of the eye (flashbacks, divagation…),
to improve the precision and speed of the pointing of the eye and the time of return to a sought point, this to facilitate a reading by word group, even by whole lines or packages of lines (in the case of a text in column). The speed and the accuracy of mouvement of the eye are essential, this is why the cognitive Oculométrie is used for the study of the performances of readers;

of the strategies of location, creaming (detection of key words carrier of information), speed reading, anticipation and sorting according to questions which one puts before reading and in the course of reading;

This double approach makes it possible a “reader-expert” to apprehend the ideas forces, words and important passages of a text much more quickly than by a reading with high, or quiet voice but in “word for word” . The method does not replace a thorough reading of the technical or complex passages, nor does not prohibit a slow reading for example poetic texts, novels, etc

Note: The eye must be at an optimal distance from the text, to include important groups of words, without having to make long returns to the line. The pause of the eye when it “photographs” a word or group word is known as not fixing . The measurement of the number of letters perceived simultaneously is named the empan. One seeks here to increase it; a slow reader fixes 5 at 10 letters per point of fixing, a “reader high-speed” into fixed more than one score.

To see quickly, but to detect and retain the important one

The profits speed and visual perception make it possible to the high-speed reader to devote more time to comprehension of the text. These profits also permitted by an improvement of the concentration and the drive have several origins:

suppression of the subvocalisation;
control of work (accommodation, positioning, movements of the eye);
widening of the field of vision.

Javal, Smith, and Richaudeau allowed a better comprehension of than is visual perception during the reading. They profited from the technical projections and the perceptivo-cognitive theories of the psychologists, the psycholinguists and the cognitivists. The brain, the mechanism of training, the mental processes of anticipation of the direction of a text are included/understood better and can still clarify our capacities reading rate, of visual perception, tri anticipation and memorizing. Psychologists cognitivists like Smith, and Charolles studied the importance of the processes of memory (in the short and long term) for the data processing during the process of comprehension.

The neurologists and anatomobiologists can today follow on line the active zones of the brain during the reading, which could lead to better including/understanding processes at the same time close and different like the reading with mental pronunciation from the words and sounds and the total and fast expert reading.

Many works, exercises, and formations propose methods to refine its strategies of reading, by locating for example the elements structuring a text, by reading the conclusion or the chapitrage before beginning the reading or by adjusting the levels of comprehension to what seems necessary according to the parts of the text. These formations are sometimes included in the formations on the effective management of time.

History

It is Claude-François Lizarde de Radonvilliers which, in France in 1768, seems to have the first initiate (for the children of the king it had been named under-tutor) a method associating the form of a word calligrapher with an image representing its direction, before learning how to decipher and associate the syllables to recompose the sound of it who must evoke the direction of the word (if it were learned).

1787: Nicolas Adam, in France, insists on the fact that the whole and the form are perceived before the detail, and that it is necessary to begin the trainings with comprehensive approaches before passing to the details (with the decomposition words in the case of the reading).
1800: The typographers note that one collects overall better and more quickly shapes associating of the pig iron and cast iron the known of characters, and that it is much slower for written characters in pig iron and cast iron unknown factors, easily considered to be ugly by the reader. The typographies become models deposited which are sold of one country with the other and the creators compete of originality or smoothness in the improvement of what exists.
1843: Leclerc, a French notary notices that the experienced reader anticipates and guesses more than it does not read really word for word. A fragment of word is often enough with comprehension, in the context of the total direction of the sentence and the text. It shows that any experienced reader can read at an almost normal speed while having only the upper part of the lines (by erasing the lower half of a line, the text remains perfectly and quickly readable, except if it is written entirely in capital letters). Leclerc contributed to the theory of typographical legibility which will follow. With humor, he proposes to remove the low part of each letter, which would divide by two the volume of the books and the expenses of impression.
1848: The psychological doctor Genevese Claparède is interested in the child psychology and his psychology of the intelligence, defining 3 principal acts implied in human knowledge:

Seen general and confused of a whole (syncretism),

Seen distinct, and analytical, parts,

synthetic Recombining of the whole, on the basis of knowledge brought by the parts.

1878 : the doctor Emile Javal (ophtalmologist, director of the laboratory of ophthalmology of the university of the Sorbonne) note that the eye posed on a word or an small group of words only for one third to a quarter of second to make it possible the spirit to apprehend the direction of these word, and that it requires needs only one fortieth of second to pass to the group (field of vision) according to. The drive allows a reader experienced to apprehend increasingly important word groups (in the same manner as a leader with learned how to read several lines and ranges at the same time).
1905: E. Javal concludes that the eye functions with movements of jerk and that he recognizes the letters by their total differences without need to analyze each letter in detail. It drew a character more quickly readable in which it accentuates the letters at the places than it judges important for the vision, and it shows thus that the simplest forms are not inevitably the best readable ones, because causing more risks of confusion between letters.
1923: Switzerland Jean Piaget develops the Global method of Radonvilliers.
1930: In the USA, Doctor William H. Bates, seeks to include/understand accommodation and notes that the vision changes according to the psychic state and the concentration of each one and that a conscious and optimal visual behavior can improve the Presbytie, the Myopie, the Astigmatisme, the Hypermétropie, the Strabisme in the children and the adults without resorting to the glasses. In the same way, a reader can voluntarily, if it is involved, use and associate strategies and varied of readings, more or less powerful techniques for the reading rate, the comprehension and the memorizing of the contents. He identifies means of widening the field of vision while being conscious of the peripheral vision.
1936: the Belgian Ovide Decroly promotes and tries out a method initially giving importance to the oral examination for then leading the reader towards the writing. He insists on the importance of the objectives and associated strategies that the reader can and must fix himself to withdraw the information of a text.
1940: The American army gives courses of speed reading to its officers, whereas the method had always been used with children.
1968: Richaudeau is interested in the speed reading and the legibility of the texts to make them more compatible to a certain capacity natural to quickly seize groups of letters, figures and/or words.

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