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chrissyrun
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07 Jul 2011, 12:45 am

That reminds me:

When I was in 8th grade, they had us take reading tests.
We would read a paragraph as fast as we could, answer some questions, and then do a little math to calculate a level.
I always scored really high on that...but not because I was a super-reader, rather, I knew what to look for.
All you need to read is numbers, underlined things, quotes, and bolded words and you could answer half the questions. The title gives you enough to get at least an 80%.

However, it depends on what I am reading.
I "read" the old testament in 3 days.
That means I saw the words without thinking them.
But on things I actually want to think about, and how deep I want to read it, I can be a slow reader.



johnsmcjohn
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07 Jul 2011, 1:16 am

I can read quite quickly but I prefer to enjoy the material I'm reading. When I read at a normal pace on something I am interested in, I can kill 500+ pages in an afternoon.



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07 Jul 2011, 4:41 am

I've always been a fast reader. I'm trying to learn how to speed read to be freakishly fast though, it would probably be useful for exams.



Mummy_of_Peanut
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07 Jul 2011, 4:56 am

I was a precocious reader (3yrs) and have always been a good reader. But, I'm also very slow. It can take me months to get through a standard novel (300 pages or so). There are 2 reasons for this:
1 I have poor concentration and my mind wanders, if I'm not totally absorbed. I've been known to reread pages as I've reached the bottom and said to myself, 'What did I just read?', I was actually thinking about the weather, as my eyes made the reading movement. If the book is great and the story is easily visualised, this doesn't happen.
2 I read every single word and hear them in my own voice in my head. So my speed of reading is limited to my speed of speaking.
I'm reading a collection of short stories by Truman Capote just now, in the hope that my interest will be held long enough to get through each one. I can read a whole story in a single sitting, which is a plus.



OddFinn
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07 Jul 2011, 5:04 am

I started to read when I was four. My father used to read aloud to me and he would follow the text with his finger. I started to figure out words, so I did not do it the difficult way (first learning letters and then syllables etc.) Others say I am a fast reader, they wonder how come I scroll so fast while reading something online, or switch pages while reading TV teletext.

It was really boring when I went to school. I had already read everything they were teaching. I'm glad many teachers figured it out and they gave me some books to read and left me alone.


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Tamsin
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07 Jul 2011, 8:41 am

No. I am a very slow reader and am being tested for Dyslexia because of my reading problems.



Callista
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07 Jul 2011, 10:13 am

I just took an online reading speed test and got 500 wpm, 90% comprehension. Would've been 100% comprehension if that one multiple choice question hadn't been so vague.

I read faster from books than a computer screen, though. I'm pretty sure I hit 600 or 700 easily with a book.

I used to be hyperlexic, but my comprehension has caught up to my reading ability, so now I'm just a good reader. Lately, though, I've been "reading" a lot of audiobooks--both because it lets me have my hands free and because I hope it might improve my auditory processing ability. No idea whether it's working. Even if it doesn't, I'll have a lot of crochet and housework done to show for the difference in format.

Dyslexic people should really look into Panopreter. <--link. It's a text to speech tool that's got a freeware version and can also do text to mp3. I used it to listen to boring textbooks. Modern text to speech is really very understandable, and if your reading speed is slower than speech (150 wpm) you will benefit speed-wise as well.


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SyphonFilter
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07 Jul 2011, 10:28 am

Sora wrote:
Is there such a thing as naturally fast readers? If so, is anybody else a fast reader too? Have you noticed something odd about your reading habits?


Yeah, I think there are naturally fast readers, just as there are naturally fast math problem-solvers. Sometimes I can read a book extremely fast if it's one of those that you "can't put down"; other times I'm incredibly slow at reading and struggle to comprehend what's going on in the text.

Don't know if this is an odd reading habit or not, but many times when I read, it's hard to read because either the words "slip off" the page, or I mix the letters around in words (I read "the" as "hte" and so on), or it's like my mind adds a letter to an existing word so that the entire sentence has to be re-read because it doesn't make sense.



Callista
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07 Jul 2011, 10:42 am

Reading and problem solving aren't the same thing, though. I'm a fast reader but a very slow problem-solver, so much so that I get extra time on tests. My classmates will get their A's in forty minutes out of the fifty they're given; I'll finish after an hour and a half and get the same A. It's a matter of speed, not ability, but until I got permission for extra time on my tests, it meant that my grades were a lot lower than my ability suggested they should be. It was routine for me to get A's on projects and F's on tests...


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littlelily613
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07 Jul 2011, 10:48 am

Sora wrote:
I think/know you can train fast reading, but that's not what I want to talk about.

I researched reading with a friend (an avid reader who is reading FAST) and it said that the average speed of reading is between 100 and 300 words. Is that really true?

Apparently then, I'm not a slow reader, but I thought I was. I read about 600 words per minute easily.

I don't prefer that style of reading though. I prefer speaking the words in my mind slowly, when I want to enjoy a book.

Is there such a thing as naturally fast readers? If so, is anybody else a fast reader too? Have you noticed something odd about your reading habits?


I don't really know how to figure out how many words I can read a minute, but I can read very fast. I call it speed-reading. I am not like Reid on Criminal Minds or anything, but I can read the pages very quickly. Like you, however, I prefer to read more slowly when I have the time so I can be sure I am processing everything properly in my memory. If I am in class, and not really caring about memory, I go through 20 pages or so in just a few minutes and can pull out valuable discussion points.


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MakaylaTheAspie
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07 Jul 2011, 1:18 pm

It only took me two days to read the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy.


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