Quick Reading: Too Much of a Good Thing?
Monday, June 13th, 2011
I’m a very very good reader, fast, accurate and an excellent literal and inferential comprehender…..most of the time.
Richard Wanderman, founder of LD Resources, is among other things, dyslexic and probably not the fastest most accurate reader of all time. He’s also a wonderful photographer and an excellent and thoughtful writer.
A few weeks back Richard reminded me that sometimes the best thing to do while reading is to slow down.
You see, he was teaching me something about a technical aspect of running this wordpress site. While he was talking over the phone to me and I was reading something related to our “technical” discussion, I made some error in connecting what I’d read to what I was supposed to do next. I remember sort of apologizing to Rich for my technical slowness.
Richard said “It’s Ok, Sandy. Slow down and take your time.”
Hmm.
I took a breath, slowed down my reading, everything became clearer and I settled down to finish whatever it was we were working on.
Kids with reading disabilities, dyslexic or otherwise and especially the ones who get good instruction and improve their rate and accuracy, get sucked in to a common myth, namely that reading quickly=reading well.
Don’t get me wrong, being able to read fluently is a great and important thing.
But not all the time.
I often advise some of the older kids I work with, to slow their reading down. They’re surprised because they’re so delighted to finally be able to read more quickly than ever, they get carried away with too much of a good thing.
It’s a great reminder Richard (I don’t think he knew that he was doing this). Sometimes reading slowly is the name of the game.
Thanks for the reading lesson Richard.
You’re welcome Sandy.
An interesting parallel: If you want to hike further in a day, slow down. Slower hiking takes less toll on joints, lungs, muscles, and one can actually hike for longer periods and so, further.
in reading, a certain threshold of speed is necessary for decent comprehension, one has to get enough of the sentence/paragraph in one’s head all at one time to see the meaning of it all. In hiking, it’s not quite like that and the slower you go, the more detail you see and have the time to think about.
I wish I could read as well as I can hike. But, I know how to find times and places to read where I get max comprehension. My favorite is on airplanes and I’m flying next week and have a stack of reading for the plane.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to turn the radio (mostly NPR talk shows) off when driving in an unfamiliar place that requires attention. Same with reading: when the going gets tough I make sure I’m in a place of little distraction but just a bit of background noise. Airplanes work well for me, unless of course, I’m sitting next to someone who likes to talk.
Richard, thanks.
Not to be glib about a sore spot for many people, but maybe this’ll catch on and “slow reading” will become cool.
Slow walking, cool. Results in taking in the moments better and can lengthen your miles.
Slow cooking, brings out the flavors.
Slow reading, better comprehension.
We could start a movement.
Sandy, we can only hope. These days with so much verbal distraction ANY reading is a good thing.
I think that when you are nervous and are not focussing totally on the content, the words get confused. I think my fast reading has something to do with my dyslexia. I find that when I try to focus word for word, I get those pesky word reversals and letter confusion. Somehow I managed to learn to get my eye to track quickly accross the page and I get it.
It’s better for me to read the same paragraph several times than to to focus on word after word. Is this true for anyone else? I have often wondered.
You’re absolutely right Dale. Being nervous, as I am when reading AND doing something technical and sequential simultaneously), is another recipe for confusion.
I guess the point is that reading is sometimes like math:
1. Going slowly can be a good thing, and
2. Being confused and not seeing the whole picture is part of the learning curve.
For people with reading disabilities, slow reading is inherent. Seeing speed as the end product, while certainly a nice luxury, is not the top priority.
This also validates the need and appropriateness of getting “extra time.”
Dale and Sandy: The issue for those of us with language-based learning disabilities is to read fast enough to get to comprehension, slow enough so we don’t lose it.
If you read too slow you can’t comprehend either and we many times forget that. Dale’s re-reading of a single paragraph is a good way to make sure it sticks but that’s neither slow nor fast, it’s repetition which is also good for sticking things in our brains.
If someone is watching me read I walk away from the task. I can’t read at all under pressure. I can DECODE but I can’t COMPREHEND.
What about reading on a computer screen?
Just out of curiousity, how does the computer screen affect your reading? There are times when I can’t study off of a screen. I have to run it off. This drives me crazy as an ardent environmentalist, but I’ve made up my mind- accommodating my dyslexia is more important than saving trees. (I don’t print on both sides of the paper, either)
But I can read and absorb on the screen. Several of my non-dyslexic friends have the same thing, but I was curious how it worked for the rest of us.
I routinely read on computer, iPad, and iPhone screens. I read the newspaper, articles, and books with iBooks on the iPad. I like paper as well but the backlighting on a good high contrast, high resolution screen is quite nice and pretty much everything I want to read these days is coming through the internet in one form or another.
Remember, all of us were around when screens were cathode ray tubes and flickered but those days are long gone with high quality LCD screens.
Richard, I’ve recently started reading books on my iPad. I wasn’t sure what the experience would be like. I’ve grown to like it a lot. I love being able to adjust the screen backlighting level, the positioning, and the font size. Of course you can do most of that on a computer screen, but holding it in your hand feels about right.
Having the size, lighting and other interface aspects under my control adds to the experience.
Not to mention touching a word and looking it up in the dictionary, bookmarking multiple pages and paragraphs you want to come back to, and search, which is one of the single most important access features of digital content.
Still, until there is better text to speech this reading experience will be inaccessible to many in the LD community.
Richard, agreed. Those are all great features for anyone, including students with or without LD.
As someone with dyslexia, how would you describe any visual processing issues that you have when reading? You mentioned flickering before, for example. What if anything do you (or did as a child) experience on a visual processing level?
Thanks.
These days my issues with reading are making the time and space to read long pieces and books. I like serious quiet when I read but not too much quiet. For me, the best place to read is on planes where there is just the right amount of background noise and quiet.
If I read slowly enough and stick with it, I can submerge into a complex piece and get through it in a reasonable amount of time (well, reasonable for me, slow for most people).
But, as Sally Shaywitz says (and I believe), people like me with dyslexia will never get to be fast, automatic decoders like folks who read without this disability. It will continue to be tougher for us.
But, that’s really not the interesting question. The interesting question is, how many people who CAN read DO read? I’m thinking not many. This is less a disability issue, more a national literacy issue.
Our country has one of the lowest literacy rates of any developed country on earth. This is a serious problem. Compared with most Americans, Dale and I are not only literate, we’re in the top percentage of literacy. That doesn’t mean it’s easy for us to read, it simply means that we DO read, even with the disability.