After generations of error, fifty-years of proof convinces some skeptics.

Fact: The faster you read, the better your comprehension.

Mrs. Harrison, my 3rd grade teacher, hammered into our numbskulls If you want to understand what you are reading always read it slowly.

She could only teach us what she knew and had been taught in Teachers College. For one hundred years teachers were trained to get students to slow down for better comprehension.

It was intuitive and no one had the nerve to question the dictum slow-equals-better.

In 1952 Evelyn Wood requested university linguistic researchers to test her principle that the faster-you-read, the greater your comprehension; she was hooted down.

She proposed that speed reading created a context for the text, while focusing on a single word, phrase or sentence, was the basis for subvocalization, regressions, and loss of long term memory.

Speed reading doubles attention, and adds up to 15% to comprehension, triples the amount of learning.

Context reading requires speed, and that contradicts the status quo.

It took over 50 years for this counterintuitive research to trickle down to 25% of teachers.

The other 75% still teach Mrs. Harrisons intuitive system of purposeful-slowness.

Dig This

The QUERTY keyboard was created to slow down the speed of typing because the original typewriters jammed when handling multiple keys hitting the roller simultaneously.

Querty was named after the first six letters on the Sholes keyboard.

A Milwaukee mechanic, Christopher Sholes, invented it in the first year of the Civil War 1861, and it is used by 99% of all word processors, almost 150 years later.

So what?

It is slower and less effective than three other keyboard layouts; DVORAK is 50% faster, but misoneism (fear of change or newness), prevails.

Slow reading is less effective by a factor of three, but do you have the courage to change?

What is New?

The latest research on motor-skill learning by Dr. Reza Shadmehr at Johns-Hopkins university concludes slow learned motor-skills is maintained longer.

We are talking about learning motor-skills, not reading or comprehension, and it turns out there are two requirements:

a) Sleep-on-it means giving your brain time to process and remember how to control the muscles involved.

b) Errors helps your brain fine-tune the muscle-movements. Mistakes (trial-and-error), are mentally filed away with an order to avoid that mistake in the future.

Speed Reading

To become a master speed reader, over 1,200 words per minute, compared to the average reading speed for U.S. college graduates, requires 15 minutes daily practice for twenty-one days.

These strategic repetitions permit your brain to reorganize both its function and structure - for speed and enhanced comprehension. It provides the sleep-time and errors for your twelve eye-muscles and finger-muscles holding your pacer, to kick-in.

After three-weeks of practice new engrams (memory-traces), are created, and you motor-skills go on auto-pilot. You now own a permanent lifetime skill that will add up to 40% to your productivity, a competitive-edge, and keep you on the fast-track for promotions and personal growth.

Trial-And-Error

Did you know that trial-and-error is one of the three major systems of learning our brain owns? The other two are Observation and Symbolism seeing and hearing.

There are four elements to trial-and-error:

a) it produces knowledge, both know-how and prepositional.

b) it is problem-specific no generalities, just the correct answer.

c) non-optimal not all the answers nor the best one.

d) non-experiential you are not required to have prior knowledge.

Endwords:

The Scientific-Method uses a version of trial-and-error in formulating and testing hypotheses. Learning-reinforcement, biological-evolution, and drug-research requires the use of randomness, and trial-and-error, for success.

Trail-and-error requires you to search until you discover what satisfies your need.

We look for variations through randomness. It has a long and proud tradition. Use it.