You can read this!

 

 

Anne Jones is the World Champion Speed Reader. Having accomplished the feat six times over, she is frequently invited to preview book reading sessions, including Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (for which she set her fastest record at 4251 words per minute!) and more recently, The Lost Symbol, in London. A teacher of accelerated learning courses and an author too, Anne shares the tricks of the trade with Indira Parthasarathy…

How do speed readers differ from ordinary readers? What is the average wpm rate for the two groups?

They don’t differ. Anyone can choose to speed read. Once you have learned to speed read, you can decide whether to speed read or not. I would not choose to speed read Tagore’s poetry or Shakespeare’s, for example.

People’s reading speed improves with practice. I collect data on the training day. The recall is also tested and the results are good. The wpm varies as you will see:

Individuals: Starting speed 368 wpm, finished at 1250 wpm; Starting speed 150 wpm, finished at 500 wpm. Groups: A group of bright 17-year-olds, average speed 237 wpm, average end of course 826 wpm.

A group of Financial Times readers: Average speed 228 wpm, average end of course 592 wpm. A group of lawyers: Average speed 199 wpm, average end of course 807 wpm. Of course, if we use the skill regularly after training, speeds improve further. Mine did!

Is speed reading essentially an art? Like the ability of some to crack the Rubik’s Cube in record time (speedcubers)? Or is it a skill for anyone to sharpen, as one is led to believe given the speed reading courses available, including yours..?

There are many books on speed reading, including Tony Buzan’s The Speed Reading Book, published by the BBC. This is the only one I recommend. It is Tony’s method I learned as a beginner. What I do now is as a result of competing at the Mind Sports Olympiad. I learned a great deal from that experience. Your mind set – how you approach the task – is critical at top speeds, if you need to recall detail for the answers to questions.

Doesn’t speed reading kill the idea of ‘curling up with a book’?

Some of us are so busy that unless we speed read, we don’t get time to curl up with a book! I sometimes choose to read slowly if I have the time and I want to relax in that way. Is speed reading advisable for any kind of book/genre? Or does it only serve to aid curricular reading, and not advocated for ‘pleasure’ reading, or vice-versa?

Speed reading, combined with a good study technique, is ideal for in-depth study. It is a way of reading more efficiently. I read books for pleasure fast if I am short of time, or I am desperate to find out what happens to the characters.

How different is speed reading from skimming?

When I teach speed reading I do refer to skimming. Skimming is reading the first and last paragraphs of a document and the topic sentences of each paragraph. Speed reading is reading all the words quickly. You could speed read and skim too.

“Speed reading courses teach skimming, not reading, though most won’t admit that,” appeared in a Slate article. Your comments…

I teach different types of reading. I was an English teacher before I became a speed reading trainer and, believe me, I would not want to teach skimming by itself. Reading with good understanding and recall is what I teach. I cover different levels of reading.

Reading to know something – this can include scanning or skimming for information; reading to understand and the ways to maximise comprehension; reading to synthesise ideas; reading to evaluate ideas…

Does speed reading not come in the way of comprehension and assimilating information well enough?

I use speed reading to research the writing I do (children’s fiction and educational materials). I find it essential in comprehension and assimilation. I work with some of the top people in their fields and their organisations keep inviting me back, so I am very certain that my customers value speed reading for those purposes as well. Which books do you hold the speed reading records for? How was your experience with The Lost Symbol?

I have speed read books for the Mind Sports Olympiad competitions and I am their speed reading record holder. I also have been asked to speed read Harry Potter books at their launches. The fastest speed was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at 4251 wpm.

The problem is that there were no objective tests until the Mind Sports Olympiad. The difficulty there too is that each book is different in terms of layout (word density correlates to faster times as less page turning) and conceptual difficulty. Therefore, a record really relates to a specific book. In terms of raw speed, there are people in America who claim to have read much faster than me. It is strange that they never turned out to compete at the Olympiad.

I have not prepared for The Lost Symbol as well as I would have liked, as I was invited only three days before the launch. I read and re-read the previous books by Dan Brown to get used to his style on those days before the launch.

Before the reading on the 15th (September), I did some yoga breathing and stretches to mentally prepare.

The speed I read it at on its release was 3845.8 wpm and the time was 41 minutes and 55 seconds. The Lost Symbol is an odd book to speed read. If you are reading fast, you open your mind and you absorb the information. Your thoughts do not act as a buffer between you and the book. Some parts of the book have a horror and violence element which have a greater impact if you are reading in this way. It will be popular with people who like twists and turns in the plot and the macabre.

Any golden tip that you may wish to share with those looking to increase their reading speeds?

The golden tip to speed reading is to use a guide (pointer) to guide your eyes as you read. Move the pointer faster to get your eyes to move faster!