“In normal reading, the brain is less taxed”

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Most adults read the same way they learned to read in school as children. The gaze jumps along the lines in small jumps and continues to pause at certain points to give the brain time to process the information. At the end of each line, the gaze jumps to the left and the reader must find the beginning of the next line. Speed-reading techniques help make this clunky affair more fluid.

Speed ​​reading expert Madlaina Hartmann says that even skipping to the next line takes up half the reading time. In her online and presence mode courses, she teaches, among other things, participants to read the next sentence backwards while jumping back. “The person doing it is twice as fast.” Another effective technique is to capture groups of meanings in which several words belonging to each other are perceived simultaneously.

With the “vertical wave motion” method, most text information can be processed in the shortest possible time. The method combines forward and reverse reading. The eyes move left and right in rhythmic waves in the middle of the text.

Not according to Madlaina Hartmann. That’s because in speed reading, he says, all information is processed, and not just – as in review reading – selective information that you think is important. The goal is to remove all the “noise”. This also includes the slow self-talk of the text – subvocalization – that even experienced readers often practice unconsciously. According to Hartmann, the brain is less stressed because it can absorb ten times more information during “normal” reading.

Fans of speed reading believe it is suitable for reading novels in addition to school materials, scientific papers, non-fiction books, and media articles. A speed reader who reads a book gets caught in a flow, Hartmann says. Because it can concentrate on the text in this way, it looks much more lively than traditional reading. “You can completely immerse yourself in a story. You feel as if a movie is flowing before your inner eye. Speed ​​reading is not just for reading aloud.”

If you don’t want to attend a course, you can choose from a variety of self-study programs. In a test by Stiftung Warentest, the Heku IT app came in first. For example, it includes exercises that teach you to quickly distinguish similar words such as tree and skirt.

Most of the techniques have been tried and tested and seem to work. For example, techniques in which the visual range of the eye is trained to perceive more text at the same time are controversial. It’s important to still have enough time to process information while reading, says psychology professor Ralph Radach in an interview with Stiftung Warentest. He explores the topic of speed reading and considers it realistic to double individual reading speed with appropriate techniques.

Source : Blick