Have you heard about the anti-slow reading app called Spritz? It’s a speed reading app, “reading reimagined” they say. Why do you need a speed reading app? Because reading is so time consuming. The thing that takes the most time is moving your eyes across the page so Spritz presents the text to you one word at a time with key letters highlighted to help you recognize the word faster. The app will supposedly help you read up to 1000 words a minute. The average reading rate of an adult is 220 words a minute. They are touting you can read a whole novel in under 90 minutes! That way you know you can either read more books or move on to doing something else with all your extra spare time.
Spritz is basically power skimming. One. Word. At. A. Time. Can. You. Imagine. What. That. Would. Do. To. Proust? Or Henry James? Or Virginia Woolf? Or pretty much any writer who isn’t a robot? Why anyone would want to read a novel that fast is beyond me. No, wait, I know who would. People who only read so they say they have read. The ones who aren’t really readers but want to look like it so they can sound smart.
But what sort of comprehension can one possibly manage at 1000 words a minute? Hardly any according to the Telegraph. There are limits to how fast you can process information. Apparently we max out on spoken words at 300 words per minute. And I don’t know about you, but when I read, no matter what I read, I hear the words in my head and if I don’t hear them in my head they don’t really register and I forget them, get lost, don’t know what I just read. So I wouldn’t be surprised if the 300 words per minute max for spoken words also held true more or less for reading.
Plus, when we read we don’t just read one word at a time. We read phrases too. Our eyes also do not move smoothly across the page even though that is what it feels like. When we read our eyes move back and forth across the line as we put together an understanding of what we are reading.
The people at Sprtiz want everyone to use their app. Sorry Spritz, you won’t get everyone because I will never use it. Ever.
If you want a demo of what the app looks like and how it works at different speeds, you can give 250, 350, and 500 words a minute a try here. If your experience is like mine, 250 felt fast but totally doable without much effort. At 350 I started to feel tense and felt my shoulders start to move up to my ears. At 500 my blood pressure shot up and I felt a little crazy and angry because I couldn’t completely comprehend the whole thing. One could argue that with practice, speed will improve. But what’s the point?
I’ll stick with slow reading, thanks.
Me neither.
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Richard, it’s dreadful, isn’t it?
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ickβ¦. for some reason i feel like this app is for lazy, self absorbed people.
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njmckay, self absorbed I can agree with, their time is so valuable and they are so needed by others that they need to speed read their way through everything. Definitely ick.
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Does this app train you to read faster? I still don’t understand its function. How can it help? Anyway, one major point is what you’ve mentioned already. Our actual reading involves eye movement, here the eye stays on one spot. I think the reason we get bogged down is when we intermittently move our eyes, stop and go, instead of moving smoothly through the page. Can this app help us overcome that problem? Just wondering.
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Arti, it lets you set the speed and they say as you get better and more comfortable at reading at a certain speed then you should/could up the speed to the next level. The app gives you just one word or part of a word if it is long at a time so you don’t have to move your eyes which is how you can supposedly read so much faster.
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I’m pretty sure even a spritz powered reader can’t hold a candle to Harold Bloom whose reading speed in his prime, according to this article http://radioopensource.org/at-home-with-harold-bloom-2-on-the-humanities/, “was 1000 pages an hour.” It goes on to say “it might be less than half that today. Meaning that nowadays it could take an afternoon, not just the lunch hour, to consume War and Peace.” (!)
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Surendran, interesting. I can’t say I am a Bloom fan and I don’t especially trust his self-reporting. I suspect a reading speed that fast is only for books he has read before and knows quite well because really, that amounts to skimming and however brilliant Bloom might be, he isn’t super human! π
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This is CRAZY and takes so much of the fun out of reading! I tried the link, and my experience tells me that:
– I have to concentrate so much that it is exhausting
– as a sleep deprived mother of a small baby it was not pleasant at all (perhaps as a student cramming before the exams I would have endured it, but now?)
– my reading speed depends of the language. As English isn’t my mother tongue, I can’t read and make sense of anything at 500wpm unless I watch the sentence several times (which ruins the point, ah) much less at 1000wpm. Obviously the crazy app-creators are once again American-centric.
Now if you excuse me I have to fetch some eyedrops.
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Smithereens, it is crazy! The app actually offers different languages so you could change it to French and go crazy in your own language π
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Yes, I saw a report about this over the weekend and simply couldn’t think of anything worse. What is the point of reading if you’re going to take away all the joy of savouring a particularly well written sentence? And what about when you need to go back and check out something you didn’t give enough attention to the first time round, possibly because that was what the author wanted? This isn’t reading. I’m not quite sure what to call it. Decoding, perhaps? But it definitely isn’t reading.
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Alex, exactly! These people obviously don’t understand the point of reading. Ok, I can see why you might want to speed read your way through a company report or something but even then it seems you’d be likely to miss something important, at least I would be afraid of that! You are right, it isn’t reading!
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Very much to be avoided I think! How strange to see that Stakhanovite reading is thought desirable by anybody!
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Ian, I suspect the speed reading is for those who consume words in order to stay current rather than for enjoyment. Not something I am interested in!
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It might be beneficial to politicians who approve bills of thousands of pages without reading them. If they could remember anything of what they read.
I wonder if you tried the app and then went back to reading in a normal manner if the speed would improve? I read to fill the hours with another world, to appreciate an author’s skill with words, and/or to learn something new. I like knowing that a phrase I liked was at the middle of a page on the left hand side, or at the top of the page on the right. I like knowing that I can re-check something by its placement on a page, and it always surprises me that this is possible even days later.
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jenclair, oh that is sad but true. It would be interesting to know if using the app increased reading speed even when not using it. I enjoy reading for the same reasons you do and that is not something you want to rush through π
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Why waste creative energy, hell just ordinary energy, on trying to ruin the reading process? It’s not broken. There’s no need to fix it. Read at whatever speed gives you pleasure and meaning and all those other things you are actually reading FOR. On a different note, this reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend the other day – her head of department is a Professor Epps. I said, aren’t you dying to say in a departmental meeting, when a tedious job comes up, ‘there’s an Epps for that?’ Heh. It’s these foolish things that amuse me.
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Litlove, but you know, to certain people reading is broken, the kind who are always online always worried about being left out of something, you can’t read fast enough. It’s sad really. What a great story! There’s an Epps for that! Wouldn’t it be great if someone actually said it? I’d love to see the look on his face:D
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You know, I just started reading Journey To The Center of the Earth by Jules Verne and I thought to myself, “Gosh, I wish I’d have picked this up when I was 12! What an adventure I missed.” To me, that is what reading should be…a delightful journey somewhere you haven’t been or visiting a time in which you haven’t lived. So what’s the rush? Where’s the savoring? Why bother reading at all if one simply wishes to collect as many words as possible before one dies? Might as well scan the phone book (They do still make them, don’t they?) or The American Heritage Dictionary. Why not just scan words in a foreign language? After all, the object is not whether one actually understands or finds meaning in the words…they’re just a bunch of letters after all. Reading: There’s An App For That. What progress!
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Grad, exactly! As to the phone book, I’m not sure if they still make them or not. I haven’t used one in years and I can’t remember the last time one was dropped onto my porch.
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There are some things I like to read fast, such as newspaper articles, how to manuals, self-help books (especially those that state the obvious in slick packaging and repeat themselves endlessly), etc.
But literature? I read for fun (and my sense of fun includes 19th century tomes) and what’s the fun in moving pell-mell through something that should be savored. Reminds me of my dog eating her dinner!
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Jane, I agree, there are some things every likes to read fast, don;t need an app for that though but I guess some people do. I agree that reading literature at such a fast rate would take the fun out of it. If you aren’t reading novels for fun there is no sense in reading them at all if you ask me.
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LOL, I hadn’t seen this when I used my food analogies! I Ws going to say something similar about some things info read fast aka skim! Like newspapers etc as you say.
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I’ve been composing a post on this and have pretty much the same feeling about this. I’ve tried it for a week and just ant see there is any real value since I wasn’t retaining the info I had allegedly read.
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BookerTalk, oh you’ve tried the app? I look forward to reading your post about it. Just looking at the demo I had a hard time imagining comprehension and retention could be very good and it sounds like that is indeed the case.
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It’s not widely available yet because they need some money for development I think. But a super geeky guy in work so show had a version of it (I didn’t dare ask how) and I got to play with it. Really horrible experience. It’s like those installations you see in modern art galleries where random words get flashed in front of you. At the end of “reading” a report with it for bout 10 mins I still had no clue what I’d read.
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That does sound like a horrible experience. It’s all hype for the app now, I wonder how many people will actually end up finding it useful.
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Yeah, I don’t think this is for me either–it makes me dizzy just thinking about it. I not only have to say each word in my head (even the the’s a’s and ands) but sometimes I have to distinguish voices and accents, too! I am all for reading more books but I don’t think I would enjoy cramming them all in this way!
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Danielle, cramming is right. Just make me independently wealthy so I can read all day and I’ll get through plenty of books are my own pace thanks π
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I’m not even sure I’ll try the sample. Sounds way too stressful for me. Like you I hear the words too … I like to almost feel them roll off my tongue. Not that I read THAT slowly, mouthing words, but that as I hear them I can almost feel them too. Literature in particular is to be savoured like a gourmand, not consumed like a glutton.
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whisperinggums, yes, I like to feel the word roll off my tongue too, or since I don’t say them out loud, resonate around in my brain. Though sometimes I will read out loud if no one is around. I am a book glutton but I savor them like a gourmand π
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Yes, resonate around the brain but sometimes I can almost feel them! Gourmand, yes!
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