V.  Six Myths about Reading

When you read textbooks and other technical material for full comprehension, you must read as carefully as you read the word problems in the last chapter. Occasionally you may not have time to read carefully and you may just skim the material. But you should recognize that when you skim, you will not comprehend many of the details. You cannot learn mathematics by skimming a math text, nor can you learn chemistry, physics, biology, or any other science by skimming textbooks in those areas.

There is a great deal of misinformation about reading. Here are six popular myths about reading which research has shown to be false.

Myth 1.  Don’t Subvocalize When You Read

You sometimes hear the advice that you should not move your lips, tongue or throat muscles when you read. You should not even hear the words in your mind when you read. You should be a totally “visual” reader. In some books, teachers have been advised to give young pupils candy or gum to prevent subvocalizing, and if necessary to even put a pencil or a ruler in a child’s mouth to save him from this habit.

A series of studies have now shown that subvocalizing is useful and perhaps even necessary for good comprehension of difficult material. For example, in one experiment college students who were taught to suppress their subvocalizing responses were only able to maintain good comprehension for easy reading material. Their comprehension of difficult reading material suffered drastically when they didn’t subvocalize as they read.

All the evidence indicates that you should subvocalize freely when you read. It can produce better comprehension of technical material and a fuller appreciation of literary writing where alliteration and other poetic devices depend on hearing the words.

Myth 2.  Read Only the Key Words

This advice is completely illogical. How can you know which words are the key words, until you first read the words? The advice assumes you have some magical, subliminal mechanism which allows you to pre-read the words and select out the key words which you will then read.

When students do try to read just key words, they frequently emerge with a misinterpretation of the material. For example, one student I worked with read the following sentence silently:

I asked the student what the sentence said and he replied: “The level of Greek culture was very high.” I said: “How about the first part of the sentence—some scraps of evidence?” He answered that he had skipped over that part and had tried to read just the key words, namely, “high … level of culture … Athenians.”

Myth 3.  Don’t Be a Word-by-Word Reader

Emerald Dechant, a prominent reading researcher, made the following comments on this myth in the Eleventh. Yearbook of the National Reading Conference:

Myth 4.  Read in Thought Groups

This myth is closely related to myth 3. Since good readers basically read one word at a time, they obviously do not read in thought groups.

Naturally in reading you group words together mentally. Verbs and prepositions link nouns with other nouns, and so on. But you cannot “read in thought groups” in the sense of visually focussing on groups of words which form thoughts. In fact, this would be logically impossible. You couldn’t know which words formed a “thought group” until you first read the words. It would be impossible to read by moving your eyes from one thought group to another.

Myth 5.  You can Read at Speeds of 1,000 or more Words a Minute—Without any Loss of Comprehension

Speed reading “experts” say if you read 250–300 words a minute you are plodding along at a horse-and-buggy rate and wasting your time. You should be reading three to ten times that fast. However, a sample of University of Michigan professors was found to read at an average rate of 303 words per minute, and the average rate for Harvard freshmen was 300 words per minute. Furthermore, a number of experiments have found that when people who have learned to skim at 600 words a minute or more cut back to 300 words per minute their comprehension improves. In study after study, approximately 300 words per minute has turned out to be the maximum rate at which people can read without sacrificing comprehension.

Students preparing for tests like the SAT, GRE, or LSAT can rest assured that a reading speed of 250–300 words a minute will allow them to attain a very high score if their comprehension is strong. Their preparation should consist mainly of strengthening their vocabulary and comprehension skills, not attempting to whip-up their reading speed.

Myth 6.  Don’t Regress or Re-read

Speed reading “experts” say you should never regress or re-read a section of material, even if you feel you have not understood it well. Re-reading is said to be a bad reading habit and totally unproductive. Instead you should forge ahead and your understanding will be clarified as you read on.

Studies show that good readers do not follow this advice. With textbooks and other complicated material they must frequently re-read sentences and paragraphs to get the full meaning.

A Speed Reading “Guarantee”

One of the major speed reading companies supports its claim by offering to return a portion of your payment if they fail to triple your “reading efficiency.” This sounds impressive to many people because they don’t know what their “reading efficiency” represents. Here is the definition of reading efficiency:

Assume you begin the speed reading course as a good reader who reads at 300 words per minute and answers 95% of the questions correctly on the comprehension test. Your reading efficiency is calculated like this:

You then complete the speed reading course. Suppose on the test to determine your new reading efficiency you read 2,000 words a minute with 55% comprehension. Your new reading efficiency is calculated to be:

Your reading efficiency has more than tripled. But what good is a reading efficiency of 1,100 if it is based on a comprehension score of 55%? Would you want a surgeon to operate on you with anything less than his maximum possible comprehension of medical texts? Don’t lawyers, nuclear engineers, and auto mechanics require the maximum possible comprehension to do the best possible job?

If you want to master your academic subjects and perform well on tests, you must read with care and thoroughness, and give the work the time it requires. There are no magical shortcuts. In reading textbooks and technical material, use all the activities of good problem solvers described in chapter III.