All that has been said about efficient study is based on the assumption that the student has normal reading, writing, and arithmetical skills. However, many studies, surveys, and reports from those who counsel students show that high school and college students have deficiencies in these basic skills. Probably the most common deficiency is in reading ability. Some college students read no better than seventh grade pupils, and at least one-third of college freshmen read too slowly to do their most effective work.
Reading Is Complex Behavior
It is not surprising that reading deficiencies are so common because the reading act is complex. This complexity creates many opportunities for error to occur. Examining the behavior of the eyes during reading makes one wonder how reading is possible at all. If we stand directly behind a reader and carefully observe onti of his eyeballs by reflection in a small mirror held just below it, we see that the eye moves from left to right, not with a steady sweep but with jerks and pauses. Then it swings back from the extreme right to the extreme left to start the next line. Experimental studies have shown that during the movement of the eyes, perception of letters and words is impossible. How, then, can one ever learn to read? We now know that the eye as a receiver of information from the printed page works during the stops or fixation pauses.
During fixation pauses the reader attends to the stimulus mater ial not in a piecemeal fashion but as a pattern or whole. He does this because he nas learned that it is not necessary to perceive every letter and every word in o!der to obtain the essential information. All languages contain letters and sounds that are redundant, and the languages themselves are redundant, i.e., they contain more words than are necessary for conveying information. When you perceive the letter q, you know it will be followed by u. When you see informati, you know it will be followed by on. When you see ps ch l y, you fill in the missing letters easily. When you see
The land the free home brave
you fill in the missing words without difficulty. In reading, certain cue letters or words are all that is necessary for ordinary comprehension.
Slow and Fast Readers
What, then, is the difference between slow and fast readers? Both, of course,.take advantage of redundancy in language, but the fast reader s so to a greater extent. He pauses just often enou'gh to get the sense of what he reads and thereby reduces the number of glances per se. The poor reader spends toq much time looking at words that arry irrelevant or repeated information. To improve his reading peed, he should therefore decrease the number of pauses per line. And to accomplish this it is necessary to expand the number of words perceived in a single glance, The trick is to force oneself to take in more territory during the information-gathering process when the eyes are at rest.
Another common fault of poor readers is to make regressive eye movements. Such movements are back tracks, or returns, to a word or phrase which did not clearly register. These movements usually defeat the reader's purpose, which is to gather information from the material before him. Regressive movements may impede the information-gathering pr-ocess by interfering with the train of thought, so that ideas become jumbled and unrelated. If you are a backtracking reader, make every effort to break the habit.
Don't vocalize as you read. You have no doubt seen children whisper to themselves when they are beginning to read. As they gain reading skill, the whispering becomes inaudible, but their lips, tongue, and throat muscles still move as if they were talking. Some college students have not progressed beyond this stage. This kind of vocalizing lowers the rate of reading and acts as a distraction, preventing you from grasping the full significance of what is read. The purpose of reading is to perceive not words, in themselves, but significant cues, which are the raw material or vehicles of ideas:
Phrases and sentences are the units which convey the ideas on the printed page, alld they are the units which must be comprehended. Reading without vocal activity allows one to grasp the phrases, and hence the thought, quickly, in a minimum of time.
Efficient reading is, of course, impeded by a deficient vocabulary. You should not attempt to read with speed at all costs. Some students do this by skipping over new words, hoping to get their meaning from some later sentence or paragraph. Occasionally these deduced meanings are correct, but frequently they are not. The safe procedure is to get into the habit of checking definitions of all unfamiliar words. Underline new words when they are first encountered and look up their meaning in a good dictionary before leaving the assignment. After a dictionary has been consulted, return to the context in which the word was seen and reread it so that you can see how it fits into the total setting. This adds meaning to what you are reading with help to establish the meaning of the word for future use
What about speed readirig courses? Studies have heen inconcludsive as to the value of speed reading programs. On the positive side (besides those who have commercial interest in speed reading pro grams, along with some of their custormers), there are those who say that reading speed can be increased to between 1,000 and 2,000 word per minute. These proponents include some independent research who believe that comprehension at these levels is adequate for so types of material. On the negative side, there are those who say that high reading speed cuts down comprehension. Let us relate one study un the controversy.
College students who er,rolled in a university speed-readinq program were tested for immediate and basic comprehension. Fou different types of literature was used. These included "heavy fiction" (Doctor Zhivago), "light nonficticn" (Playboy), "light fiction" (Redbook), and "heavy nonfiction" ( textbook in experimental psychology). the selections were about equally long, They were presented in the same format, double-paced typing.
Each student read two kinds of literature and was immediately tested for comprehension. Weeks later. each student was tested again. Other tests were conducted, with the usual experimelltal and control groups involved. Three genelalizations emerged. First, it is believed that the average speed reader can.not triple his reading speed (as often claimed), or even double it. without missing large chunks of the message, Second. there is some evidence of better comprehension at faster speeds. This suggests that some speed reading techniques can be valuable for some people and for certain purposes. For example, to skim literatlure intelligently may be a very useful skill. Most of us, after all. have only a limited amount of time for general reading. Third. the claim that mos, of us. must of the time can increase our reading speed dramatically without loss of comprehension remains yet to be proven. Each of us should ask: What do I wish to get from what I read?) How much time and effort will it take for me'?"
Individual rcadiag habits have greatly, In general. those peopl who read widely-the subject matter ranging from newspapers and magazines to technical material and pleasure reading-read well. A vailabilit y of reading material is important, and so is convenience. Most people will not go out of their way to read a conventional bulietin board. but they may habitually read single daily items placed in the elevator or short items handed out at the plant gate.
