Story of a Great Discovery in Speed Reading

A Story of a great discovery

This is not a lesson on speed reading. This lesson will give you an insight of how speed reading has started. Evelyn wood is the lady behind speed reading revolution and she coined the term speed reading.

Here is a brief history of how it started:

Evelyn Wood began her career as a counsellor for girls at a high school in Salt Lake City. As it happened, none of the youngsters she was trying to help could read well, and good reading seemed the key to getting them back on track in their studies. So Evelyn established a remedial reading program.
That program was quite successful, but she wanted to do more.  She was especially interested in finding ways that students could read beyond what many experts then regarded as the outer limit of reading speed, 1,000 words per minute. But first, she needed some proof that high-speed reading really was possible. The evidence came unexpectedly from one of her professors, Dr. C. Lowell Lees, the chairman of the speech department   at the University of Utah.

Evidence… 

One day, Evelyn turned in an eighty-page term paper to Dr. Lees, expecting him to read at home and return it to her later, as most professors did. Instead, he took the paper from her and began reading it right there. He went through the entire paper in under ten minutes, graded it and handed it back to her as she sat watching it in total amazement.

How fast did Dr Lees Read the paper? By her calculation, he was reading at about 2500 wpm. 

She was amazed with Dr Less reading ability but couldn’t figure out his technique even after questioning him. She was convinced that reading faster is possible, so she started searching for fastest readers alive. She eventually found 53 people who could read from 1500 WPM to 6000 WPM.  Even after interviewing and observing them, she observed their eyes were moving faster and in vertical direction. She couldn’t identify how they were doing

Frustration…

One day, she was reading the book Green Mansion by W.H. Hudson. Even though she was reading fairly quickly, her reading speed was not close to fast readers she had interviewed and read about.

Finally, in utter frustration she threw the book across the water and just sat there totally annoyed. A short time later, realizing that this mood isn’t getting her anywhere, she waded through the water, retrieved the book and headed back toward the cabin where she was spending her holiday.

Discovery at last…

That evening, she picked up the book again and started reading again in good mood. Some dirt remained on the pages and she started brushing the dirt away with the side of her hand.

Suddenly, she was moving through the pages at high speed as her eyes followed her hand’s natural, relaxed brushing movements. Before she knew it she had read more than 50,000 words in less than 10 minutes – at a rate of 5000 wpm.

From this experience, a technique of pacer was born. Pacer is a solution to reduce or eliminate most of the bad habits. 

Biggest take away from this story is use of pacer. Let’s understand what pacer is and how to use it. Jump to next lesson now. .

~Srinivas Reddy