Are Reading Like a Dyslexic?

Scientific-Evidence: Dyslexics Can Change

Review of report by the Brain-Behavior Research Center, University of Haifa, Isreal.

About two-years ago Speedlearning 100 worked with two young students who were

labeled ‘dyslexic’. They reversed letters while reading, and generally were in trouble and frustrated with their school studies.

All we had to offer – we are not masters of reversing dyslexia – was the concepts of

speed reading, and in particular using the RasterMaster, the cursor-on-

the-computer, and a ‘pen’ - as ‘pacers’. Why? Our eyes ‘must’ follow a moving object – it’s an instinct and a reflex.

We know from decades of experience that our schools (public-private-parochial),

produce lousy readers starting in the 3^rd-grade, averaging only 215 words per minute, with about 65% comprehension.

When they are tested for reading-speed and comprehension in high-school, college

and graduate-school – many years later – they have accelerated to 250 words-per-minute, and not improved their comprehension. That is not reading, it is ‘snailing’.

The reason for such s-l-o-w reading is not dyslexia, but the inactivity of their ‘peripheral-vision’, and the lack of a ‘pacer’ to reduce ‘regressions’ per page.

The average college-graduate, lawyer, doctor, etc, are snailing

instead of reading because they read one-word-at-a-time, and suffer from

‘porous-concentration’ – they forget 75% of what they read within sixty-minutes.

The ‘hear’ each word they read in their head – it’s called subvocalization – and

that alone reduces their reading speed by up to 40%. All of us are capable of

reading at the Speed-of-Sight, 300% faster than standard reading – which is at

the Speed-of-Speech.

Normal reading is a left-brained experience, the site of our language abilities.

Speedlearning utilizes our left-brain, and adds the unique skills of our

right-brain – ‘pattern-recognition, spatial-skills, and holistic (context) scanning’.

Profound Scientific Fact: the slower we read, the worse our comprehension, and

the ‘faster’ we scan a page, the greater concentration and long-term memory.

Why?

Our brain gets the benefit of the ‘context’ of the sentences above and below.

It’s like getting the meaning of a word you don’t understand in a sentence – from

the rest of the words and phrases in the sentence.

Graduates of Speedlearning 100 read three (3) books, articles, and reports in the

time it takes their peers to complete even one. On average they save up to two (2)

hours daily, improve their personal-productivity, while tripling their reading-speed.

Back to the article in the Journal of Neurolinguistics and the research by the

University of Haifa, 18 (2005) 197-219. Don’t let the title put you off –

‘An fMRI study of the differential effects of word presentation rates (reading acceleration) on dyslexic readers’ brain activity patterns.’ A. Karni et.al.

Point 1: Word reading can be considered as an ‘independent variable’.

Point 2: Reading speed influences comprehension as well as accuracy in reading.

Point 3: Faster reading does not necessarily incur a cost in terms of accuracy.

Point 4: All readers including those with dyslexia - increase their decoding accuracy

and comprehension – if made to read FASTER than normal (routine), reading rate.

One more time – the faster you read, the “better” your comprehension. This proof applies to all of us – in addition to those with dyslexia.

What happened to the two-kids? They became brilliant stars in college – thank you very much.

There is further evidence that kids who suffer from dyslexia appear to be very creative as adults. We don’t recommend dyslexia for cognitive-growth, but speedlearning 100 takes the position they can be great-readers - at the end-of-the-speed reading tunnel.

See ya,

copyright © 2005

H. Bernard Wechsler

www.speedlearning.org