Radar Readar Reader
By ice rivers
- 728 reads
Take out your radar guns and stop watches. We're about to discuss baseball, speed and reading.
If you wanna be a major league batter, you need to be able to hit a 92 MPH fastball. If you can't hit that, a fastball is all you'll see. No need to throw you a curve or a slider. They'll just blow the fastabll by you, make ya feel like a fool.
If you wanna be a major league reader, you got to read at least 350 words a minute. If you're slower than that, your mind, which is traveling at about 1000 words per minute, will get bored and start looking for distraction which will lead to a loss of comprehension which will lead to re-reading which will slow your reading down even further which will lead to 'studying' which for most of us means reading the same few paragraphs over and over again until we fall asleep, decide to grab a beer or turn on the teevee and hope that the teacher asks a question that can be answered by the paragraphs that we've read over and over again even as we gave up on the majority of the reading. If we're reading at a speed less than that in a classroon, we're liable to start throwing paper wads at the nearerst student who is also looking for a distraction and is relieved by it.
We slow down our reading when we subvocalize. Subvocalization means we are saying the words aloud to our selves in our mind which automatically takes us back to the earliest days of our reading when we were learning how to read by syllable which means we were decoding. It's easy to spot a subvocalizer because they move their lips when they read. Moving your lips is a tell.
Stop that inner voice. It's slowing down the speed of your swing. Bat speed equals power so if you're lucky enough to get around on a fastball, you won't hit it far which means that you can't hit the fastball which means you're not in the major leagues.
Let's face it, so much of what we used to call schooling is based on reading. If you are a slow reader, you've been punished for that lack of speed through most of your academic career and probably don't read much anymore as a consequence. We sorta give up on reading instruction somewhere around the third grade as by that time, we have already figured out who is "smart" and who isn't.
Next we move on to comprehension. By the time we get to high school, English class is all about comprehension which is a problem for those who didn't do the reading in the first place. because they fell asleep or were bored or were distracting or distracted When teaching is done skillfully test what they teach and teach what they test. The tests are mostly about comprehension as we have stopped teaching reading at about fifth grade. For many pupils, reading speed has kicked in at around eleven years of age and stays that way until an effort is consciously made to increase that speed.
According to rumor JFK could read at a thousand words a minute. JFK was known for his speed. According to Angie Dickinson, having sex with JFK was the best 20 seconds of her life.
Not to be otudone, Donald Tump can read at 2000 words a minute. After reading the Tolkien trilogy in record time, Trump said "It's about wizards and shit."
Kennedy was even faster at writing. His best seller Profiles in Courage was written in no time at all. Same with Trump's Art of the Deal.
Many decoders (both North and South) are baffled by multisyllabic vocabulary words because of an inability to read in context. Good readers don't need a dictionary to look up the words because they can grasp their meaning due to the context of what they're reading. Take the word "lugubrious' for example. Victor Hugo uses that word a record 46 times in Les Miserables in describing sad or mournful situations. If you read in context, you already know the meaning of the word. If you've read this far, you probably knew the meaning at the start.
I could go on but I'm running out of my allotted writing time so let me 'splain. I've emboldened every hundredth word (approximately) I'll give you a word count at the end and you can use your readar guns to determine your reading speed. If you got to the second power in the first minute, you're at around 300 wpm. If you got to reading, you're about 600 words a minute
Now just for shitz and giggles read from the beginning of this piece down to here in 30 seconds and you can see what it looks and sounds like to read over a thousand words a minute. You're gonna have to force yourself. You're gonna need your timer or better yet someone to time you.
Might as well throw in a couple of comprehension questions just to make sure you aren't reading like Trump.
1) What did Angie Dickinson say?
2) what is subvocalization?
3) How might Tump descibe the trilogy?
4) what's the name of JFK's best seller?
5) what does lugubrious mean?
6) How often is it used in Les Miserables?
7) What's your speed?
There is much more to say on the subject but my time is up as Lynn just returned from shopping, I'm still dicking around on ther computer and she's timing me.
If this whole thing took you a minute to read....you're at about 720 WPM.
Two minutes, means you're at 360.
Five seconds and you're Donald Trump.
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Comments
I enjoyed this. A good read.
I enjoyed this. A good read. I got to the end of the paragraph before the JFK paragraph, but in a way I was cheating because I'd already read it once so I knew I had to read fast (and it's easier to kid yourself a second time that you're reading it properly). Still I like a light examination. I could answer all your questions too bar the one about JFK's book. I wondered too if the other questions are easier because they involve unusual words or humour. The Trump parts made me laugh. At least I can read faster than Trump, but maybe I knew that already, maybe everyone can. How fast a reader
are you?
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