The students averaged a 60 percent comprehension level without ever reading the required material, a reflection of what Carver says is the tests shortcomings. "They are designed to compare readers with each other - not to evaluate if someone has improve."Ĭarver, a reading specialist for 13 years, says he took a group of college students, told them to imagine they were reading material from the Wood course and then gave them the West Tests. "The tests they use are not designed for testing what they are claiming," says the University of Missouri's Carver. Some reading specialist take issue with the tests, multiple-choice quizzes that are supposed to measure the amount of information that the reading students have retained. To prove that the method works, the company cites the results of comprehension tests given to their students at the beginning and end of the course. based engineering concern that helped build Metro in Washington. "It's like teaching Darwin against the Bible," says Franklin Agardy, executive vice president of Wood Reading Dynamics, now a subsidnary of URS, the San Mateo, Calif. Some speed reading instructions say their critics are narrow-mined and clinging to outmoded concepts about reading. It's like learning to read music - you can see many notes at the same time." "It's seeing words in chunks - reading as the author thought it. "It's a visual form of reading," says Verla Nielson, director of the program's Salt Lake City operations. At Evelyn Wood, People learn a new way to read one that teaches readers to take in whole ideas rather than single words, they say. When the students were tested at 600 words a minute, they were "simply getting an idea of what they were reading," in effect, skimming.Įvelyn Wood officials, who regularly claim to have students reading at 2,000 words a minute, says such studies ignore a basic premise of their approach. Ronald Carver, an education professor at the University of Missouri, says tests he gave students there tend to support that notion. I have a hard time believing that people can read beyond 900 words per minute." "I can't imagine that someone reading 4,000 words a minute is reading," says Keith Rayner, a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Although the differ as to what is the upper limit for reading speed, most agree that anyone who claims to be reading more than 900 words a minute, is in fact, skimming. Many reading experts challenge the system. "It was very new, so new that it almost frightened me," she said. She was a graduate student at the University of Utah there when she discovered the technique after years of observing naturally fast readers. "I think it's the greatest invention since the printing press," agrees Evelyn Wood, now 72, and recovering from a stroke in her native Salt Lake City. Donald Wood, husband of the woman who founded the system and helped organize a national franchise system that teaches speed reading in 26 cities around the country. "Skimming is a nasty word in our business," claims M. To Evelyn Wood officials, those are fighting words. "They have the illusion of improving their reading when in fact they are skimming," charges John Guthrie, director of research for the 70,000-member International Reading Association. They dispute the value of the $395 Evelyn Wood course and others like it, saying simply that no one - regardless of their training - can read that fast. Kennedy's military advisers, actor Charlton Heston, and a host of members of Congress have enrolled in the courses since they were first offered in 1959.īut now a growing number of reading specialists around the country are raising serious questions about speedreading. More than 1 million speed reading aspirants, including President Jimmy Carter, John F. They'll triple your reading they say, or your money back. This is the message of Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics, the California based company that has made millions teaching Americans how to glide through the pile of best sellers sitting on your shelf.Įvelyn Wood claims it will have you reading at up to 5,000 words at the conclusion of a seven-session course.
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