Myth #2: Skimming is Speed Reading
All too often we hear that speed reading is simply a matter of forcing the eye to move faster over the text. This skimming or "scanning" of the text only ever succeeds in harvesting random clauses; often recalled completely out of context. Although this method is the first to be labelled as "speed reading" by it's inventor, Evelyn Wood, I would point out that the "Wood Method" and its variants are not even reading. Skimming is just pretending to read, because the objective is not so much to understand the text but to run the eyes over the text. Speed reading is based on the instant recognition of words and of the grammatical structures such as clauses, sentences and paragraphs into which they fit.
Another type of skimming involves drawing words and word groups that stand out from each paragraph or page without any sense of structure or context. The immediate result is the construction of nonsense or "garbage sentences" that are unconsciously reconstructed into something more sensible to the "reader". While this gives the "reader" a high degree of confidence in understanding the material, the assumptions made in reconstruction are untested and often incorrect. This leads to a high degree of false or synthetic memory of the text and a correspondingly high degree of error in comprehension.
Speed reading is not a matter of disciplining eye movement but using natural eye movement as a guide to the degree of recognition the reader has of words and clauses, and as a guide to learning the recognition of those words and clauses accordingly. This is because proper reading technique is the movement of the eye from one fixation to the next where there is no set length or size for each fixation because each fixation is comprises a recognised word or word group.
An alternative method of reading is attenuated or gaze reading. When practised correctly this method first ascertains the structure connecting recognised words and word groups in a paragraph by gazing at the paragraph until the structure is apparent. While some people can do this with surprising speed, it doesn't work for everyone. This may be related to temperament. However, I would venture the opinion that unless a sufficient proportion of the text is immediately recognisable as chunks large enough to be connected by a fairly simple structure, this method of reading is impractical. Until a high degree of recognition of sizeable word groups is possible for the reader, the conventional "fixation by fixation" reading method is the fastest way to read.
