Reader's Reverie

coberst

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Reader’s Reverie

We have learned how to read while in a trance-like state in the same manner that we drive our car. I assume everybody drives like I drive; I drive while in reverie (lost in thought).

“Your reading assignment for tomorrow is Chapter II” commands the teacher. “Yes mom, I have done my homework” replies Jimmie to his mother when he requests permission to visit his friend next door.

Jimmie has, quickly and painlessly, completed the assigned 50 pages of reading while his thoughts were focused on the events that happened in school that day.

Our schooling has taught us to sleep-read. Now, what do we do if we want more out of life than is available in day-to-day reality? If we want more we must first teach our self how to read with comprehension. We must first learn that reading can be for the purpose of comprehending important stuff.

While we are learning to read with comprehension we need to learn how to write short essays. The short essay is a means to learn what we know and don’t know. Writing an essay is like the artist painting a landscape. I am not an artist but I suspect the artist does not know what her painting will be until it is. The artist and the essay writer are attempting to communicate what is in the mind for the purpose of ‘seeing’ it for the first time. I occasionally read my completed essay with amazement because I did not know that I knew that.

The Internet discussion forum is an ideal means for practicing these skills. I think we miss a great learning experience when we treat forum discussions as just a ‘verbal video game’ or a good place to post our graffiti.

The essay and the painting are modes of creation and not just the modes of communication.

I have about three reading speeds for serious non fiction; skimming speed is about 300 pages in 30 minutes, the first reading that is about 50 pages per hour, and a second reading that is about 20 pages per hour. After that I go into my essay writing speed that may take many hours to complete a chapter. What are your reading speeds?
 
coberst said:
What are your reading speeds?
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I can't read any faster than I can talk. When I read, I actually "hear" the words in my head. When I read Randi's commentaries, it's Randi's voice and inflection that I "hear". (I have "voices" for everyone on this board, too.) It's usually a shock when I hear an author read, because it never matches "my voice" for that author.

Of course, because I work with language all the time, and read thousands of pages a year, I have my shortcuts. But for the most part, these involve "skipping" strategies, such as recognizing which parts of a document I can omit altogether (summaries of other material I've already read, formulaic prose that adds no information, bits which are not relevant to my purpose, etc.), which parts I should scan for keywords in case there's something interesting, etc.

When I read fiction, I read quite slowly. When I read poetry, I read at a snail's pace, and I always re-read at least twice.

I cannot read or write while music of any kind is playing, because it interferes with my ability to hear the cadence of the phrases. And if I don't hear those, I can't read.

I even read recipes this way. If I think a recipe was written by a woman, and later I discover it was written by a man, my "reading voice" for it changes.
 
coberst said:
Reader’s Reverie

We have learned how to read while in a trance-like state in the same manner that we drive our car. I assume everybody drives like I drive; I drive while in reverie (lost in thought)...
No, you are absolutely wrong.
I've been reading since I was 5 and driving since 13. You assume wrong. I have done neither of those activities in a trance state, which is probably why I survived doing both for over a half century.
Good luck to you, you'll need it, Mr. Trance State.
eta, do me a big favor. Never drive anywhere near Long Island, NY. We got enough problems without farkin' trance states. Massachusettes is bad enough, not to mention Jersey.
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When we acquire any motor skill, (hint:- this has nothing to do with engines), we initially do it "consciously". With practice, the skill becomes automated- ie handled by subconscious routines. This is why people who learned how to ski thirty years ago are generally very bad ski instructors. They have forgotten what they did to learn. They just know what to do to ski.

Driving is more complicated than skiing , because it happens at higher speeds (unless you are a slow driver or fast skier) and because it involves interacting with other drivers, with abstract legal statutes and with machines.
We can still "automate" a lot of it, (so we don't consciously think about how to get home from work for instance).
I suspect we have all experienced the scary effect of having no recollection of how we actually did get home- but this does not mean we did so in a trance. It means we did not put the experience into conscious memory , because nothing memorable happened. If a kid runs out in front of us, we make the switch from autopilot to very aware yelling out the window extremely fast. Sometimes not fast enough.

Reading is different again. No motor skill involved, for a start. I can read a 200 page novel in a day and tomorrow recall virtually none of it. Major social accomplishment.

Reading to remember has to be done at the speed we form conscious memories from written text. For me, that is 1-10 pages an hour, depending on familiarity with the underlying data, the density of data and the degree to which I need to commit it to memory. I will have to repeat the exercise in a day or so, maybe more than once. Then again after a while if I want to actually know it , as opposed to having a vague belief that I know it.
There will still be holes in my comprehension of the data. If it holds together as a pattern it's a lot more likely to stick, which is why I recall stories better than tables of unrelated data.
 
I can stuff food in my mouth and chew it fast and swallow quickly and finish eating a gourmet meal in a matter of minutes.

Why would I want to, though?

If you're reading just to get to the end as fast as possible, you're reading the wrong stuff.
 
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