From: utzoo!decvax!pur-ee!ecn-pa.haamu
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Title: non-phonetic reading
Article-I.D.: ecn-pa.274
Posted: Thu Jul 29 10:05:06 1982
Received: Fri Jul 30 04:44:47 1982

I hope this requested clarification is not redundant:

I am not an educator or psychologist, but to the best of my limited
knowledge Michael Wagner is correct:  "chunking," or increasing the
amount of information taken in with a single eye motion, is the most
important technique to be learned in order to increase reading speed.
But subvocalization, or mentally (and possibly even physically)
pronouncing words as you read them, is the most important "technique"
to be unlearned.  Since subvocalization is much more time-consuming
than visual recognition (in most adult readers), it negates the
advantages of chunking; moreover, it encourages the reader to pronounce
every single word, no matter how unimportant.

I'm not talking about "speed reading," a term I'd like to avoid because
it is too often equated with "skimming."  I'm talking now about reading
with complete comprehension at or slightly beyond what researchers
consider the highest "conventional" speeds--around 1000 to 2000 words
per minute.  Such speeds are entirely plausible while taking in no
more than half a line of text at a time.

Many researchers attribute subvocalization to the way in which reading
is initially learned--orally--and that the answer is for trained readers
to disable their subvocal processes, if that doesn't just occur naturally,
through reading drills while listening to music or saying nonsense words.
I seem to recall, however, someone recently saying the real answer is
to reduce or remove the oral and phonetic emphasis we place on the
training of beginning readers.  (Unfortunately I don't have time to
dig up the reference.)

If this idea has validity, then moving towards a phonetic (or increasingly
phonetic) spelling standard would reinforce a connection we should
perhaps disavow.

(Of course this is far from the strongest argument against spelling
reform, but I will defer to the poets on that score.)

-- Mark Raabe