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