The one person most often considered to be the “inventor” of speed reading is an Australian woman named Evelyn Wood. Before Evelyn Wood speed reading was completely unknown. In the 1950s, she was one of the first individuals to put her ideas about reading quickly down into writing, and in them, she discussed some of the basic reading techniques that we often mention on this site, including things like using your finger to pace your reading, and subvocalization, though she called it “reading without sounding words” at the time.
Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Today
Today, her course is still in use in Australia and in some universities in the United States.
In general, the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading courses are given in seminar format, in which you spend three long days being trained in the art of speed reading. The first day is usually spent discovering reasons why you read slowly, and doing some basic testing and reading exercises. The second and third days are spent discussing how texts are organized, and how you can easily pick out which sections you need to read and which you can skip or scan through.
By the end of the three days, they state that most individuals are reading six times faster than they were at the beginning of the course and with a 5-15% increase in their reading comprehension. This is not a really amazing claim that is being made by the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading people, which is a refreshing change from what you typically see in other, over-hyped programs.
Evelyn Wood Speed Reading Problems
Her course has not evolved all that much over the course of 60 years, and is by and large the same as it was when it first began. Reading tests and materials are often given in pen-and-paper form, timed with stopwatches, and much of the calculations required are done by hand. This makes the Evelyn Wood Speed Reading class a little dated, but still worthwhile.
Overall, we found Evelyn Wood Speed Reading to be a pretty good course, but a little behind the times. Today, for instance, we know that reading while dragging a pen across the page is a good technique for reading quickly at first, but can eventually become a crutch that limits you from reading as fast as you can, and can sometimes cause you to read very poorly when you don’t have one of the instruments in your hand, or you cannot find a way to scroll across the page (as if you were reading a sign or poster).