10．
阅读理解
Do you get lots of
reading tasks as part of your homework? You might wish that you could read
faster. There are some people who say that you can learn to read at super-high
speed. But experts disagree on this idea.
"Speed reading is
not actually possible, " said Elizabeth Schotter, a scientist at the
University of South Florida, US. Schotter pointed out that people who say that they
can teach others how to speed read are usually doing it to make money by selling
courses and books.
In fact, speed reading
has been made known to people since 1959, when Us educator Evelyn Wood
introduced a speed reading program. Several US presidents have even asked their
officers to take speed reading courses. However, there is no real science
behind speed reading.
Schotter explained
that reading is a task difficult to finish. It includes four steps: seeing a
word, getting back its meaning from your memory, connecting it to other words
in the same sentence , and then moving on to the next word. This process uses
many parts of the brain at one time. It can't be sped up.
Some people who say
they are able to speed read are simply skimming. Skimming involves reading a
passage quickly and only looking for certain words or sentences. Skimmers can
figure out the main idea of a passage—especially if it's a topic they're
familiar with——but they will not be able to remember all the pieces of the
information.
So is there a way to
become a faster reader? Research suggests that you should try to improve the
number of your words and simply read more.
