" by Richard Hart

MENLO PARK, CA (KGO) -- A new study indicates that preschoolers become literate faster in a curriculum that uses video and online technology. Menlo Park's SRI International conducted the research at a school in East Palo Alto. "

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"Texting Improving Literacy?
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cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by uberculture

Reading through some random tweets leading to a blog post, I found a fantastic video interviewing David Crystal, an expert on the English Language. Here is a little information on this expert on the English language from Wikipedia:

Crystal studied English at University College London between 1959 and 1962. He was a researcher under Randolph Quirk between 1962 and 1963, working on the Survey of English Usage. Since then he has lectured at Bangor University and the University of Reading. He is currently an honorary professor of linguistics at Bangor. His many academic interests include English language learning and teaching, clinical linguistics,forensic linguistics, language death, "ludic linguistics" (Crystal's neologism for the study of language play),[1] English style, Shakespeare,indexing, and lexicography. He is the Patron of the International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL) and honorary vice-president of the Society for Editors and Proofreaders (SfEP). He has also served as an important editor for Cambridge University Press…His book Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 (published in 2008) focused on text language and its impact on society.

Obviously, the guy has some knowledge in the area of language and literacy.

As I watched and wrote notes on his talk in this video, there were some amazing, yet seemingly common sense ideas that he shared. Here are some of the quotes that I jotted down:

Texting and it's impact on reading and writing

"It turns out that the best texters, are the best spellers."

"The more you text, the better your literacy scores."

"The earlier you get your mobile phone, the better your literacy scores."

"What is texting? Texting is writing and reading."

"The more practice you get in writing and reading, the better writer and reader you will be."

One of the additional things he discussed in this talk was that we often say, "These kids do not read," but he quickly dismisses this as a fallacy. In fact, Crystal goes further to say that kids that text read more than what we did as children because they have more access to writing. Simply put, they do not read and write the same things that we did. Looking at my own situation, I have actually read more "books" in the last little while than I ever have, as I carry around a huge book collection all the time on my iPhone and/or iPad. The ease of access makes it a lot easier for me to read whether it is blogs, books, or yes, text messages and tweets.

David also addressed the idea that the acronyms and slang that we use in our text messaging, shows up in students' exams, to which he stated:

"(When asked) Do you see these 'textisms" in your exams, the answer universally is no…the kids don't do it."

He noted that there were obviously the occasional occurrences of this happening, but it is an anomaly. With clear guidelines of where we are writing, our purpose and audience, it should be easy for our students to be able to make the distinction about what writing should look like. When we ignore the fact that our students text and use digital technologies, I can understand where they would become confused.

Tweeting and our changing culture

Crystal admittedly has not looked deeply into Twitter, but has started to explore it since, as he described it, it is the "SMS system of the Internet":

"Twitter changed it's prompt from "What are you doing?" to "What's happening?" People are now looking more outwards instead of inwards."

"If you want to find out about an event, you are most likely to find out on Twitter before any other medium."

I distinctly remember reading that Osama bin Laden was assassinated before the announcement was made by Barack Obama. Leaks of the information came so quickly and although it was chalked up to be rumour, it obviously was confirmed after. More people are turning to the Twitter search function to find out about events in real time from people who are willing to share. It is rare now that any reporter would not have a Twitter account so they can be the first to share the story, which is much easier from a phone in 140 characters, as opposed to a long article written even on a website.

Moving Forward

Crystal shares some thoughts on how we can help manage this shift in our world and "manage" the way we look at reading and writing:

"Most of us are still in a mindset where we see the book as central and the electronic technology is marginal. For young people, it is the other way around…We are not going to change that, but we can manage it….put the book into the electronic technology."

"Every style of language has its purpose, but we have to see what the purpose is…Take an essay and turn it into a text message or vice versa, take a text message and turn it into the essay."

Crystal addressed the real concern that our attention span has lessened, and with the advent of short snippets of information, making it harder to pay attention to anything at length. Admittedly, the thought of even watching his talk at 30 minutes in length seemed a little daunting even to me, but with all of the information now available, haven't our standards risen in what we are watching/consuming? Think about television…we had two channels when I grew up in Humboldt, Saskatchewan, and we would sit through shows that I would not give a second look at now. Today with 100′s of channels, the options are much greater, yet I usually find myself going to the Internet anyway where I can have more personalized options of what I choose to watch, read, and even create.
Concluding Thoughts
Admittedly I have been frustrated by conversations with many regarding the idea that texting is eroding our literacy skills. I have always been a firm believer that the more we can have our students read and write, no matter how that happens, their skills will improve, as long as we are willing to guide them. Now, having an expert confirm these thoughts is more than exciting. I am hoping you will share the video below with others to start some conversation on not only how we can use this medium in our schools, but how we can connect the use of technology into our more traditional forms of literacy. They definitely can serve one another.

This entry was posted in Leading a Learning Community, Providing Instructional Leadership and tagged David Crystal, george couros, literacy, reading and writing, texting on August 21, 2011 by George. "

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Boj8VYzDAy8?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

"Literacy specialists are just beginning to investigate how reading on the Internet affects reading skills. A recent study of more than 700 low-income, mostly Hispanic and black sixth through 10th graders in Detroit found that those students read more on the Web than in any other medium, though they also read books. The only kind of reading that related to higher academic performance was frequent novel reading, which predicted better grades in English class and higher overall grade point averages.

Elizabeth Birr Moje, a professor at the University of Michigan who led the study, said novel reading was similar to what schools demand already. But on the Internet, she said, students are developing new reading skills that are neither taught nor evaluated in school.

One early study showed that giving home Internet access to low-income students appeared to improve standardized reading test scores and school grades. “These were kids who would typically not be reading in their free time,” said Linda A. Jackson, a psychology professor at Michigan State who led the research. “Once they’re on the Internet, they’re reading.”"

"Transcript of Technology: Declining Literacy or Changing it?
Agree The NEA makes a convincing case that both kids and adults are reading fewer books. "Non-required" reading - ie, picking up a book for the fun of it - is down 7% since"

http://prezi.com/vokzpwaeohry/technology-declining-literacy-or-changing-it/#

Digital Tools

Can Texting Develop Other Writing Skills?
Tina Barseghian | August 15, 2012 | 24 Comments

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Flickr: English106

As more schools begin allowing students to bring their own devices and actually use them in class, the debate around the value of “digital writing” — texting, taking notes on mobile devices, tweeting, etc. — is heating up.

Some educators (and even a linguistic expert) believe kids who text are exercising a different, additional muscle when texting, writing, and note-taking — and that skill is actually adding to a student’s growing and changing repertoire.

“Children know that when you’re in school, you do not use texting language,” said linguistics expert Susana Sotillo, an associate professor at Montclair State University in an article in the North Jersey Record. “…No one is destroying the English language; the English language just keeps changing. It’s not a good idea to present change as a negative aspect.”"

"Digital project-based learning. Use the Internet for inquiry based projects for research, identification and communication with other models and communities engaged in the same topic, and to create end products that can be shared with the larger community on the Internet - a digital movie or podcast, a tutorial, a report or blog post. Encourage learners to "geek out" and "go deep"17 on a subject, becoming and involving experts on a topic."

Teens and Social Networking in the School and Public Library
Social networking technologies have many positive uses in schools and libraries. They are an ideal environment for teens to share what they are learning or to build something together online.

"It stands to reason that children who read and write more are better at reading and writing. And writing blog posts, status updates, text messages, instant messages, and the like all motivate children to read and write. Last month, The National Literacy Trust released the results of a survey of over 3000 children. They observed a correlation between children's engagement with social media and their literacy. Simply put, social media has helped children become more literate. Indeed, Eurostat recently published a report drawing a correlation between education and online activity, which found that online activity increased with the level of formal activity (socio-economic factors are, of course, potentially at play here as well)."

"
Can social networking boost literacy skills?

October 8, 2010
Alberta Teachers' Association

The findings of two ­recent literacy studies in Great Britain will come as no surprise to many ­parents and may also help to explain why students are reluctant to do homework. These studies reveal that most young people never pick up a book—at least not outside of school. In fact, about one in five reads blogs and magazines only. But these findings shouldn’t be interpreted as meaning that young people don’t read. It’s just that students browse social ­networking sites, blogs, websites and magazines much more frequently than they read books.

Both of these studies on the reading and ­writing habits of students were undertaken by the ­National Literacy Trust. One study surveyed more than 2,000 students aged 7 to 15. The other involved more than 3,000 students aged 9 to 16. According to these studies, 20 per cent of students never read fiction or nonfiction books, but about 67 per cent surf websites weekly, 55 per cent read e-mails and 46 per cent read blogs.

Let’s explore these findings in more depth. Teenagers may not be reading books, but they are clearly interested in social networking. So the question becomes whether social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube are harming students or helping them. Social networking sites, which began as social communities, are becoming increasingly important. Barack Obama, for example, used such sites to great advantage during his successful campaign to become United States president.

But do social networking sites have any educational benefits? Aside from helping students to make new friends, do social networking sites facilitate learning? The answer seems to be that they do. The National Literacy Trust found that social networking sites and blogs help students to develop more positive attitudes toward writing and to become more confident in their writing abilities.

According to one of the studies, 49 per cent of young people believe that writing is “boring.” However, students who use technology-based texts such as blogs have more positive attitudes toward writing. Whereas 60 per cent of bloggers say that they enjoy writing, only 40 per cent of non-bloggers find writing enjoyable."

"Social networking hurts the communication skills of college students

By Megan Puglisi

Published: Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Updated: Wednesday, October 13, 2010 23:10

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Although media and networking sites were created to facilitate better communication, social networks are ruining the public communication skills of college students in America.

According to Northern Michigan University, college students who used Facebook while studying, even just having it in the background, earned grades 20 percent lower on average than non-users in 2010.

Social networking sites are designed to allow college students to maintain bonds with family and friends often separated by distance.

However, it has become a detour for college students to avoid personal contact with professors and campus peers, which is a key for success.

Reliance on social media has decreased the relationships formed between students and their professor due to the detachment of e-mail, hiding the face linked to your voice.

Dr. Kelley Crowley, who teaches public relations writing and principles of advertising at West Virginia University, agrees that relationships with her students are different due to these networking tools.

"Students have become reticent and intimidated in the classroom to speak directly with me. Rather, they feel more comfortable sending me an e-mail from behind a computer screen, which is impersonal and does not contain context at all," Crowley said.

Students prefer to participate in brief e-mail exchanges when they should be pursuing real relationships. "Avoiding personal interactions harms the competency of young professionals ... (It's difficult for students) to speak to respected professionals during interviews because they lack the necessary nonverbal behaviors, like eye contact,"she said.

Face-to-face communication and phone conversations have become foreign to the millions of users who rely on social media and networking sites like Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

College-aged users, in particular, are aware that the opportunities to communicate using these tools are countless and convenient, but I am concerned the number of informal and improper communication errors will dramatically increase and threaten the intelligence and productivity of our generation.

At least once per day, I log into my networking sites to read the poor grammar.

Writing skills reflect intelligence and articulation, which should be taken seriously.

A vast difference exists between the way most students communicate via social networking sites and how they should write and speak to professors, employers and respected campus peers.

Yet, the common mistakes are an embarrassment and frustrating for the rest of us in cyberspace to read.

Earlier this week, I painfully read the Facebook status of an anonymous communication major, which read, "This wknd was off the chain! If yall was their then you know what I talking bout."

In order to graduate with a degree in communication studies, students are required to have a cumulative grade point average of 3.0 and complete 128 credit hours, of which 36 hours are emphasized in communication studies.

In this specific major, students are also expected to be able to clearly explain thoughts, ideas, opinions and relevant theories through assignments and written exams.

Communication studies should be a difficult major that requires professional and disciplined abilities to complete, which leaves me scratching my head regarding this student's status.

I hope the anonymous student's status was a joke, but I have a hunch that it was a serious statement that is a result of excessive social networking and minimal knowledge on how it should be used.

Media literacy is a tool that needs to be taught proper usage, much like a gun. A gun is a tool that can be used for protection, or it can be used to go around shooting at anyone and anything.

Similarly, social networking sites are tools that can be used to represent one as a professional seeking networking opportunities.

Or you can log on and make yourself look like a fool.

In an Oct. 12 CNN article "The ultimate guide to proper Facebooking," Simcha Whitehill discusses eight rules about using the social networking site Facebook. These rules should be strictly followed. Rules such as "Don't drink and type," "Do not delete your exes" and "Tag, you're it" should be considered when portraying oneself to 500 million users, especially when job hunting.

The Washington Post featured an article "Check your spelling and grammar with After the Deadline."

The author suggests students use After the Deadline, a browser plug-in that checks for spelling, grammar and writing style mistakes.

The browser is free and available with Chrome and Firefox.

Although this feature will not find all careless mistakes, at least it can provide assistance before submitting an assignment with elementary mistakes.

In doing so, maybe students can prevent looking like a fool in front of professors, friends and future colleagues."

"Social media might turn people away from personal contact

To take a balanced, rational view, it is also perfectly possible that some might turn to social media to shy away from direct contact. Perhaps this is a bad thing, I’m sure the psychologists can contribute the theory. But what if direct contact is so painfully embarrassing and stressful to such people that they would not interact anyway? Perhaps then social media can actually increase a person's communication skills, albeit in a less implicit way where physical human relationships can't be developed"

"The pupils, who did not already use a mobile phone, were split into two groups.

Half were given a handset to use for texting over weekends and during the school holidays over a 10-week period. The remaining pupils formed a control group. "

"Admittedly I have been frustrated by conversations with many regarding the idea that texting is eroding our literacy skills. I have always been a firm believer that the more we can have our students read and write, no matter how that happens, their skills will improve, as long as we are willing to guide them. Now, having an expert confirm these thoughts is more than exciting. I am hoping you will share the video below with others to start some conversation on not only how we can use this medium in our schools, but how we can connect the use of technology into our more traditional forms of literacy. They definitely can serve one another.

Related posts:

Literacy…Just Literacy
Social Media Makes Students Terrible Writers
What to include in your social media publishing schedule: Part Two
The Power of the Backchannel: Part One
Making Grammar Sticky With Google Docs

Tags: David Crystal, literacy, social-media, texting, twitter
About the Author
George Couros

George Couros is currently school principal of Forest Green School and Connections for Learning, located in Stony Plain, Alberta, Canada. The schools are from ages K-12, and he loves working with kids of all ages. He is passionate about distributed leadership within his school, and believes that creating a collaborative environment with all stakeholders, will help to ensure that educators meet the best needs of all children. You can learn more about George on his own blog entitled “The Principal of Change”. George is also the creator of the "Connected Principals" site because he knew that we can learn so much from a strong team of educators with different backgrounds, as opposed to the view of only one. It is imperative that as educators, we are learners first."

"Little or no grammar teaching, cell phone texting, social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, are all being blamed for an increasingly unacceptable number of post-secondary students who can't write.

For years there's been a flood of anecdotal complaints from professors about what they say is the wretched state of English grammar coming from some of their students. Now there seems to be some solid evidence.

Ontario's Waterloo University is one of the few post-secondary institutions in Canada to require the students they accept to pass an exam testing their English language skills. Almost a third of those students are failing.

"Thirty per cent of students who are admitted are not able to pass at a minimum level," says Ann Barrett, managing director of the English language proficiency exam at Waterloo University. "We would certainly like it to be a lot lower."

Barrett says the failure rate has jumped five percentage points in the past few years, up to 30 per cent from 25 per cent.

"What has happened in high school that they cannot pass our simple test of written English, at a minimum?" she asks.


Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none. Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser University



Even those with good marks out of Grade 12, so-called elite students, "still can't pass our simple test," she says.

Poor grammar is the major reason students fail, says Barrett.

"If a student has problems with articles, prepositions, verb tenses, that's a problem."

Some students in public schools are no longer being taught grammar, she believes.

"Are they (really) preparing students for university studies?"

At Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, one in 10 new students are not qualified to take the mandatory writing courses required for graduation. That 10 per cent must take so-called "foundational" writing courses first.


Simon Fraser is reviewing its entrance requirements for English language.

"There has been this general sense in the last two or three years that we are finding more students are struggling in terms of language proficiency," says Rummana Khan Hemani, the university's director of academic advising.

Emoticons, truncated and butchered words such as 'cuz,' are just some of the writing horrors being handed in, say professors and administrators at Simon Fraser.

"Little happy faces ... or a sad face ... little abbreviations," show up even in letters of academic appeal, says Khan Hemani. "Instead of 'because', it's 'cuz'. That's one I see fairly frequently," she says, and these are new in the past five years.

Khan Hemani sends appeal submissions with emoticons in them back to students to be re-written "because a committee will immediately get their backs up when they see that kind of written style."

Professors are seeing their share of bad grammar in essays as well.

"The words 'a lot' have become one word, for everyone, as far as I can tell. 'Definitely' is always spelled with an 'a' - 'definately'. I don't know why," says Paul Budra, an English professor and associate dean of arts and science at Simon Fraser.

"Punctuation errors are huge, and apostrophe errors. Students seem to have absolutely no idea what an apostrophe is for. None. Absolutely none."

He is floored by some of what he sees.

"I get their essays and I go 'You obviously don't know what a sentence fragment is. You think commas are sort of like parmesan cheese that you sprinkle on your words'," said Budra.

Then he's reduced to teaching basic grammar to them himself.

He says this has been going on now for the 20 years he's taught college and university in B.C. and Ontario-only the mistakes have changed.

He too blames poor - or no - grammar instruction in lower schools.

"When I went to high school in the '70s I was never taught grammar in English. I learned grammar from Latin classes."

Budra was taught to read and write using whole language rather than phonetics - not a good way to go in his books.

"We haven't taught grammar for 30-40 years...(and it) hasn't worked."

"It's not that hard to teach basic grammar," he says.

Ontario's Ministry of Education says grammar is a part of both its elementary and high school curriculum.

Cellphone texting and social networking on Internet sites are degrading writing skills, say even experts in the field.

"I think it has," says Joel Postman, author of "SocialCorp: Social Media Goes Corporate," who has taught Fortune 500 companies how to use social networking.

The Internet norm of ignoring punctuation and capitalization as well as using emoticons may be acceptable in an e-mail to friends and family, but it can have a deadly effect on one's career if used at work.

"It would say to me ... 'well, this person doesn't think very clearly, and they're not very good at analyzing complex subjects, and they're not very good at expressing themselves, or at worse, they can't spell, they can't punctuate,' " he says.

"These folks are going to short-change themselves, and right or wrong, they're looked down upon in traditional corporations," notes Postman.

But "spelling is getting better because of Spellcheck," says Margaret Proctor, University of Toronto writing support co-ordinator.

James Turk of the Association of University Teachers takes all the complaints about student literacy with a grain of salt.

"There's a notion of a golden age in the past that students were wonderful, unlike now. I'm not sure that golden age ever existed," he says.

"You can go back and read Plato and see Socrates talking about the allegations that this generation isn't as not as good as previous ones," he notes."

"Using mobile phones to send text messages is altering development skills in youngsters, according to new research.

Scientists in Australia believe using predictive text to compose short messages will result in youngsters behaving impulsively and making mistakes in later life because the method of communication discourages them from thinking things through.

Professor Michael Abramson of Monash University in Melbourne explained that children who use their mobiles a lot more are faster at completing tests, but less accurate.

"Their brains are still developing so if there are effects then potentially it could have effects down the line, especially given that the exposure is now almost universal," he added."

"Out of 700 youth aged 12-17 who participated in the phone survey, 60 percent say they don't consider electronic communications - e-mail, instant messaging, mobile text - to be writing in the formal sense; 63 percent say it has no impact on the writing they do for school and 64 percent report inadvertently using some form of shorthand common to electronic text, including emotions, incorrect grammar or punctuation.

Dorlea Rikard, Florence High School language teacher, said she understands texting is part of student life, but to excuse bad writing by saying it's just how their world is now "is ignoring the fact that formal communication is still important and necessary."

She teaches 11th-graders in advanced placement language and composition class and said students often have handwritten assignments. Many struggle with the formal writing process, she said.

"They slip into the informal voice often, and that's really a tightrope because you want them to find their own voice, but the writing must be appropriate," she said. "I've realized they very often write the way they speak and they speak the way they text. And yes, I've had a few students turn in papers with numbers instead of words and letters used inappropriately. It's definitely the texting influence.""

"The impact of text messaging language shortcuts on developmental students' formal writing skills
Dissertation
Author: Sherry L. Rankin
Abstract:
The language shortcuts used in text messages are becoming evident in students' academic writing assignments. This qualitative study sought to determine if the use of the shortcuts has an adverse impact on developmental students' spelling and grammar skills. This research was based on the constructivist theory, which rationalizes that students use what they are most familiar with as they acquire new knowledge. The study was directed by four research questions to understand (a) how students use language shortcuts in their academic writing, (b) how language shortcuts influence students' spelling and grammar skills, (c) how well students are able to differentiate between casual writing and academic writing, and (d) how the use of language shortcuts influences the amount of writing students do."

"Texting, TV and Tech Trashing Children's Attention Spans
Posted: 11/05/2012 1:51 pm
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Two studies on teachers' views of the impact of digital media on children's learning were just released, one by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project and the other by Common Sense Media.

Although teachers see a number of advantages in young people's heavy use of digital media (especially in their ability to find information quickly and efficiently), it is the potentially harmful effects that have families, educators and policy makers worried. New York Times' Matt Richtel summarizes these concerns in an article about the studies: "There is a widespread belief among teachers that students' constant use of digital technology is hampering their attention spans and ability to persevere in the face of challenging tasks."

Nearly three quarters of the 685 public and private K-12 teachers surveyed in the Common Sense Media online poll believe that students use of entertainment media (including TV, video games, texting and social networking) "has hurt student's attention spans a lot or somewhat."

Likewise, in the Pew online survey, which polled 2,462 middle and high school teachers, 87% report that these technologies are creating "an easily distracted generation with short attention spans," and 64% say that digital technologies "do more to distract students than to help them academically."

It was the teachers who commented on the findings in the New York Times ' story who captured my attention.

Hope Molina-Porter, an English teacher at Troy High School in Fullerton, California, who has taught for 14 years, says that she has had to become an entertainer. "I have t"

"This “eternal present” is comprised of “comforting, reassuring images, fantasies, slogans, celebrities, and a lust for violence.” It is a world devoid of substance, dislocated from history, reflection, and nuance.

The media and popular press point clearly to new technologies as the cause of this decline but also, ironically, as the source of the “new literacy.” Texting, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and countless other technologies and media are widely seen as undermining or displacing literacy. Not so. They are certainly changing our relationship with literacy and altering what it means to be literate in a ubiquitous multimedia world. But all these things are intimately linked to literacy."

"The Decreasing Literacy Skills of the Workforce – Changing Responsibilities of Business Training Programs
Employers are finding that the ability to write clearly, concisely and correctly among their workforce is becoming a rarer and rarer skill. And nearly everyone in the workplace is frustrated at how slowly they read and how little they remember.
Written Apr 15, 2009, read 2400 times since then.
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In 2001, the American Management Association found that one-third of job applicants flunked basic literacy and math tests.

There is plenty of evidence that literacy skills continue to decline. U.S. government data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that after years of educational reforms, high school seniors scored worse on a national reading test than they had back in 1992. Less than three-quarters of U.S. 12th graders scored at at least the “basic” level, down from 80% in the early 1990s.

Some technology advocates, like William Crossman, author of “VIVO (Voice-In/Voice-Out): The Coming Age of Talking Computers,” aren’t concerned about this loss of literacy. Crossman says, “Just as the car replaced the horse and wagon, speech and graphics and video streaming over the Internet will replace written texts, and talking computers will replace text-driven computers.” This optimistic prediction isn’t borne out in most workplace environments, where most computer equipment is years old. And anyone who has tried speech recognition systems knows that they have a long way to go.

Employers view reading and writing as critical basic skills, yet they are often at a loss about how to improve those skills among their workforce without incurring huge costs and loss of on-the-job time. Training programs abound to train managers and staff about project and budget control and various technical disciplines, but few programs exist to teach basic skills and employers find it difficult to justify such expenditures.

The Center for Lifelong Learning was created to address these and other pressing literacy issues.

We believe that the problem of the decline in literacy is exacerbated by the fact that nearly everyone is taught to read using techniques that modern education and brain researchers have proven to be antiquated. Since the beginning of mass education in the U.S., students have been taught to read, starting in Kindergarten, in ways that have been shown to be the opposite of the way our brains work.

Ever gotten drowsy while you read? Ever lost your place and spent many minutes trying to find it, then forgetting what you read? Ever suddenly become aware that you have no idea what you have read for the last few pages? Ever finished a book and 15 minutes later have little idea what it was about? Remember being told by your 1st and 2nd grade teachers that the slower you read the more you will remember? But don’t you get sleepier the slower you read?

Most people attribute their reading problems to their own failings as students. Yet the problem is really the techniques they were taught to use, not their brain and its native capabilities.

Researchers have found that the reality is that the faster you read, the more you remember. It’s the way our brains are designed. In school, kids are taught to read one word at a time, to stop reading at the end of a line until they reach the left side of the page again, and, worst of all, to say the words out loud in their head. All of these practices are exactly the opposite of the reality of the way our brains want information delivered.

The last few years have yielded some studies with profound implications about the way we read. Learning the skills taught in many speed reading programs that stimulate thinking and learning affect the brain. Expanding your vision to take in more than one word at a time actually retrains key parts of your brain. A study published in September 2006 by Harvard and Princeton investigators reported that that reading faster and thinking faster made the subjects "happier, more energetic, more creative, more powerful." And you remember more.

Other studies show that stimulating your brain with these kinds of programs can even prevent your brain from succumbing to the pathological effects of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Case in point: Executives of the training program of a major U.S. airline were recently trained in our 12-hour, 2-day speed reading workshop. After a review of the reading issues and problems they faced, they took an initial reading test. They all came in reading between 145 and 205 words per minute - very slow – with average comprehension.

They, like nearly all employees, managers, and executives, expressed frustration at the voluminous amount of reading they have and how far behind they constantly feel.

The next step in the workshop was to systematically replace old reading behaviors with new ones. First they practice using a pacer. When we read, our eyes move with a jerky motion, causing us to loose our place and our concentration. It turns out that our eyes evolved to follow moving objects and do so very smoothly and efficiently.

In Speed Reading, everyone uses their pen to underline while they read. Just using a pacer like the tip of your pen – the moving object that allows your eyes to move smoothly - will double reading speed. This technique stops the inefficient and frustrating one-word-at-a-time reading and replaces it with peripheral vision reading, taking in 3 to 6 words at a time. After 21 days of practice, the student no longer requires the pacer because a new behavior and habit have been formed and they own it for a lifetime.

Over lunch, the head of HR said, “I came in a skeptic, but I am leaving a believer. I can really feel it happening." The CLO said "I am going to use this right away to get through a stack of 40 trade publications on my desk I've been putting off." She will get through that stack in about 45 minutes to an hour. Even decades of inefficient habits and behaviors can be changed in a relatively short time – if the participant is willing.

They continued their practice for the rest of the afternoon, learning how to break the sentence into different sized chunks and getting comfortable at seeing words and knowing what they mean without saying them aloud in your head (When you approach a STOP sign, you don’t say “stop” in your head before reacting, do you?).

Their practice continued the next day with all the pieces they learned coming together in an end-to-end reproducible process that they can customize for every book they read.

At the end of the second 6-hour day, the slowest reader who came in at 145 words per minute tested at 634 wpm at 76 percent comprehension, more than 4 times her original reading speed. Her comprehension will steadily increase over the subsequent 21 day, 15-minutes per day practice plan.

The second slowest reader of the group, coming in at 147 wpm, tested the fastest of the group at 928 wpm at the end of the second day (and he had to miss the afternoon of the first day) at 76 percent comprehension. The table below gives the entire groups’ scores.

Initial Reading Speed | Final Reading Speed | Percent Increase
1 145 634 437%
2 147 928 631%
3 180 807 448%
4 185 809 437%
5 190 798 420%
6 205 568 277%
7 218 500 229%
Major U.S. Airline Speed Reading Training, October 2007
(© 2007 Center for Lifelong Learning)"