I love this in principle but I can’t use it myself. I‘m a very fast reader by default, basically already doing what the highlighting tries to make you do, without it needing to be there. The highlighting disrupts that for me. I end up stopping at every word and partially jumping back and forth. I do show this to people on occasion that aren’t as lucky as me with their reading speed and most said it helped them. Not all though.

[–] cobn@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 6 days ago (4 children)

it slowed my reading in the same way.

Felt wierd realy, like I couldn't read ahead while my inner voice was "saying" it.

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 3 points 5 days ago

For me, it completely messed up my whole-word and multi-word reading by shape. Like, I don't read by syllable because I'm not pronouncing the words, I'm just reading the meaning of the whole word directly from the shape of the whole word (or several words), if that makes sense?

Like, when I'm reading, my inner monologue is only "saying" a handful of key words in each sentence, as it fluidity skips over "mentally pronouncing" all the filler/context words.

This completely breaks that. It splits each word into two chunks, neither of which is the word, so I need to show down to "mentally say" both chunks of each word to read them. Like, it's still fast, I guess, but I'd estimate it slows me down by ⅓-½ish and disrupts my reading comprehension significantly.

I assume that if I read like that for a few hours, I'd likely get used to it, but why bother?

On the other hand, I think that could be a great reading tool, I imagine especially for people with dyslexia, but probably most fluent but slow readers.

[–] Entertainmeonly@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 4 days ago

Can you expand on that? I have never been a fast reader and speed reading takes the pleasure out of it for me. So, mainly story books, I read at the same pace as a speaker might say them outloud. As if my minds voice is reading them allowed in a chair to the child me setting quietly on the ground. Speed reading feels like watching a show in fast-forward. Great for boring parts but not enjoyable to me.

How does your inner voice feel as you read?

[–] null@lemmy.nullspace.lol 2 points 5 days ago

This is the most accurate description I've ever seen of how I read

[–] degen@midwest.social 1 points 5 days ago

I've sort of always read that way, inner voice and all. When I learned that really fast readers figure out how to ignore that, or do it naturally, my mind was blown.