Is subvocalizing necessary for retention and comprehension or does it just slow you down?
Have you been able to get through entire books without subvocalizing?
If you used to be a subvocalizer but then stopped, what did you do to ease that transition? Do you find that your retention and comprehension have suffered?
I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand. I subvocalize and I am enlightened
Before I'd just look at words on the page, but now I actually vocalize the words on the page.
Not really, just had to write this cause of how weird it sounds. Do people really not vocalize when reading - they can just comprehend by looking at the words?
>Do people really not vocalize when reading - they can just comprehend by looking at the words?
I can’t turn it off completely but I don’t think every single word, usually just every fourth or fifth word or so.
I figure the more one reads eventually you get to a point where comprehension comes easier. I feel like vocalization helps in that process to encode meaning, for lack of a better term.
I found a speed-reading book at the library once that completely changed the way I read. Before, I would read how I speak, mentally saying every word. My comprehension was capped at whatever speed I could look at each individual word and then speak it in my head. It was slow. This book recommended visually taking in chunks at a time, groupings of words, rather than single words one-by-one. I started doing that and made an effort to not vocalize, and pretty soon my reading speed and comprehension tripled. It was a neat feeling, understanding just by looking at text, without saying it in my head. I read WAY faster now.
I don’t even want to “speed read” I just want to read at a pace that’s quicker than 200wpm or whatever slowass speed I’m currently at.
It’s not skimming. My speed of full comprehension is faster. Maybe "speed-reading" has a bad connotation.
Once a book has a flow going I think my brain is grabbing chunks of sentences and flowing at about the rate of an audiobook at 1.5x speed. If the flow breaks and I can’t figure out what the scene really means I slow way down.
It’s almost like the subvocalization turns into more of just a rhythmic thing, the patterns of the main notes provide the meaning while the mind is painting the scene visually. The vocalization isn’t like the sound of a sped up audiobook, more like a drum or a hum that conjures up imagery in the brain. I think that rhythm is what makes a book start to fly by once we learn the author’s tempo.
This is what I have been doing for the past three months: all day, every day I have repeated the trinitarian formula on loop and nothing else. Life is better in all aspects.
I occasionally do it
I'm really interested in hearing from the people who trained themselves not to subvocalize and have managed a retention that's equal to or greater than what they had before.
Classic literature should be subvocalized and enjoyed to truly soak it in. But textbooks and biographies can be sped through looking for facts to string together main concepts.
is this the same as moving your tongue while you read silently?
It’s thinking the words in your head as you read them.
I cannot wrap my mind around being able to read something without the words being formed in your mind.
Is that why so many people don't like reading?
People who have a high quantity of books they want to read before they die will take up dropping subvocalization in order to get through them faster and be more likely to finish them all.
Subvocalizing is for people who enjoy reading. Like speed eating or watching films on fast forward, speed reading is for when you care very little about a book.
I overvocalize anon. I read stuff out loud like in the literal fricking middle ages and you have no idea what this can do for memory, understanding and imagination.
You will remember way more of a text if you read it out loud, possilbly with inflexion and trying to "act it" out, as if you were the person thinking it and writing it. Not only novels, but also philosophy books.
You WILL, by reading out loud, be capable to understand other languages if you have a basic vocabulary and little grammar. You can literally trick your brain into learning everything intuitively by just reading out loud and understanding from context. Start easy and go for two years: you can learn any language.
Imagination: if you read out loud you see images. You see colors that don't exist, feel feelings etc - imagine the difference in vividness between reading a sentence and telling a sentence to a friend. It's at least this strong, and it gets stronger with time.
Plus, it makes reading extremely pleasant. I have read the entirety of Thomas Bernhard's Extinction out loud late at night in the postgraduate study room of my uni library during my PhD, chasing away all the indians and chinese exchange students who were too shy to enter and study in a room where a man walking in his socks (yes, I take off my shoes in the library) blasting beethoven at 10pm was reading out loud Murau's thoughts as if they were his own, and I retain almost entire paragraphs, I remember vividly most characters and places, especially Wolfsegg as I have imagined it and the faces of the main character's sisters as they appear laughing in the pictures described by Morau - and so on and so forth.
I did the same with Ulysses and War and Peace. Best time of my life in university. I did it with Musil when I was forced to be locked in my room for 31 days, able to leave only to go to the toilet, because I got covid early.
You just need a room for yourself.
Don't you get tired eventually though? Or is that actually a feature as it tells you when to take a break?
My throat always feels tight and reading out loud makes me forget what I just read and feels like I’m speaking another language, very labored. If I’m on a roll talking with a real person it’s effortless. But reading out loud alone or recording a simple voice memo feels like I’m talking with a mouth full of food. It’s like the effort difference between typing fast on a keyboard vs hand writing.
I don't even understand why you would want to speedread on IQfy. Where is the value of speedreading for the classics? That's an experience you'd want to savor and appreciate in its rich detail. You can't speedrun experience, so why speedread through a good novel?
I'd only want to speedread slop.
I like to speedrun sex with girls.
I think everyone knows how to speed read internet comments. Imagine flying through a complicated work of literature as fast as you’re parsing these comments all day. You can, but yeah most of the beauty of the work would be lost. We should sit in the room with the characters, walk along side them.
you haven ' t actually ever looked at a book .
I used to subvocalize but I conditioned myself to drop that habit. I actually have better retention when I don't subvocalize because by chunking words together my brain is more active in "processing" the words. When subvocalizing, I'm just mindlessly repeating the words in my head.
I don't speed read but definitely subvocalize. Doing different voices for each character and narrator. I think of the voice of someone I know for separate characters and eventually they're separate. Didn't know people didn't want to do this or couldn't do it.
How can you tell ahead of time who is speaking and which voice to use
Wtf
I do this and also animate scenes in my head with different camera angles, and sometimes soundtracks. It sometimes takes me 1 hour to read through 15 pages of a classic novel.
Here's the rearranged text:
Nor should it be reduced into Manichean lenses - blaming property developers and the civil service for creating the crisis /// Then the woodcutter let his axe fly - Thwack! Everyone heard it /// Manual work was considered below their station /// In this condition, we equated the luminance of the brightest leaves with the luminance of the fruit /// They want "just the facts without the fluff" and have never met data they didn't like /// He's a little long in the tooth to be wearing shorts, don't you think? /// A group of tiny brick houses is tucked away behind the factory /// He was moving from unction to abrasion with no perceptible interval /// They swept the ashes from the hearth /// I'm extremely crabby when I'm hungry /// Thora bustled around the house, getting everything ready /// How did the most American of retailers get mixed up with a hoity-toity Parisian boutique? /// To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him /// He's one of these men who went bald very young and has a terrible hang-up about it /// Wood-carvers were plying their trade in the town square /// She claimed to have had an affair with the candidate, which produced a huge media flap /// Why the company should have been taken in by such a hapless project is baffling /// Everywhere we go, we're low-key checking out coffee shops, parks, and window seats for maximum reading coziness /// Native Americans from the Northwest Pacific Coast held potlatch feasts at which property and goods were lavished upon neighboring tribes, mainly for the purpose of showing off wealth /// In his own photos, Savader looks like your average Beltway nebbish: pasty, bespectacled, bad hair /// The drive cable was wrapped around the drum several times to provide sufficient traction /// We are going to have to put the pedal to the metal if we want to finish on time /// As many women show depressive symptoms during the luteal phase, cyclical changes in cortisol levels may be causally related to changes in mood and cognition /// This is the time of the year that studios release their tent-pole film /// As he left the theater, the singer was set upon by fans desperate for autographs /// They recruited the paralegals in the local area, and not surprisingly, these seemed primarily to be part of the district coordinator's political network /// She sent a ten-page missive to the committee, detailing her objections /// He made his way up a flight of steep stairs and into the main keep of the castle.
It all depends what you're reading and why. I find I have more retention when subvocalising and even more reading aloud. If you speed read a text and then regret it you can always read it again more slowly (repetition helps memory even more than taking your time).
Nothing sub- about it. Reading silently is degenerate and modern.