Eye Movement and Speed Reading

Eye movements in reading should have the same kind of automatic response as driving a car or word processing an e-mail. Training students to read faster helps build this automaticity by reducing line fixations and the amount of time spent on each fixation.

So, how do our eye movements affect our reading ability? Most people would probably say that their eyes follow the print, left to right, at a consistent rate across the page. However, this is far from the truth. Using sophisticated cameras and computer analysis, scientists have found that our eyes fixate on several places in the line in a rather herky-jerky motion.

In fact, when our eyes move, they aren’t even looking at the words, but are just moving from one fixation to the next. Eye movement accounts for only about one-tenth of the time spent on each line of reading text. In other words, reading consists of a series of individual glances at each line of text and the corresponding meaning-making of each glance.

The greater the number of fixations per line and the more time it takes to make sense of each fixation, the slower the meaning-making will be. Better readers have less fixations per line and rapid processing of each word. This is what Marilyn Adams (1995) refers to as "automaticity" and is the necessary prerequisite for reading well. This automatic processing develops as the reader becomes able to quickly and effectively apply the semantic, graphophonic, and syntactic cueing systems to the text.

Of course, the number of fixations per line and the duration of each fixation should depend on the degree of reading difficulty. Reading unfamiliar material or subject-specific vocabulary requires slower processing. Also, the purpose of the reader should determine reading speed. Reading a biology text for a test is quite different from reading a Goosebumps mystery for fun. The problem is that poor readers tend to read everything in the same way, that is with too many fixations and taking too much time to process the words.

Specific speed reading techniques have been developed to vary the reading rate according to the degree of text difficulty. Speed reading will also help call attention to, and even break, many poor reading habits. Effective speed reading will also maintain or improve reading comprehension as students increase their silent fluency rates.