Myth #4: Speed Reading Diminishes Reading Pleasure
If your "speed reading" method impairs comprehension, then it will be all work and no reward because at the end of your reading, you still won't have the answers to the mystery of what the text is really all about. The idea that speed reading diminishes reading pleasure is based on the myth that pretend-reading practices such as skimming and photo reading are actually speed reading.
Recognising words and clauses in context accelerates the reader's comprehension and takes less effort. This actually makes reading far more pleasurable because less work is required to understand the text. In fact, the trick is to be reading fast enough that you stop seeing the words and start seeing the meaning conveyed by the words. A well written novel can immerse a fast reader in the story more deeply than even the best cinematography and surround sound. However, if the reader is intimately familiar with the technical jargon of her/his profession, immersion in this field is akin to suddenly "remembering" the facts and interpretations as made by the authors. Once again, the better written the reading material, the more immersive the reading material.
Therefore it stands to reason that real speed reading is actually more pleasurable because it puts the reader in direct contact with the implicit meaning of the text instead of requiring from the reader a lengthy sequence of phonic decoding, verbal construction, parsing, structural analysis, and interpretation prior to understanding the text. It comes as no surprise then that people who truly enjoy their reading are generally faster readers.
