Study On The Effect Of The Speed Reading Training On The Third Graders

Nowadays, our society is in a era that the information technology develops by leaps and bounds.Traditional reading methods become more and more difficult to bear excess information. So how to get the information that we need effectively becomes a impending problem. Since the World War Ⅱ,many countries had launched the research of speed reading. They cultivated many talents of speed reading by relative schools and courses. Although China started later on the research of speed reading, it developed with a high speed and acquired some achievements. This research based on relative researches in the past, primary school students were selected as subjects and the speed reading training was regarded as the independent variable, in order to discuss how the training promotes their reading speed and influences on eye movements mode during the reading process.There are two experiments in the current research. The first one is a natural experiment, the second one is conducted in the lab. In the first experiment, there were57third graders from two classes as the subjects. Speed reading training was the independent variable, the reading speed and effective reading speed were the dependent variables. The two classes were randomly assigned into two groups—the experimental group(28students)and the control group(29students). The second one is carried out in the eye tracking lab. There were20third graders in both the control group and experimental group. The subjects’ eye movements were recorded when the subjects were reading The speed training was the independent variable and six eye movement measures were used as the dependent variables. The results indicate:(1) Reading speed could be improved significantly by systematic training on speed reading while the reading scores would not be decreased;(2) The training of speed reading could reduce the fixation counts effectively, and shorten the average fixation duration at the same time;(3) Both saccade counts and regression times could be reduced by training on speed reading.