Reading Course Uses Movies To Increase Students' Speed

Seeing movies can help you to learn how to read. At least that is the theory behind the spring term reading course which starts on April 12 and runs through May 9.

Meeting for one hour a day, Monday through Friday, the course aims at speeding up the reading ability of its students without a concurrent loss of comprehension. Motion pictures, flicking groups of words on the screen at an increased rate of speed as the course progresses, aid the student to do this.

Aggressiveness

"We especially want to attack the attitude of the students toward their reading," William G. Perry '35, director of the Bureau of Supervisors and head of the course, said yesterday. "We want to make them read aggressively for ideas."

Given every term for the past ten years, the reading classes last year had an enrollment of 715, including faculty members and students from the University and Radcliffe. There is no outside work and no grades are given.

Though the course is not a guaranteed cure-all, the average student improves noticeably, records show. A student who reads at the rate of 200 words a minute at the beginning of the course can often read 400 to 420 words a minute at the end of the month's grind, and still maintain his previous rate of comprehension.

Every class hour is divided into three parts:

First comes the film. This over, there is a test consisting of ten questions on what was in the movie.

Then, each student is handed some material to read against time in class. Once again, there is a ten-question test on what they have read.

In all these tests, the students mark their own papers and keep their own grades.

Lastly, there is a period devoted to teaching students how to read the essentials, how to skim, and how to take rapid notes.