Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer probably a dumb question...

This has just occured to me but, if it is the fact that we subvocalise the words when we normally read that slows us down, do deaf readers read quicker?

Worth a thought anyhow.

Nick

Not me Then again I lost my hearing later in life. I personally find there is some advantage in to having learnt to subvocalise. When you come across some new word you give it a sound then you inner mind has something to throw back at you.

Another way to look at it... If you could just look at the words of a foreign language and understand what it means without subvocalising. You would be learning the language closer to the way a completely deaf person might learn the language. However your inner mind would still apply sounds to interpert it (you make up your own pronounciation). Yet to learn a foreign language the best place to start is hearing it. A deaf person has to use their visual memory to interpert the words. While their visual memory may not directly co-inside with what the author ment because it is difficult to create a visual memory for words like... like, and, if, or, there, however, consequently, etc, these words add/change the meaning of the picture.

Consider... the expression 'get outta here', when spoken as a joke, has a different meaning than when spoken, by say a figherfighter racing into a burning building... The words are the same yet with the inflection of the voice a different meaning is conveyed and we can tell by just hearing them. I've given 2 examples and there are many more for the same word group. Now consider, a deaf person, who has never heard sound, is unlikely to be able to pull from their memory what I just wrote about the firefighter. If they saw a movie or experienced it, they may succeed in understanding the message I've conveyed. If not then for them the reading experience would seem to be slower. Deaf people who can hear to some degree are also taught to read the same manner as everyone else so they too wind up subvocalising.

Maybe being deaf and learning to photoread has an advantage... we get used to the silence so it might not bother us so much if we don't subvocalise.

Alex

And for many Deaf people, English is their second language (sign language being their first), so imagine reading in your second language faster than you can read a book in your native langauge.

Although I am fluent in only one language, I could easily imagine a person reading faster in a second or third language because there would be less emotional attachment to the second and third languages. The words of the 2nd and 3rd languages would just be useful tools, while one's primary language is likely to be overloaded with unconscious emotional meanings and blockages from early childhood.

Seeker,

As a Deaf person and a fluent speaker of two languages, German and English. I can assure you that, that is not the case. My emotional attachment to English makes me a faster reader of this language because it was the language I was schooled in. My mother tongue I learnt to read later in life... at a point where my family no longer spoke the language at home. I recognised the words vocally, I was not experienced in recognising the in written form... for this reason my reading skills in German are much slower. An interesting thing though using photoreading I am able to comprehend the text much faster than by regular reading. However this comprehension is still slower than with English.

Alex

I was thinking of someone who would be totally fluent in, say, two languages: for example, english (learned as a child ---> compulsory), and spanish (learned as an adult ---> by choice). When I say "fluent," I mean able to speak, read, and write in the language skillfully.

Under those conditions, the learning difficulties which, let's face it, we all experience as a child, could still leave traces in the mind years later when using one's primary language. The primary language would be associated with those frustrations that we all experience to some degree, while the secondary language might not.

I've heard from many people that after a second language is learned, it is relatively easy to learn a third and fourth language. This could be due to some blockage being overcome once more than one language is learned.

Your native language learning is natural. As a baby listening to your parents, siblings, cousins, radio, TV, etc. you naturally pick up the language; or languages, if your parents are bilingual.

The fact that there are fewer cultural, personal, and emotional ties to a language that is not your native tongue, reading or communicating in that language would not be as natural, even if you are fluent in that second language. There are many cultural undertones that may not be obvious, as it would be to someone with that as their native language.

[This message has been edited by Sandy Millies (edited September 25, 2002).]

Seeker,

Have you ever met someone who learnt a second language as an adult and has to use it daily in their working lives. My experience with them is they are more inhibited to expess themselves in the second language for fear of 'getting it wrong' They are concsious of their accent even though they are skilled in the language it still causes them more frustration than their native language in both learning and using.

It odd to think if you've been using a language for 15 to 21 years (adult) you would find it easier to learn another language, you've got 15 to 21 years experience with it you tend to fall back on what is now natural. We learnt to get the knack of learning our first language through an average of 10 years of school.

If what you are saying is true then researchers have it wrong... they say the best age to start learning a second language is before the age of 12 not as an adult.

Yes learning a third language is easier because you start recognising subtle similaries of some words so it is easier to form a memory bank of common words in a language. However getting the correct sentence stucture in the new language is what causes the greatest frustration. Understanding when to use the nomative, dative or the subjective case is frustrating. It certainly doesn't come easy if the language has 6 varients of the word you or 4 varients of the word love. How do you know which one you should be using? Trial and error? Learning? (ouch still bugs you when you get it wrong at any age.)

A small child starts off with single words and isn't able to form sentences until about the age of 3 when it starts to identify itself as an individual and begins to recognise that 'I 'means the self and 'you' is the other person. I can assure you that anyone learning a second language as an adult experiences more difficulty than a child.

I consider myself lucky, I also consider both German and English my mother tongues. It took me the first six years of my life to learn german and I learnt English in a matter of months. It took my mother about 3 years to get the language to flow. It was the most frustrating time in her life and I had to translate for her. To gain fluency or flow with anything one has to use it constantly and the process of learning until it comes naturally has it inbuilt frustrations.

You can't become fluent to speak read and write in a language 'skillfully' without learning it. How do you seperate the experiences of learning for 8 to 14 years of your life when you start learning another language? It is the learning process that we experience as a child that we bring into learning anything. If as adults we could let go of our past learning difficulties, then, every adult, would be able to master photoreading overnight. Learn to balance their cheque book, learn to fix a car, learn astronomy, yes even learn other languages with more ease.

The learning experiences that we had as a child not only leave traces of the frustrations and triumps we experienced, they are a part of what shaped us as indiviuals and we carry them with us in every endeavour of our lives. Everyday offers the opportunity to learn something some lessons are still more painful than others.

Alex

Thanks, Sandy, AlexK,

I would just like to point out that what is natural is often very painful and difficult. Birth and death come to my mind as very natural happenings.

Since most of us are not taught to Photoread as children, an adult has to unlearn the slower way they were taught to read as a child. Unlearning childhood habits can be extremely difficult and painful.

I guess it depends on the individual person. If someone reads by subvocalizing in their primary language for 20 years they have a lot of work to do overcoming that. As an adult, that same person could learn a second language and never develop that habit of subvocalizing in the second language. It depends.

LOL There's nothing natural about learning to balance a cheque book, or calculus either

As for subvocalising... I've been doing it for some 30+ years, still do it and I found photoreading easy to learn.

quote:

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Unlearning childhood habits can be extremely difficult and painful.

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That is one of the reason why learning a second language is so difficult as an adult. We want to avoid those childhood taunts at all cost. As an adult perhaps we should know better or have a thick enough skin to tolerate the laughter of our peers when we say something and they find something extremely funny about it, the way or what you've said it. One habit we develop as a child is avoidance of situations where we might find ourselves the butt of a joke. You've said it well...Unlearning childhood habits can be extremely difficult and painful.

Alex