MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text

nekokami · 05-12-2007, 06:49 AM

I liked the description of "Rubish" in the slashdot discussion.

The debates that rage on the source article page (http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/li...ne/#more-10459) were interesting, too.

I was initially highly skeptical of this research. The sample provided in the venturebeat article was skewed in a fairly obvious manner. I decided to look iinto this a bit more. Here's the actual study report: http://www.readingonline.org/article...cles/r_walker/

The research seems reasonably well designed (I'm doing graduate work in educational research, so I have some basis for comparison). The sample sizes are small (about 50 students in each of two studies), as is typical of educational research, so I think more follow-up is needed. I was unsure of their conclusions, however. The researchers seem to imply that there would be a benefit to reformatting all texts this way (a position which is in their financial interests to hold). On the other hand, I suspect that a longer term study might show that there is a maximum amount of advantage to be gained from this presentation method, after which a return to block formatting might be beneficial. The presentation format makes readers much more aware of syntactic structures in written material. Since grammar is barely taught in schools currently, this is an advantage. However, once the students have internalized the grammatical rules exposed by VSTF, they may not need the method anymore, and in fact, it might prove to be less efficient than block text, which allows the use of speed reading techniques that require the visibility of larger quantities of text at once.

The research article concludes with a link to a web-based service that reformats text to VSTF: http://www.liveink.com/LiveInkToGoReadingOnline.htm I wanted to try this with my older daughter, who was adopted from China when she was 11 years old and is now 16. I thought it would be interesting to get her opinion of whether VSTF made text easier to read. Unfortunately, the server seems to be presently overloaded (possibly due to the slashdot notoriety). I will try to remember to follow up on this in a few days, when the furor has died down a bit.

05-12-2007, 06:49 AM	#3
nekokami fruminous edugeek Posts: 6,745 Karma: 551260 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Northeast US Device: iPad, eBw 1150	I liked the description of "Rubish" in the slashdot discussion. The debates that rage on the source article page (http://venturebeat.com/2007/05/10/li...ne/#more-10459) were interesting, too. I was initially highly skeptical of this research. The sample provided in the venturebeat article was skewed in a fairly obvious manner. I decided to look iinto this a bit more. Here's the actual study report: http://www.readingonline.org/article...cles/r_walker/ The research seems reasonably well designed (I'm doing graduate work in educational research, so I have some basis for comparison). The sample sizes are small (about 50 students in each of two studies), as is typical of educational research, so I think more follow-up is needed. I was unsure of their conclusions, however. The researchers seem to imply that there would be a benefit to reformatting all texts this way (a position which is in their financial interests to hold). On the other hand, I suspect that a longer term study might show that there is a maximum amount of advantage to be gained from this presentation method, after which a return to block formatting might be beneficial. The presentation format makes readers much more aware of syntactic structures in written material. Since grammar is barely taught in schools currently, this is an advantage. However, once the students have internalized the grammatical rules exposed by VSTF, they may not need the method anymore, and in fact, it might prove to be less efficient than block text, which allows the use of speed reading techniques that require the visibility of larger quantities of text at once. The research article concludes with a link to a web-based service that reformats text to VSTF: http://www.liveink.com/LiveInkToGoReadingOnline.htm I wanted to try this with my older daughter, who was adopted from China when she was 11 years old and is now 16. I thought it would be interesting to get her opinion of whether VSTF made text easier to read. Unfortunately, the server seems to be presently overloaded (possibly due to the slashdot notoriety). I will try to remember to follow up on this in a few days, when the furor has died down a bit.