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SPEEDY deliveranceThe Bible: best-seller, yes; page turner, no. The Good Book can be intimidating, confusing and thick. It makes War and Peace look like a Vanity Fair fashion spread. Most people own a Bible but few have read it, frightened away by a hail of candlestick measurements, characters with names like Elzaphan and the word "begat." Most Christians would say that one should not edit the nearly 800,000 words of God. But some think it`s OK to speed it up. Bible readers these days feel the need for speed, and many reach for tailormade products and regimens that get them through the Bible as quickly as possible. William Proctor created the Light Speed Bible, a Bible that, when paired with Proctor`s speed-reading techniques, can be read in less than 24 hours. "It`s the only Bible that`s been designed for accessibility and speed," said Proctor, a writer and speaker who lives in Florida. The Light Speed Bible uses a Holman Christian Standard Bible translation and includes loads of headlines, subheads and underlined text to help readers grasp key points quickly. Lines have more white space between them, making it easier on the eyes. The real key, Proctor said, is to remember Lot`s Wife: Never, ever look back. "Looking back is a deadly enemy to efficient reading," he said. "More often than not, you`re going to answer the questions as you go along." Proctor says he uses the Light Speed Bible and teaches speed- reading techniques in Christian speed-reading seminars. Most attendees can polish off the Gospel of Matthew in about an hour, and speed up as they get more experience. In fact, Procotor said his 24- hour estimate is downright pessimistic. Most can cruise through all 66 books -- from "In the beginning" to the end of the world -- in 18 hours or less. Moreover, Proctor says his readers generally retain at least 70 percent of what they read. Crash Bible-reading plans are nothing new. Many denominations read through the entire Bible every three years or so as part of their liturgy, and Jewish congregations read through the Torah -- the first five books of the Bible -- every year. Yearlong plans are legion: The 969-year-old Methuselah probably could have read the Bible (had it been around) each year of his life using a different plan. But Ted Cooper, creator of "The Bible in 90 Days" reading program, says one-year plans don`t work for everybody. Type A, list- oriented folks need to have more of a challenge, and need to make more of a commitment. "The speed certainly has to do with where we are as a society today," Cooper said. "We`re used to shorter time frames. It`s easier to get distracted." Cooper`s 90-day program requires readers to absorb about 12 pages a day of his "The Bible in 90 Days" Bible. It`s enough reading to keep readers soaked in Scripture, he said, but not enough to require them to quit their jobs. Most importantly, it allows readers to explore the Bible more thoroughly than other speed-reading programs do. Every word can be read and pondered -- as long as the reader keeps to a strict 12- page regimen. There`s precious little room for slackers in Cooper`s plan. Quality time with Scripture is important, according to Cooper. A few programs are more akin to spiritual Cliff`s Notes. "The 100-Minute Bible is primarily intended for people who have an interest in Christianity but not the time (nor tenacity!) to read the whole Bible," toots Britain`s The 100-Minute Press. "As the title indicates, most people will only take 100 minutes to read it, making it ideal for an upcoming rail or aeroplane journey." Glenn Paauw, director of product development for the Colorado Springs-based International Bible Society, said, "I would say I`m a little concerned (about how some Biblereading programs are used)." Such abbreviated, paraphrased Bibles interpret for the reader, and that can be worrisome. What happens if a paraphrase cuts back on commandments? Still, Paauw says that reading the Bible is too big a task for some people without some sort of plan. "I think it`s gotten harder, as our culture has changed, to read an admittedly difficult book," Paauw said. "If you take a non-Bible reader and give them a whole Bible, their reaction is to be intimidated, to be overwhelmed, to be confused." The International Bible Study has long printed sections of the Scriptures for readers: The Gospel of John, for instance, or the book of Ecclesiastes. IBS also offers what Paauw calls a "Five Act Drama," which gives readers a broadbrush treatment of the Christian story through selected Scriptures. The verses can be found in IBS publications, new versions of NavPress` popular Bible paraphrase "The Message" and on the IBS Web site (www.ibs.org/niv/appendix/get tingstarted.php). Paauw said the smattering of verses doesn`t replace the Bible. For Christians, or people interested in Christianity, reading the whole book is as important as ever. Time-sensitive Bible-reading plans -- be they 90 days or a year -- can be a real aid. Training Reading Fluency in Dysfluent Readers with High Reading Accuracy: Word Specific Effects but Low Transfer to Untrained WordsThe outcome of a training study attempting to increase German speaking poor readers` reading fluency is reported. The aim of the training was to help children establish orthographic representations for a limited set of training words as well as for high-frequency onset clusters. A sample of 20 dysfluent readers (8 to 11 years) received a computerized training of repeated reading of a limited set of 32 training words over a period of up to 25 days. Each day, training words were presented up to six times with a special emphasis on the onset segment. Post-tests were carried out one and five weeks after the last training day. A considerable decrease in reading times could be achieved for the trained words that remained stable for both post-tests. However, even for the limited set of training words, a remarkable amount of repetitions did not lead to age adequate word recognition speed. Generalization to untrained words starting with a trained onset cluster (transfer words) was statistically reliable but small.< /p> WHAT IS READING FLUENCY? According to Wolf and Katzir-Cohen (2001), reading fluency refers to "a level of accuracy and rate where decoding is relatively effortless; where oral reading is smooth and accurate with correct prosody; and where attention can be allocated to comprehension" (p. 219). Difficulties in reading fluency is one of the major problems in children with reading deficits: their reading is slow, hesitant, and sometimes extremely laborious. The concept of reading fluency plays an important role in theoretical models of reading acquisition. LaBerge and Samuels (1974) proposed that learning to read involves increasing automaticity in processing word units, and thereby increases the cognitive attentional resources for text processing. Similarly, Perfetti`s (1985) verbal efficiency model suggests that slow word processing speed interferes with automaticity of reading and, therefore, with comprehension. Despite the theoretical relevance of reading fluency for the development of competent reading skills, it has been largely neglected in reading research (Allington, 1983). In recent years, however, fluency and fluency intervention have regained the attention of both researchers and practitioners ( see, for example, Kame`enui & Simmons, 2001). DYSFLUENT READERS HAVE A DEFICIT ON THE WORD READING LEVEL The oldest and most commonly used method for facilitating fluency is the repeated reading technique (Samuels, 1985) where certain reading material is read repeatedly until a particular rate is attained. The majority of intervention studies focus on passage-level reading ( see Chard, Vaughn, & Tyler, 2002, for a recent review). Another approach is to focus on training of word recognition, which plays a particularly central role in the complex process of reading. It is often claimed that practicing isolated words is not pedagogically sound because it does not transfer to text reading. However, Levy, Abello, and Lysynchuk (1997) could show that repeated reading of word lists does indeed have a positive effect on reading the same words in connected text. Tan and Nicholson (1997) also found that gains in word recognition speed led to improved comprehension of text. Levy (2001) directly compared the effects of context training versus list training on later reading fluency. She reported no differential benefits f rom list or contextual training. Based on findings like that, Torgesen, Rashotte, and Alexander (2001) come to the conclusion that "the primary locus of the repeated reading effect is on individual word reading efficiency" (p. 346). This conclusion is highly plausible as it has been demonstrated that it is the process of word reading that is deficient in reading disabled children (Ben-Dror, Pollatsek, & Scarpati, 1991). Poor readers not only have problems in reading connected texts, but also show the same (or even bigger) problems in reading words in isolation. In the present study, training of isolated words was given preference over text reading for methodological reasons. We wanted to determine if the method of repeated word reading is efficient to help dysfluent readers build up orthographic representations of (1) a limited set of training words and (2) specifically trained sub-word units (in our case, onset clusters). The assumption was that such representations can further be used for fast and automatic recognition of (1) the trained words and (2) untrained words that include a trained subword unit. Training on the word level only allowed both specific selection of the training material and precise examination of differential effects of our training on certain word types. WORD READING ACCURACY AND SPEED Two factors are relevant for fast and fluent word recognition: namely, accuracy and speed. Word reading accuracy is mainly dependent on phonological decoding skills. Quite obviously, problems and mistakes in working out the correct pronunciation of a certain grapheme string will have a strong negative influence on reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. Speed reading index
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