Testen, was das Zeug hält.

The Importance of Reading
IQ OR EYE Q?
IQ person’s intelligence compares to that of an
is an abbreviation for intelligence Quotient.
This is the number showing how a
average person. Technology has changed the way we
live. We just love being fast at texting, video games and
surfing the internet. But we’ve never thought about
reading fast and that’s where the “brain enhancement
programme” comes in, known as Eye Q.
libraries, like universities, serve a critical role in improving
literacy levels and act as information hubs, often
providing a community’s only access to electronic communication.
african libraries are
generally given a low priority by
governments and international
funders as most have severely
deteriorated infrastructure.
Public libraries are being transformed
into multipurpose community
centres that seek to foster
a lifelong culture of reading and
library attendance. These new “centres of Excellence”
include early childhood development sections, teenage
computer games as well as performance and meeting
space. They are also serving us as integral components
of violence prevention projects in previously crimeridden
cities and sections of black townships.
These information hubs do help in preventing us from
being involved in unscrupulous activities, but yet again,
are they helping when it comes to serving their purpose?
in essence, they actually don’t help in reading
fast. But when it comes to reading “SMS taal”, nobody
seems to encounter a problem and that’s why we’ve
become so fast at texting because we write out the
words in our own interpretation. We don’t have time
to write out: “How are you doing?”, it’s simply “Hud?”.
Funny enough, this is the language we all seem to understand:
“aint nobody got tym 4 bombastic wrds”. The
SMS language tends to create a novice language which
has become an integral part of the multilingual world.
it pursues simple sentence structure for communication,
especially between family members. it is assumed
that SMS syntactic and lexical choices by texters are not
so different from a child’s language.
a child expresses his feelings through simple progressive
tense, e.g. Eating for ‘i am eating’.
one study showed that an average american teenager
sends up to 60 texts a day. However, SMS has also been
blamed for the decline in language ability and an increase
in traffic accidents. This new sub-language has
spread worldwide as texters find shortcuts to write
their messages as quickly as possible, using the fewest
characters. Texting shorthand such as lol (laugh out
loud) and oMg (oh my god) has entered the oxford
English Dictionary.
Speed reading allegedly improves one’s ability to reading
quickly. Methods involved include, chunking (in psy-
chology, a phenomenon whereby
individuals group responses when
performing a memory task) and
eliminating sub vocalization (inter-
nal speech made when reading a
word, thus allowing the reader to
imagine the sound of the word as
it is read).
according to Wikipedia, tests to
measure the effect of speed reading on comprehension
have generally achieved poor results. a speed
reading test sponsored by Staples as part of an e-book
promotion, revealed that average college students
read about 450 words compared to a third grader who
reads 150 words per minute and a world speed reading
champion who reads 4 700 words. Sounds crazy right?
at tertiary level one really needs to be able to read fast
as lectures are at a very high pace because they assume
you are able to meet them halfway as they read about
675 words per minute. Notes are given and reviewed
on a daily basis and tests are written regularly and in
most cases, you’ve got to make sure that you go over
the work done that night, because, that’s when the
learning takes place. in class its actually just teaching…
you’ll never know if you’ll be getting that surprise test
or not the following day, so, it’s better to be safe than
sorry (this is why we have always been advised in high
school to go over our work on a daily basis).
To answer the question: it’s your iQ that matters as it’s
synopsized by the general knowledge as well as the
learning information you take in and in most circumstances,
general knowledge just compels you to aspire
to find out more about things.
By Lerato Mofokeng
20 >>>Hola MaHigH-ScHool