Evelyn Wood research

Evelyn Wood started the research following her master’s thesis in the University of Utah. The professor Dr. C. Lowell Lees read and graded her 80-page paper in ten minutes. Although without special training, he was able to read 2500 words per minute, that is, ten times faster than average. At that time speed reading was considered to be up to 400 words per minute.

Afterwards, Evelyn Wood started teaching in the secondary school and found out that some people could read faster than usual. She traced over 100 people who could naturally read between1600 and 6000 words per minute. She started studying how they were reading, why they were reading that fast and how they learned to do so. She managed to find the methodology, but not how it was learned. Many fast readers did not know they did anything special, it was just usual for them.

Evelyn Wood concluded, that they read more than one word at once. The whole complex of words made up the meaning for them. The eyes moved fast and easily down the page. They adjusted the speed of reading to the type of literature, knew how to grasp the meaning of the paragraph and the main idea of the text. The objective of reading is not to slowly slide through the text, but to understand the idea of the author.

After understanding these core assumptions she learned to read a couple thousand words per minute, and soon she developed the whole system and started teaching people. Her program was approved in the University of Utah  in 1959 and spread across the whole country; later it became known globally.