Eyercize:Online speed reading training

Website of the day: Eyercize

What is this?

It is a free online tool for learners to increase their reading speed. Learners can paste whatever text they would like to speed read, setting the number of words per chunk and begin to read!
  

Why is it good for language learning?

• It is a free tool which really help students to increase the reading speed little by little because students can set the number of words and the rate according to their own learning process.

• To make the tool more accessible, students can drag the link to the bookmark bar so that students can easily pracitce speed reading whenever they read articles online.    

• There will be a pop-out column which tells the users how many words they read when doing the practice. students can know their learning progress.  

      

Classroom use

• After reading a text, teacher have students use Eyercize to read the text again according to their individual reading speed. Since students already grasp the main ideas of the text, it will be easier for them to practive reading in bigger chunks like 4 or 5 words per chunk. Sudents can compare reading word by word with reading with larger chunks and see if the website can increase their reading speed. 
• Before teaching a text, students can use the website and read for the main ideas of the text first. Afterwards, teachers can have students do general comprehension checks and test if they really understand what the text is mainly about. Then teachers lead the sutdents to read the text again, paying attention to more details and langueage forms. 

Limitation

• To use the website service, the texts learners read have to be eletronic or adapted from the internet.  
• There should be enough computers for everyone since each student has different reading speed. Therefore, students cannot share computers. 
• Students might find teh reading strategy doesn't work on them because people have different learning style. 
• Students with faster reading speed might feel bored if they have to wait until other students finish reading. teachers have to devise other activities for these sutdents.  

How to use Eyercize

Click here to watch the trainign video made by Russeel Stannard.