重燃人们快速阅读的兴趣

Mobile speed-reading apps use 'rapid serial visual presentation,' or RSVP, in which words are flashed on the screen at a preset rate. The technology is based on the premise that a lot of reading time is wasted by moving our eyes back and forth.
手机速读应用采用了“快速序列视觉呈现”(RSVP)技术，让词汇以预先设定的速率在屏幕上闪现。这项技术所依据的假定是，我们的很大一部分阅读时间都浪费在目光的前后移动上面。

RSVP hurts comprehension because it doesn't let people look back at previous words, says Keith Rayner, a psychology professor at the University of California-San Diego. In a study he co-authored, 40 college students read passages at their natural pace and also while using a technology that didn't allow them to refer back. In the first trial, subjects had 75% comprehension accuracy. In the second trial, they had only 50% accuracy.
加州大学 地亚哥分校(University of California-San Diego)心理学教授基思·雷纳(Keith Rayner)说，RSVP有损理解，因为它不允许人们回顾前面的文字。在他跟别人合作的一次研究当中，40名大学生以自然速度阅读段落，然后采用一项不允许他们往回看的技术阅读。在第一次实验中，实验对象的理解准确率为75%；第二次实验当中，他们的准确率只有50%。

Last year, nearly two million people participated in Iris's in-person courses, compared with 417,000 in 2012 and 22,517 in 2007, when the company began.
去年接近200万人参加了Iris公司的当面授课课程。2012年人数为41.7万，2007年（该公司成立的那一年）有22,517人参加。

The company teaches a three-step process involving 'preview' (look at headings and subheads for main ideas), 'overview' (read the first sentence of every paragraph') and 'read' (go from beginning to end, but only if the previous two steps have convinced you the article is worth reading).
这家公司传授的方法分为三个步骤，包括“预览”（看标题和副题了解大意）、“概览”（阅读每个段落的第一句）、“阅读”（从头到尾地读，但前提是前面两步让你相信这篇文章值得读）。

None of this is possible using an RSVP app. In 2010, Iris launched its own free RSVP app, AccelaReader. 'People still have to read on the printed page or on a full screen, so people need to know how to read well in both situations,' Mr. Nowak says.
使用RSVP应用是无法实现这三个步骤的。2010年，Iris推出它自己的免费RSVP应用“AccelaReader”。诺瓦克说：“人们仍然需要在印刷页面上阅读或整屏阅读，所以需要知道怎样在两种情况下都能读好。”

San Francisco-based startup Plympton Inc. has a different solution for people reading in short bursts on their phone. In March, Plympton launched its first iPhone app, the $4.99-a-month Rooster subscription service. Rooster can send users a 15-minute chunk of a novel-selected every month by Rooster's team-each day. (The 15-minute chunk is calculated using an average speed of about 200 words a minute.) Upcoming selections include 'The Kreutzer Sonata' by Leo Tolstoy.
旧金山初创公司Plympton Inc.为在手机上短时间阅读的人们提供了一套不同的解决方案。今年3月，该公司推出它的第一款iPhone应用“Rooster”，月订阅费4.99美元。Rooster可以每天向用户发送一段15分钟的小说文字，这些文字每月由Rooster的团队挑选出来。（15分钟是采用每分钟约200词的平均速度计算的。）即将发送的选段包括列夫·托尔斯泰(Leo Tolstoy)的《克鲁采奏鸣曲》(The Kreutzer Sonata)。

Rooster's approach is designed to make the thought of starting a book more appealing, says Yael Goldstein Love, Rooster's editorial director and a novelist.
Rooster编辑总监、小说家亚埃尔·戈尔茨坦-洛夫(Yael Goldstein Love)说，Rooster的做法是为了让开始读一本书的念头更有吸引力。

Readers can choose to read on to the next installment if they've finished their 15-minute daily read. 'You can binge read,' Ms. Goldstein Love says. ' 'Binge read' sounds like a funny thing to say because that was how we read normally, but people no longer feel like they have time to read a 300-page thing.'
读完了15分钟的每日必读内容之后，读者可以选择继续阅读下一个章节。戈尔茨坦-洛夫说：“你可以大篇幅阅读。‘大篇幅阅读’这个词听起来很好玩，因为我们正常情况下就是那么读的，但如今人们不再觉得有时间读一本300页的长篇巨著了。”