[nabs-l] Learning to learn faster

Tue Feb 25 02:48:19 UTC 2014

Arielle,
You and me study the same way. I, too, zone out when doing audio reading; 
its tough to concentrate but very hard with jaws; I need a human reader, 
live or recorded, to really absorb the material.

I also find it very necessary to take notes when doing audio reading like I 
will tonight. I read all the way through which is quite time consuming as I 
cannot skim over the irrelavant boxes and sidebars.
But as you said, the advantage is that I can study my notes for exams, 
rather than re-reading the chapter.
I also have a braille note so this system works since I can write notes in 
braille.

I would say  that audio reading is faster than braille. I used braille and 
audio in high school, but more audio. I think braille took slightly longer. 
I had good reading speed, but its just that it was long text and for every 
print page, it was like five braille pages.
I never timed it so I don't know for sure though.
I need my braille to retain info, so if I'm not reading in braille, I use my 
braille notes as a substitute for that.
Sometimes I even put place markers in my keyword files to further help me 
mark up important info.

Ashley

-----Original Message----- 
From: Arielle Silverman
Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 9:25 PM
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list
Subject: Re: [nabs-l] Learning to learn faster

When I was an undergrad student, I used a combination of Braille,
E-text with JAWS, and audio recordings for my textbooks, depending on
what was available. I didn't keep track of how much time I spent
working on reading, but I don't think the amount of time ever seemed
excessive. I usually got in the habit of reading book chapters all
the way through rather than skimming, but then I didn't need to
re-read before tests. I could just study my notes and that was usually
good enough. I did find that it was essential for me to take notes if
I was reading through audio either with JAWS or an audio recording;
otherwise I would forget the material. If I read using Braille I
didn't have that problem. I had a Braille Note then, so note-taking
while listening to JAWS was easy. Now that I no longer have a Braille
notetaker this has become less efficient for me, since I have to stop
JAWS and go into a notes file every time I  want to write something
down. However, now as a doctoral student in dissertation stage, nearly
all my work is writing. In some ways I miss reading! :)

Arielle

On 2/24/14, Lillie Pennington <lilliepennington at fuse.net> wrote:
> I personally can't stand human readers. I would say that my Braille 
> reading
> and comprehension of a screen reader are about the same.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On Feb 24, 2014, at 8:02 PM, Jamie Principato <blackbyrdfly at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> How many hours a night must you spend reading in order to keep up with 
>> and
>> be successful in your classes? Are you using Braille or a screen reader?
>> I'd love to hear everyone weigh in on this. If you don't read for class
>> every night, how many hours a week?
>>
>> Jamie
>>
>> Sent from my iPhone
>>
>>> On Feb 24, 2014, at 5:34 PM, Arielle Silverman <arielle71 at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> I find it easier to skim in Braille than in audio or E-text. You can
>>> skim in Braille by looking for indented text, sliding your fingers
>>> down the leftmost edge of the page looking for spaces where the text
>>> is indented or centered to indicate a new paragraph or section
>>> heading, or of course, flip to the next physical page.
>>> Also, I'm not sure speed is  the end goal, at least not all the time.
>>> I think a better goal is to achieve a good speed-to-accuracy ratio.
>>> That is, you want to understand as much  as possible in as little time
>>> as possible. Anyone can put their screen reader on 500 words a minute
>>> and just breeze through, but if you comprehended less than half what
>>> was spoken, that's not useful at all. Similarly, carefully reading in
>>> Braille at 100 words per minute but understanding everything you read,
>>> and remembering it later so you don't have to re-read right before the
>>> test, is valuable.
>>> I'm one of those Braille readers who reads very quickly, and I've
>>> often found, especially as an adult reading denser material and having
>>> less practice with Braille, that I have to force myself to slow down
>>> or I start missing stuff.
>>>
>>> Arielle
>>>
>>>> On 2/24/14, Carly Mihalakis <carlymih at comcast.net> wrote:
>>>> Good afternoon, Sophie,
>>>>
>>>>        Growing up,I admit, I took braille very much for granted,
>>>> couldn't fathom those blinks I heard about who, didn't read braille.
>>>> Served the Federation's summer program as the braille instructor, was
>>>> a devotee of this page slate I have. Was beginning to learn Grade 3,
>>>> the whole bit. I forgot, in studying Japanese language, I, with the
>>>> help of a key my Dad found for me On-line, began teaching myself
>>>> nihongo tenji (Japanese braille) Then, at age 19, I was hit by a car
>>>> which caused severe brain damage, a symptom of which has been acute
>
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