Why do Asian students seem to do better in American schools than American children?

The ‘Asian Genius’ stereotype is still common even though it is not politically correct to use it. However, it is still a statistical fact that Asian children do tend to perform well in English speaking schools.  Some of this difference can be attributed to home life or a strong belief in success through education that is lacking in many American households. However, Michael Ford, President of Elite Minds Inc. and creator of the Speed Reader-X reading system, has uncovered another possible explanation.

During his reading skills research, he found that the way Asian children learn English is different from the way American children are taught. According to Mr. Ford, "Asian children learn to read a character based language such as Chinese or Japanese first. ….They are later taught English around age eight to twelve[After they have become proficient in a written language]. Those Asian children who recognize characters without pronouncing them as words can naturally carryover character recognition to English. Instead of trying to pronounce them, they see words as images just like their native character based languages. This means a very high percentage of Asian children naturally speed read."

Mr. Ford went on to explain that Speed reading is a skill which involves taking in words visually instead of pronouncing them one at a time like most people read. It is comparable to someone recognizing the ampersand symbol(&) as the word AND without trying to pronounce it in order to understand its meaning. Children in Asia who learn character based languages may pronounce the characters as words or learn to recognize them without the limitation of that voice in their head pronouncing the words individually. The difference depends on the child and how they are taught. This results in a large number of Asian children who have brains that are accustomed to reading in a way that is known in the West as Speed Reading. Apparently this is not true for all Asian children and many prefer to read as Americans do, using the voice in their head or they may only use this method when deep concentration is needed.

American children are taught to pronounce words and read aloud which teaches them to sub-vocalize, or read silently by using the voice in their head. As children become better readers they are still limited by this little voice in their head and they can never read faster than that inner voice can speak. Asian children who are natural speed readers do not have this limitation because they were not taught to read the same way in their character based language.

Mr. Ford added, "This is by no means a scientifically conclusive study. I only realized the connection during final beta testing of our software when I asked a friend from Taiwan to join my product testers and after one lesson he off-handedly commented that he already knew how to speed read and thought everyone read the same way he did. After some questioning I also found that two of his three sisters were also natural speed readers….Since that time I have found many other people from countries that have character based languages who were natural speed readers…a disproportionately higher number than I have found in the USA."

Asian children who can read at two to six times the speed of American children could have a definite advantage in school.

The ability to read test questions faster means more time to answer those questions. The ability to review an entire chapter minutes before a test, or to re-read a history chapter several times in one day has obvious advantages to any student.

"More schools in the US are starting speed reading courses and I think the popularity will continue to increase until it becomes a standard teaching method in the future." hopes Mr. Ford.

If you would like more information, Mr. Ford has created a free report that explains how speed reading works and it is available at http://www.free-speedreading-report.com