IELTS Matching Information 14

Nowadays, speed reading has become an essential skill in any environment where people have to master a large volume of information. Professional workers need reading skills to help them get through many documents every day, while students under pressure to deal with assignments may feel they have to read more and read faster all the time.

•  the types of people who need to read more quickly

• a definition of speed reading

• what you should consider before you start reading

Speed reading is not just about reading fast. It is also about how much information you can remember when you have finished reading. The World Championship Speed-Reading Competition says that its top competitors average between 1,000 and 2,000 words a minute. But they must remember at least 50 percent of this in order to qualify for the competition.

• why reading material should be interesting

•  what you should consider before you start reading

• the fastest reading speeds

On the other hand, a slow reader will spend a lot of time reading small blocks of words. He or she will skip back often, losing the flow and structure of the text, and muddling their overall understanding of the subject. This irregular eye movement quickly makes the reader tired. Poor readers tend to dislike reading because they feel it is difficult to concentrate and comprehend written information.

• the fastest reading speeds

•  how a reader can become confused

•  a definition of speed reading

The best tip anyone can have to improve their reading speed is to practise. In order to do this effectively, a person must be engaged in the material and want to know more. If you find yourself constantly having to re-read the same paragraph, you may want to switch to reading material that grabs your attention. If you enjoy what you are reading, you will make quicker progress.

• why reading material should be interesting

• the types of people who need to read more quickly

•  the fastest reading speeds

Speed reading is not just about reading fast. It is also about how much information you can remember when you have finished reading. The World Championship Speed-Reading Competition says that its top competitors average between 1,000 and 2,000 words a minute. But they must remember at least 50 percent of this in order to qualify for the competition.

•  a definition of speed reading

• the types of people who need to read more quickly

• what you should consider before you start reading

Although there are various methods to increase reading speed, the trick is deciding what information you want first. For example, if you only want a rough outline of an issue, then you can skim the material quickly and extract the key facts. However, if you need to understand every detail in a document, then you must read it slowly enough to understand this.

• how a reader can become confused

• why reading material should be interesting

•  what you should consider before you start reading

For many, life-casting was an insult to the sculptor’s creative genius. In an infamous lawsuit of 1834, a moulder whose mask of the dying French emperor Napoleon had been reproduced and sold without his permission was judged to have no rights to the image. In other words, he was specifically held not to be an artist. This judgement reflect the view of established members of the nineteenth-century art world such as Rodin, who commented that life-casting ‘happens fast but it doesn’t make Art’. Some even feared that ‘if too much nature was allowed in, it would lead Art away from its proper course of the Ideal.

• ways of assessing whether or not an object is art

• an example of a craftsman’s unsuccessful claim to ownership of his work

• the original function of a particular type of art

Time changes our view in another way, too. Each new movement implies a reassessment of what has gone before. What is done now alters what was done before. In some cases this is merely self-serving, with the new art using the old to justify itself. It seems to be saying, look at how all of that points to this! Aren’t we clever to be the culmination of all that has gone before? But usually it is a matter of re-alerting the sensibility, reminding us not to take things for granted. Take, for example, the cast of the hand of a giant from a circus, made by an anonymous artist around 1889, an item that would now sit happily in any commercial or public gallery. The most significant impact of this piece is on the eye, in the contradiction between unexpected size and verisimilitude. Next, the human element kicks in. you note that the nails are dirt-encrusted, unless this is the caster’s decorative addition, and the fingertips extend far beyond them. Then you take in the element of choice, arrangement, art if you like, in the neat, pleated, buttoned sleeve-end that gives the item balance and variation of texture. This is just a moulded hand, yet the part stands utterly for the whole. It reminds us slyly, poignantly, of the full-size original

• ways of assessing whether or not an object is art

• how artists deal with the less interesting aspects of their work

• an example of how trends in art can change attitudes to an earlier work

What also happens is that techniques and crafts which would have been judged inartistic at the time they were used are reassessed. Life-casting is an interesting example of this. It involved making a plaster mould of a living person or thing. This was complex, technical work, as Benjamin Robert Haydon discovered when he poured 250 litres of plaster over his human model and nearly killed him. At the time, the casts were used for medical research and, consequently, in the nineteenth century life-casting was considered inferior to sculpture in the same way that, more recently, photography was thought to be a lesser art than painting. Both were viewed as unacceptable shortcuts by the ’senior 1 arts. Their virtues of speed and unwavering realism also implied their limitations; they left little or no room for the imagination.

• the original function of a particular type of art

• ways of assessing whether or not an object is art

• an example of a craftsman’s unsuccessful claim to ownership of his work

But is it art? And, if so, why? These are old tediously repeated questions to which artists have often responded, ‘It is art because I am an artist and therefore what I do is art. However, what doesn’t work for literature works much better for art – works of art do float free of their creators’ intentions. Over time the “reader” does become more powerful. Few of us can look at a medieval altarpiece as its painter intended. We believe too little and aesthetically know too much, so we recreate and find new fields of pleasure in the work. Equally, the lack of artistic intention of Paul Richer and other forgotten craftsmen who brushed oil onto flesh, who moulded, cast and decorated in the nineteenth century is now irrelevant. What counts is the surviving object and our response to it. The tests are simple: does it interest the eye, excite the brain, move the mind to reflection and involve the heart. It may, to use the old dichotomy, be beautiful but it is rarely true to any significant depth. One of the constant pleasures of art is its ability to come at us from an unexpected angle and stop us short in wonder.

• an example of how trends in art can change attitudes to an earlier work

• an example of a craftsman’s unsuccessful claim to ownership of his work

• ways of assessing whether or not an object is art