Incremental reading looks like a haphazard way of learning

In response to this Incremental reading video

Xena and Zena from San Bernadina wrote:

Question

I love SuperMemo for Q&A's, cloze deletions and image occlusions, but I'm lost when it comes to incremental reading. To me it looks like a bunch of disjointed facts are extracted for the purpose of applying cloze deletions. It also seems more time consuming and a haphazard way of learning a subject over traditional reading and note taking.

Answer

• your impression is pretty typical. "Disjointed fact" is a usual impression of a bystander to a learning process. The glue for facts often exists only in the mind of the incremental reader
• your impression of "time consuming" is not unusual either. It is true that it takes months to become fluent in incremental reading. This investment pays handsomely, but it also takes time. The break even point may depend on the users and his perceptions and it is hard to estimate. A wild guess is that it may take 3-15 months to sense a return on investment. Some users fall in love instantly, but this is very rare. See Why incremental reading is not popular
• see SuperMemo Video for better examples of videos. The one in question is titled "Struggling with incremental reading" to show that some text can pose serious difficulty. This was an intended effect. The text was simply above the user's level of knowledge. He should have chosen a simpler text at first and proceed to deeper waters slowly.
• to a bystander, incremental reading is a bit like a chess game watched from the middle by a checkers player. Checkers is more linear and Chess may feel chaotic. Only the actual student fully knows how things connect with prior knowledge in his mind. The key to good incremental reading is to avoid "disjointed facts", or at least, put them together asap (as in the "struggle" in the video). The struggle is more typical of a homework assignment than of good incremental reading which should always be fun

This text and video are used to explain SuperMemo, a pioneer of spaced repetition software since 1987. For other videos see: SuperMemo Video