``I'll tell you this: my radio commentaries are about 170 words a minute (which is probably too fast, but that's New York for you). An hour of that would be about 10,000 words, which would be 25 pages of book text.''
Doug
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Cool. So a well organized lecture equals about 25 pages....
I think there are multiple issues involved behind the scenes. My loads were not quite as bad, except when I couldn't avoid them. And it depended on the subject. Getting through 200 pages of a novel was pretty easy. I could do near or close for history---provided I was interested in the period.
When I asked my question about transcripted lecture, speaking transformed into text, I was thinking about straight narrative. I was also thinking about my recent preference for listening to lectures rather than reading books.
But Bill White brings out another dimension:
``I found that three pages of notes would get me through a 50 minute class.''
Technical subjects like comp sci and math are a whole other dimension. It reminds me that reading and writing are so diverse that it takes multiple minds or mind sets, different forms and methods of comprehension.
One night as I was struggling through calculus, I thought fuck you guys. It took about two thousand years to figure some of this out, and I am supposed to learn it in a semester?
Some other random thoughts.
It seems to me the big mistake about English as a subject is the presumption that reading and writing are abstract skills that can learned in and of themselves, somehow disembodied from subject matter and content. This concept of the disembodied skill set, then leads to attempted objective measure methods, then endless testing, and evaluations and on into the neoliberal production unit nightmare.
There is a highly similar process of abstracted learning skills in math of course. What I found on my own, was various approachs worked depending on the math subject. Meditation, drawing, using paper and glue, coloring, seemed to really develop some subjects.
Then there is the idea-problem of literacy. But the question is literacy in what? Over the last few years following Strauss, I had to become more conversant or literate in western history of philosophy. I am not sure this subject is even taught in the US. And, of course it turned out to be another of those it takes lifetime to learn sujects that probably can never be mastered.
Anyway, thanks to all who answer the question. All I do most days is read and write and listen to lectures, and longer news coverage---almost all at the computer. I was trying to somehow gauge how much text I was listening to.
CG