Abstract
A series of experiments is reported that examined the effectiveness of a proofreading technique occasionally used by students—reading backwards. Although many educators advocate this strategy, no controlled research has been conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. Exp. 1 showed that backwards reading was actually inferior to reading forwards in detecting contextual errors, with no benefit for detecting misspellings. However, subjects were given standard instructions to proofread quickly, which may have negated any possible benefits of proofreading backwards. Exp. 2, which was designed to eliminate some potential problems with the first experiment, showed that backwards reading can be a beneficial strategy when subjects are specifically instructed to slow down as they read backwards. Exp. 3 further indicated that reading speed is a crucial variable when comparing forwards vs backwards proofreading. The main conclusion from the experiments is that backwards proofreading is an effective strategy for detecting misspellings, provided that it is used to slow students down and help them to focus on each individual word.
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