What's Your Reading Speed

[junkyardwillie]

Most speed reading books I've seen say that the average reader reads between 150-250wpm. For study/note taking reading it drops down to about 50wpm. The best reading speed that you can achieve while comprehending complex material (ie trying to speed read a physics book with no background in physics) is ~250-350wpm. I think speed reading goes with the belief that you don't really need to read every word to understand sentences just how most people don't read every letter to read a word, you just know what it is. It similar to that jumbled paragraph:

Arocdnicg to rsceearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm. Tihs is buseace the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

You can still read it at a fairly fast pace because the words are words that you know, when you are dealing with new material like studying an area you don't have an expertise in your reading speed needs to drop a lot to connect what is being read. If that sentence was describing DNA structure in detail or ingredients in your favorite candy it'd be harder to understand

[junkyardwillie]

Another interesting piece on how we read, someone did a report on how we recognize words. This is probably in the same realm as speed reading I would suppose where instead of letter recognition you do something like sentence recognition and you don't need to read words like "the", "a", "that", and other common words to understand what a sentence is trying to convey

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/...cognition.aspx

[busy91]

I clocked in at 335, but then again, I am at work, and this guy behind me is on a conference call, so concentration is tough. I would assume I'm more at 350. But either way, I just always thought I read at an average pace.

[toomanybooks]

I agree that most grammatically correct sentences in english are littered with unnecessary words. If you look at a piece of latin prose and then the english translation, it can take four lines to translate one line of latin prose. English has evolved in a different direction the sparse latin syntax. I personally like the cluttered english language as I enjoy cadences and complexity of well-written english.

However when reading for purely utilitarian reasons I will often skim, but I never consider that I have actually read something when I use speed-reading techniques.

[GraceKrispy]

I had no idea, so I googled a site with a free test. I ended up at readingsoft.com (I think?) and did the reading and comprehension test. I got 650wpm and 91% accuracy for comprehension. Not sure how accurate that is, but I do know I'm a fast reader. I tend to miss some details though.

[alecE]

How very interesting. I'd never bothered with measuring my reading speed before. I came in at 366 with 73% comprehension - but the text content didn't interest me at all.
I would say that I've got very good speed-reading (speed-skimming?) techniques for technical stuff that I need (ripping the guts out of software manuals) but I deliberately slow down for books I read for enjoyment, and will often re-read a paragraph several times, either to extract the full nuance (fiction) or to gain full understanding. I wonder, what are the comparable figures for other languages? Say French and German, with very different linguistic structures. How about languages outside the Indo-European family?

[ravenne]

I had no idea what my reading speed was, so I did the same as GraceKrispy and googled a test. Result: 425 WPM. I guess I am faster reading books in German. I also think it depends on what you are reading: a thriller (I'm quite sure I'm reading faster when it's getting more and more suspenseful) or poems (I'm sure I'm reading much slower then) .....

[Andybaby]

I'm slow. below 200 wpm. I like to take my time with a book and read every letter and fall into the world like I'm standing beside them.

I read at the pace I think, the pace I type, I routinely talk to myself in my head to get my actual thoughts on a subject worked out. I would like to read faster, and I have tried speed reading software. Its never really worked for me, but perhaps I might try again.

[junkyardwillie]

I usually read in my head (subvocalize) but at some point when I'm reading a fiction book I start to get really into the story and create scenes for what is going on for instance if they are in a garage I feel like I can see it if its described well so I don't think I read in my head at that point because it would seem to be too many things going on at once. I wish I could figure out how I actually do that so I could do it all the time because before I know it I'm 40 or so pages into the book so I'm definitely reading faster then but if something doesn't grab my attention I can't get in-the-zone.

Its always fun when they make a movie out of a book I read because I watch it and think "That's so not [insert characters name]". My worst experience with that was Along Came A Spider, Morgan Friedman is not Alex Cross in any world, I had to turn the movie off after 30 minutes or so it was just so unbelievable to me (I don't think the movie got great reviews anyway so I dont think I missed much, I could be wrong though)

[Xiaopanda]

Originally Posted by junkyardwillie

My worst experience with that was Along Came A Spider, Morgan Friedman is not Alex Cross in any world, I had to turn the movie off after 30 minutes or so it was just so unbelievable to me (I don't think the movie got great reviews anyway so I dont think I missed much, I could be wrong though)

Bone Collector did it for me......Denzeil Washington as the lead when it was (Claerly) written for (then very much alive) Christopher Reeve.
Or Maybe even "DareDevil" wif Mr. Afleck......as along time fan of the 'devil, not a true match for my tastes and totaly off topic, my apologies!

[tirsales]

I'm reading roughly 500-600 wpm in english, and more then 800wpm in german (exactly how many depends on the subject, printing quality, etc, top at around 1.000).

[pdurrant]

Thread closed. New discussion should be in the new thread.