Before you learn how to speed read, know how to measure your reading speed
Various studies describe the amount of time spent reading at work. Usually it’s around 2 hours a day or about 24% of the time at work. Improving your reading speed can be a productivity boost.
What you measure improves, what you focus on increases. Before trying to improve your reading speed, it makes sense to measure your starting speed first. Most people can’t even try to guess how fast they read, while others estimate too slow a speed similar to their typing speed, like 80 or 90 words per minute (wpm).
Here’s an easy way to calculate your rate using your own reading material. While there are online reading tests, they usually give you a result without allowing you to monitor and measure your reading speed at any time on any type of reading material.
what you will need
– Books – Pocket book or hard cover (to facilitate the calculation). Make sure it’s easy-to-read fiction or nonfiction.
– Timer – countdown timer, stopwatch, clock or clock with second hand.
– pocket calculator
– Two paper clips or sticky notes or a pencil to mark start and end points
Instructions
1. Identify the starting point
Ignore any preface, prologue, or introduction and start at Chapter One of the book. Attach a paper clip, sticky note, or pencil to indicate your starting point.
2. Read for 3 minutes.
When you are ready, start the timer and start reading for 3 minutes for good comprehension, that is, for excellent comprehension and enjoyment. At 3 minutes, stop reading and place a pencil mark, paper clip, or sticky note to indicate your end point.
3. Check recovery
To check your recollection, turn the book upside down and spend 30 seconds jotting down a few notes about what you can remember. Better yet, set up this reading test with a friend or colleague and exchange a 30-second summary.
Decide if your summary was:
– Excellent
– Very good
– Okay
-Average
-fair
– Below average
4. Calculate reading rate
Now calculate your reading rate in words per minute. To do this, count the total words read and then divide by the number of minutes spent reading, following the steps below:
a) Count words per line
To calculate the average number of words per line, count the total number of words in three lines and divide by three. (A word must have two letters to count.) The usual result in paperbacks is about 10 words per line. In hardcover it is 12 to 13 words per line.
b) Count the number of lines read
Then count the total number of lines you read. (Two half lines count as one line.)
c) Calculate the total number of words read
For total words read, multiply the number of lines by the number of words per line.
d) words per minute
Divide the total words read by the number of minutes spent reading.
Here is the formula:
___ Lines X Words per line = _____ Total words ÷ 3 = _____ WPM
Results:
– If your reading rate is between 200 and 300 words per minute, that’s an average reading rate. Most people read at this rate.
– If your reading speed is less than 200 words per minute, did you choose technical reading material with a high degree of difficulty? This can slow down the reading speed. Or do you usually read technical or scientific material at a slow pace so that everything you read is at the same slow pace?
– If your reading speed is greater than 400 words per minute, it indicates that you are not as affected by bad reading habits, such as subvocalization (listening to every word in your head while reading) or regression (your eye rolling back to reread a word). ; most readers go back 50 or 60 times per page) or fixation (reading one word at a time with narrow focus).
– If your reading rate is over 1000 words per minute, congratulations; that’s a great result. If you also rated your comprehension and memory as excellent to very good, then you are a speed reader.
Now that you know your current reading speed, the next step is to learn how to read faster.
