Measuring your speed and your comprehension
The measurement protocol in words per minute, the matching comprehension test, and how to read the results.
Why start by measuring
Speed reading is one of the areas where the illusion of progress runs strongest. You feel faster because you are reading more tensely. Without measurement you will never know whether you improved or simply skated over the page.
Two figures count, never one: speed and comprehension. A speed of 900 words per minute at 20% comprehension is not speed reading, it is page-flipping.
The measurement protocol
What you need. A text you have never read, of average difficulty, a feature article or a book chapter, and a timer.
1. Count the words. Count the words in five full lines and divide by five: that gives you the average per line. Multiply by the number of lines read.
The formula is: words per minute = words read divided by seconds, multiplied by sixty.
2. Read normally for exactly three minutes. No faster than usual: you are measuring a baseline, not putting in a performance.
3. Close the text and answer five questions prepared in advance, or better still, write down freely everything you retained, then compare with the text. Count the percentage of main ideas you recovered.
Reading your score
| Speed | Profile |
|---|---|
| Under 150 | Fully subvocalised, word-by-word reading |
| 150 to 250 | Below average; the adult mean in English sits around 240 |
| 250 to 400 | Good reader, partial subvocalisation |
| 400 to 700 | Trained reader, reading in groups |
| 700 to 1000 | Expert level on familiar text |
| Over 1000 | Skimming, not full reading |
The 240 figure is not folklore: Brysbaert's 2019 meta-analysis, covering more than a hundred studies, puts the average silent reading rate for English non-fiction at about 238 words per minute, and around 260 for fiction.
Comprehension must stay above 70%. Below that, the speed you are displaying is fictional.
The single indicator: the effective score
Hold on to this figure rather than raw speed.
Effective score = speed multiplied by comprehension rate.
- 200 words per minute at 80% gives 160.
- 600 at 75% gives 450.
- 1200 at 25% gives 300.
The third reader is the fastest and the least effective. The whole module aims to maximise the effective score, never speed alone.
What the research actually establishes
This needs saying plainly, because the speed-reading market is full of implausible promises.
Gains from 200 to 600 words per minute with comprehension intact are documented and reachable by most people.
Promises of ten thousand or twenty-five thousand words a minute are physiologically impossible: the eye cannot make enough fixations, and the fovea, the area of sharp vision, only covers a few characters at a time.
Keith Rayner's work on eye movements shows that beyond roughly six to seven hundred words per minute in full reading, you necessarily move into skimming: you are no longer reading every word.
Skimming is a legitimate and useful skill, and it is chapter 4 of this module. But it is not reading. Confusing the two is exactly what gives the discipline its bad name.
Your logbook
Each week, note: date, speed, comprehension, effective score, kind of text.
The kind of text is essential: your speed on a novel will be two to three times your speed on a dense technical text. Always compare like with like.
Effective score: why speed alone says nothing
Effective score · speed multiplied by comprehension
The fourth reader is twice as fast as the third and markedly less effective. It is this figure, not raw speed, that the module works to raise.
Exercises2
Understanding produces no change. These exercises are what makes the difference: each one has a measurable success criterion.
Your baseline measurement
Get a dated speed-and-comprehension pair to measure the four weeks against.
Equipment : A text you have never read, of average difficulty, a timer, a sheet of paper.
- 1.Count the words in five full lines and divide by five to get the average per line.
- 2.Read for exactly three minutes, at your usual speed. Do not push.
- 3.Mark where you stopped and work out your speed.
- 4.Close the text, write down everything you retained, then compare to estimate the percentage of main ideas recovered.
- 5.Work out the effective score and note all three figures in the logbook.
Success looks like : Three figures written down and dated: speed, comprehension, effective score.
The classic mistake : Reading faster than usual because you know you are being measured. A flattered baseline will make you conclude at day 28 that the module gave you nothing.
Going further : Repeat the measurement on three kinds of text: a novel, a feature article, a technical text. The gaps will serve as your reference points.
The speed illusion test
See for yourself the gap between feeling fast and actually understanding.
- 1.Take a second text and read it as fast as you can, with no method at all, for two minutes.
- 2.Work out the speed you reached.
- 3.Close it and write down the main ideas.
- 4.Work out the effective score and compare it with the one from your normal reading.
Success looks like : You find that forced reading with no method produces an effective score equal to or lower than normal reading.
The classic mistake : Concluding that speed reading does not work. This test measures raw speed with no technique: that is precisely what the four weeks will correct.
This lesson is part of Speed Reading
16 lessons, 4 resources and the complete protocol to install the method in 30 days.