How fast can you read? 500 words per minute? 750? What if you could read over 10,000 words per minute (wpm), the advertised rate of “speed reading?” “I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia,” Woody Allen once joked.
Many are skeptical about the effectiveness of speed-reading. According to the 1990 Guinness Book of World Records, Howard Berg, co-author of Speed Reading the Easy Way, reads 25,000 wpm. That comes to about 80 or 90 pages a minute. Berg could in theory finish War and Peace in 15 minutes.
Research in eye movement gives us insight into the perceptual processes involved in reading. Our eyes cast a series of fixations in rapid jerky movements, called saccades. In each fixation, six to eight letters are in focus. But our brain still looks at the letters outside the region of focus, which is why we don’t stop to look at every single word. This allows for efficient reading.
Studies suggest that exceptionally fast readers gain more information in one glance, and are better at coordinating information processing and storage in their brains.
When we read, most of us pronounce the words in our heads-we sub-vocalize. Proponents of speed-reading, who are visual readers, teach the skill of eliminating this habit. “[But] speed reading is not a silver bullet,” says Dr. Beth Moreno, program director of Supplemental Instruction in the Learning Center at the University of Texas. “It takes approximately six months of practice to retrain your eyes to make fewer visual stops per line and eliminate sub-vocalization. Most students are disappointed to find out it requires that much work.”
A word of caution: speed-reading is not suitable for high quality literature. The 1,000 wpm dash would not work for Shakespeare or Tolstoy. “If the quality of the language and emotion is the reason for your reading, you don’t want to experience those things at speed,” Moreno says.
Speed-reading is effective for material that is arranged like a newspaper: clear topic sentences followed by examples in a deductive line of reasoning. This format allows the reader to quickly distinguish main ideas from details, which is what most speed-reading techniques are designed for.
Most university students read at about 250 to 300 wpm. Based on studies that measure saccades, Professor Anne Cunningham from the University of California at Berkeley reports that 300 wpm is about the maximum rate at which we can accurately read. Other researchers report estimates as high as 800 to 900 wpm. Anything beyond that would mean skipping over words.
But research also suggests that one’s reading rate can be dramatically increased depending on how the material is presented. In the 1980s and 90s, various studies showed that when words or phrases are sequentially flashed in the same spot on a screen, people’s reading rates could exceed 1,000 wpm. Known as rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), this procedure cuts the time needed for scrolling through the lines and refocusing in between.
Nellie Perret, Learning Skills Counsellor/Educator at U of T, fears that people sacrifice comprehension and retention for the sake of speed. “I try to encourage students to actively read, which makes them more critical and efficient readers.” She stresses the importance of knowing why you are reading a particular text. “[Is it] for an overview? To prepare for a multiple-choice exam? To find pertinent examples for a research paper? It doesn’t matter how quickly students get through a text if, ultimately, they really don’t know why they are reading it in the first place.”
“Speed reading is a kind of strategic information management designed for people who really know exactly what they are looking for in the material,” explains Moreno. “It may be okay for pulp fiction if it’s just the plot you’re interested in, but the truth is that most people want to read slowly and sloppily in their spare time and they should.”
