Have you ever felt you have so much to read and so little time to cover it all? Many people have been there – the student with many textbooks, the leisure reader with many interesting fiction books, the professional with many documents to review, etc.
Interestingly, with speed-reading, you can read much more than you currently have to read and in far less time.
But what exactly is speed-reading, and how fast is considered speed-reading? This article will answer these questions.
Let’s get started with some quick facts about reading speed.
What is the average reading speed for an adult?
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The general adult population read 150 – 250 words per minute, while adults with college education read 200 – 300 words per minute. However, on average, adults read around 250 words per minute.
An individual’s reading speed depends on several factors, such as education, the difficulty of the material, the purpose of reading, etc.
Factors affecting reading speed
Let’s discuss each of the factors affecting reading speed in more detail to understand what their role is.
Education
College education requires a lot of reading. It often feels like there’s so much to read and too little time to read it all. Thus,speed reading is a must for college students.
The more you read, the better and faster you become at it, so college education would cause people to read more and faster than they would usually read. As a result, the reading speed of college-educated adults tends to be faster than the normal reading speed.
Nature of the material
The more complex a material is, the slower an individual would read it. For example, while you may coast through Dr. Seuss’s children’s books, it will not be so when reading fiction or magazine articles, and you’ll go much slower with technical materials like Advanced Physics textbooks, for instance.
Purpose of reading
The reader’s motivation also affects reading speed. For example, people read faster when reading for pleasure than when reading to understand and absorb essential details (like when reading for a test).
Generally:
