In today’s fast-paced academic world, students are expected to read a lot within a short time. From textbooks and lecture notes to research materials and assignments, reading efficiently is a skill every student needs.The good news is that reading faster does not mean sacrificing understanding. With the right techniques, you can improve both your reading speed and comprehension level at the same…

A friend shared this with me. The slower readers had 100% comprehension of what they read. It's okay to take your time.

Hi Dears,

Today I'm writing about a quite interesting topic: reading speed. I know that reading is not a competition at all! It's also better not to stress too much on how many books you’ve read a year/month etc. What's important is to enjoy it! If you're not the best at it, don't worry I'm also strugling with it sometimes. Let's keep improving together :)

The idea of this post came to my mind when I watched Léa Crumpton's (Lover of pages) shorts about her reading speed. The shorts I'm talking about: https://youtube.com/shorts/Y9qGxvtoFV8?si=JQqE4IXrRICDF4I2. It was shocking to me how fast she’s reading.

I have always assumed that I was a slower reader, even though there were two occasions when I was convinced otherwise, so I got curious and started researching the topic.

According to my research, an average person reads 200-300 words/minute. It varies from source to source. For me this number was a bit difficult to grasp, so I researched further. I’ve found a website that converted this data to pages. Although how many words there are on a page can be very different in books.

I have started my experiment by reading 10 pages from the Assistant to the Villain by Hannah Nicole Maehrer in my mother tongue and then I read about 12.5 from Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. I chose these ones because they seemed to have quite “normal” fonts, and I had physical copies of both of them. The first one is a fantasy, so it uses a bit more complex vocabulary. With Carrie Soto I decided to read a bit further than 10 pages because I started a new chapter, and the fonts were also bigger. I felt I would get the best results this way.

The results were a bit surprising to me. I thought if I was a bit slower reader in English, but I didn’t know what to expect. My performance was “fast” in both cases. I read the 10 pages of Assistant to the Villain in 9 minutes 26 seconds, and the 12,5 of Carrie Soto in 9 minutes 20 seconds. It’s almost identical, which I’m quite happy with.

I continued my quest a bit, and found an English reading test online. According to that I’ve read with the speed of 285 words/minute.

So the conclusion is, if you’re interested, try these😊 I left the link down for you. I’m happy that I’ve tried it. Now I know that I’m a faster/upper-average reader, not a slow one.

If you’re unhappy with your reading speed, quality, or understanding, these websites provide links to courses, but I think you can improve yourself as well.

These tests also made me reflect on my reading habits. I believe I have to improve my concentration. Unfortunately, often after having read for 15-20 minutes I grab my phone. This is most of the time a useless activity, I would like stop this habit and concentrate more on reading, and waste less time doomscrolling.

Have a great week!☀️

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