What Is the Average Reading Speed and the Best Rate of Reading?

Today, lots of emphasis is placed on time. Personal and professional life steals a huge portion of our daily schedule, and we are left with very little options, but to find means to do things quickly. One of the activities that have become an inevitable part of our life is reading. It comes handy to people from walks of life. While reading can be great fun, it can turn out to be a highly time consuming activity, especially if you are slow at it. In fact, most people find it a frivolous activity as one is clueless about the amount of time it will take to finish reading a single book.

Studies reveal that an average individual in business reads no faster than what people did nearly 10 decades back. As such, the average reading speed also varies based on an individual’s profession. On a broader spectrum, an adult reads about 250 words per minute on an average. On the other hand, a college student reads about 300 words per minute on an average. The increase in speed is primarily because a student is exposed to more reading activities in comparison to an adult. The increased practice definitely offers an upper edge over here, when it comes to speed reading. It’s estimated that a student spends nearly 4-5 hours a day for reading or studying activities.

That being said, a slow reader will usually read about 150 to 200 words per minute. Well, if you doubt any of these statistics, then you lay your hands on a reading test, which can be taken online as well as offline. There are plenty of websites out there that offers such tests to be taken without paying a dime.

That being said, when we talk about technical contents, the average reading speed is about 50-75 words per minute. This is because we aren’t able to process information smoothly and rapidly enough to grasp the matter quickly.

Talking about the extremes now, few individuals vouch for the fact that they are able to read at a speed of 10000 words to 25000 words per minute, while still being able to understand the subject matter. These numbers are drastically high on all accounts, considering the fact that the average speed is less than one-tenth of this. While these claims are really rare, a championship tournament usually has individuals showcasing speed reading of 1000 to 1200 words per minute. If you are anywhere close to this figure, then you are no less than a champion reader.

Most people do not realize that their reading limitations were set during their childhoods, when they first started learning how to read. While there are no age restrictions when it comes to improving reading speed, those who were able to master this art during their childhood are usually seen taking an advantage.

One of the recent studies have unleashed the fact that English reading rate has taken a hit due to poor education. While this is highly discouraging news, one can always improve their reading speed by regular reading practice.

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  1. The article was fine, but I am looking for the source of the claim that reading speed is 50 to 75 words per minute for technical reading. I did not find the source for that claim.

  2. I need the sources for these claims as I am writing an analysis of how much written material scientists are likely to process on an hour of reading.

    ** please respond as the queries below have no replies **

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