Do you want to know now how fast a reader you are? Average? Above average? Slow as a turtle? Better than the rest? What is your reading speed?
If the answer to the first question is “Yes”, then you should test your reading speed. It is not rocket science; everyone can take that kind of test.
Reading speed is generally measured in words per minute (wpm). Shows the number of words you can read in one minute. 270 words per minute indicates that you can read 270 words per minute, which is equivalent to 4.5 words per second.
You can take a reading speed test at home. Find a text and a stopwatch to do it. Then proceed as follows.
1. Choose a text
2. Calculate the number of words in the text.
3. Read the text and take some time.
4. Find out your reading speed
Choose a text that is between 1 and 2 pages long. The text must be non-fiction, so do not take it from a novel. The difficulty of the text will also affect the results. The harder the text you choose, the slower its speed. A newspaper article is a good option for testing.
Then calculate the number of words in the text. You do not need to count the words in the entire text. Instead, you can estimate it. For doing so:
1. Count the number of lines in the text.
2. Pick a line of text and count the number of words it contains.
3. Multiply these numbers and you will get the number of words in the text.
Now you are ready for the test. Start the stopwatch and read. If you have completed the text, stop the stopwatch and check the time.
To estimate your reading speed, you need to divide the number of words in the text by your reading time. For example, if you complete a 600 word text in 3 minutes, your speed will be 200 words per minute. You have to treat the minutes as decimals in that calculation. It means that if your time is 2 minutes 45 seconds, then it is 2.75 minutes.
Average reading speed ranges from 180 to 250 words per minute. Faster than 350 words per minute is great. If you can do 500 words per minute or more, then you are a speed reader. Very few people can read that fast without learning speed reading techniques.
But there is always room to increase reading speed. Even if you can read at 1,300 words per minute, you can improve to 1,400 words per minute. If you are an average person, learning speed reading techniques will allow you to double your reading rate.