Test Your Reading Speed

Reading skills are taken for granted. Once we reach fourth grade, schools are less interested in teaching us how to read. They are much more focused on what we are getting out of our reading. Reading becomes a tool, but one which most people neglect.

A young man named George once applied for a job as a lumberman. The supervisor agreed to let him work for one day, to see how he would do. George was strong and worked hard. At the end of the first day, he had cut down more trees than anyone else had. The supervisor hired him on the spot.

For the next week, George worked as hard as he ever had in his entire life. On Friday, the supervisor pulled him to one side and told him the company was letting him go. George was astonished. "Why?" he asked. "I'm the first one here in the morning, and the last one to leave. I don't take any breaks and I even work through lunch. I'm the hardest worker you have!"

The supervisor explained that George's output was dropping every day. He had been the most productive man on Monday, and by Friday, he felled the fewest trees. The supervisor believed George was sincere and a hard worker. He asked to see George's axe, thinking maybe something was wrong with his equipment. When he held it, he noticed it was the dullest blade he had ever seen. "When did you last sharpen this?" he asked the new lumberman.

"Sharpen it? I've been working far too hard to take time for that."

It's a lesson we could all learn from. We learn our basic reading skills in elementary school, and after that, we rarely if ever "sharpen our axe." A thirty-year-old man with more than 15 years of experience reading should get a little better at it, shouldn't he?

The average adult reads around 200 to 220 words per minute. Their average comprehension is around 65%. Excellent readers read around 350 words per minute, or more than fifty percent faster, with around 75% comprehension. Trained SMART readers commonly read 800 words per minute, with 85% comprehension.

It would appear that the trained reader reads more than three times as fast as the average reader does, and more than twice as fast as fast readers do. These numbers are deceptive. The true results are even greater! Effective reading rates are established by multiplying the word per minute rate by the comprehension level. In this case, average readers read around 220 * 65% or 143 effective words per minute. Trained readers read 800 * 85% or 680 effective words per minute, or nearly five times as fast. That is two and a half times faster than excellent readers read.

Did you know that the average adult reads less than one book a year? More than 80% of all books published are read by 20% of the readers. According to studies performed by Tony Buzan, the inventor of Mind-mapping, even people holding PhDs, on average, only read about forty books in their area of expertise. A trained reader can read a 300-page book in well under 2 hours. That is not skimming or skipping words. That is reading the entire text, with 85% comprehension or higher.

Reading is our most critical skill. It is credited as being the number one indicator to the success a person has in college, and in business. If you could read four times as fast as your peers, and more than twice as fast as your stiffest competition, do you think there could be an advantage?

Abe Lincoln is quoted as saying, "Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe."

ReadWild SMART Reading will teach you how to sharpen that axe.

Your Reading Speed is  words per minute.