As university students, it often feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Between readings, assignments, essays, a part-time job, coffee dates, Facebook creeping, tweeting, listening to Nickelback’s latest album, there is just never enough time to do everything that we want to do.
We’re told to skimp on the latter activities, as they are sinkholes of productivity. I’m here today to make the case that we should spend less time reading.
Maybe you like reading. Maybe you enjoy all your time spent curled up with a textbook, the name of which is too long to tweet. If you love reading, or if you hate it, you’re going to be interested in this two-part series that looks at speed-reading. For those who love reading, this could mean you get to indulge in even more content. If you’re a hater, then you’ll find this particularly exciting because it’ll give you a way to have more time to do the things you want.
This idea came to me when a friend suggested a speed-reading test, and the results, well, weren’t pretty. I scored around 190 words per minute, which, according to an online benchmark by Staples.com, is just 60 words slower per minute than the average eighth grader. That result had the kind of sting that I’m sure many a contestant on Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader? felt when Jeff Foxworthy would conclude, “You are not smarter than a 5th grader!”
I’ve always felt like a fairly competent reader as well. I’m no English major, but I read a few books every summer, and I’m looking always at news articles. When I saw the result, I couldn’t help but feel like I was falling behind in my ever-persistent attempt to stay on top of my readings.
It spurred me on to do a little bit of research on speed-reading. The conclusion I drew from the little research I did is that it is very possible to use speed-reading techniques to improve your reading speed, while still maintaining comprehension of the content.
What I want to do here is establish baseline scores of Trent students, so we can see how Trent stacks up in reading. I’m leaving this up to you to test yourself and submit the scores to an e-mail address available below, where they will be tallied, dissected, and presented in part two of this series, along with methods to improve your reading speed.
How to get a baseline score:
1) You could find an online test. Staples.com, for example, offers a good reading test. Or,
2) A manual speed reading test
All you need is a book and timer. Count the words in the first 5 lines of text. Divide that number by 5. That will give you your words per line. Set a timer to one minute, and read until the timer goes off. Multiply your words per line by the amount of lines you read, and you will have your words per minute score. Submit the score to matt.douglas@live.ca.
Finally, I will leave you with a benchmark created by Staples to compare your scores to (wpm = words per minute):
150 wpm – Average 3rd grade student
250 wpm – Average 8th grade student
300 wpm – Average person
450 wpm – Average college student
675 wpm – Average professor
1200 wpm – competitive speed readers