How to Double Your Reading Speed in Six Weeks

Quite frequently, someone will ask me, a former English teacher, "What can I do to read faster?" I tell him or her that he can greatly improve, even double, his reading speed with no loss in comprehension by practicing for 15 minutes a day for six weeks. What follows is a self-administered program for anyone interested in reading faster.

First, determine how fast you read now by opening any book at random and reading it at your normal speed for one minute. Count every word you have read to establish your words per minute (wpm) reading rate. Jot the number down. Slow reading is 200 wpm or less, average reading is 250 wpm, fast reading is 400 wpm or more. A good reader's speed is flexible rather than fixed. Sometimes, he may want to read slowly, especially difficult material, but at other times he may want to and should be able to turn up the speed to 400 wpm when he wants to read a great deal of material in a short period of time. This program addresses this flexibility and is therefore especially worthwhile for high school and college students. So we'll make 400 wpm the target speed for this program.

Second, find a paperback novel which has, on average, 400 words per page. A family member or a friend should act as a timekeeper who makes sure that you read 15 pages in 15 minutes or the rate of one page per minute for 15 minutes a day for the first week (7 full days). It is very important to read every word and to try to follow the story line, no matter how difficult this may seem at first.