12 ms·

I Was Wrong About Speed Reading: Here Are the Facts

137 points by selmat 10y ago

imron 10y ago
Although I agree that hyper speeds are not really possible/practical, this article still points out that if you have an average reading speed (200-400 wpm) you should still be able to double or significantly increase your reading speed through training. The benefits of this are clear and obvious for people who do large amounts if reading out of necessity or pleasure.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Would you take more pleasure in reading faster? Apply that to any other enjoyable activity. Have sex faster!
  - sndean 10y ago
    I think another component is the ability to do more because you're doing it faster. And doing more might be more pleasurable. So "Have more (enjoyable activity), faster!" That might not apply to sex.
  - comex 10y ago
    I have the opposite problem, sort of. For me, speed reading novels (I haven't measured how fast, but I think I'm pretty fast) comes as a natural consequence of wanting to know what happens next. The faster I go, the more I lose myself in the story, the more intense the drama: an immensely pleasant feeling. But I think I tend to start going too fast and having my comprehension suffer.
  - kaybe 10y ago
    Being a fast reader gives you a small boost in many areas. Most reading is not done for pleasure but for information intake.
  - JetSpiegel 10y ago
    You never know, there was someone here some time ago that said that he/she had never read a book for pleasure in their entire life.
  - RogerL 10y ago
    Why not? I'm a very fast reader, and take great pleasure in reading. If you (generic 'you', not michaelmrose you) read half as fast as I do, then take it for granted that you could double your speed and take pleasure in it. And, as an added bonus, you get to read twice as much. Who wouldn't want that? I'd certainly take a doubling of my current reading speed if I could. And after that, I'd accept another doubling. And another. There are so many great books, and so little time.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  People who do large amounts of reading are already fast.
mindcrime 10y ago
Interesting. I have always been intrigued by the idea of speed reading, but my "natural" reading speed always seemed just fast enough (around 500 wpm) that it never seemed worthwile to invest the time to get what I assumed would be a marginal increase in speed. But if this is right, I made a good call by not spending the time trying to learn to "speed read" as I'm close to the max anyway. I don't know if I should feel happy or sad about that. It would be nice to be able to read faster, but... at least I know I'm not a complete laggard.
ddebernardy 10y ago
It really depends on what you're reading. You can take a great many non-fiction e.g. social science books and stick to the introduction and conclusion, plus some skimming of what's in between, and still grok the general gist of what's in there. Not saying you get full comprehension - far from it. But you'll get a lot of it because it's massively redundant, especially if you're familiar with the underlying patterns and heuristics (which I'd argue are largely grounded in experimental social psychology).
- TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
  That's exactly my experience - especially the part about massive redundancy. Sometimes you need to slow right down, but a lot of the time you can skim and still get full comprehension. This is very content dependent, so it's clearly inaccurate to assume that reading is reading, and one speed fits all.
wallflower 10y ago
When you are learning a new language and in the beginner to intermediate chasm, reading in your native language is like speed reading compared to reading in your new language. It depends on the context of what you are reading, of course but it can be 10x - 100x slower. However, many polyglots write in most articles about reading in a new language about one of two approaches: 1) Reading and understanding everything (to the point of dictionary lookups ad nauseam) 2) Skimming the text as fast as possible to build your pattern /phrase recognition abilities. I wonder what applying speed reading techniques to reading a new language would do. Would it help you "skim" faster? Skimming the text of the new language as fast as possible is still pretty slow. Does anyone have experience with reading quickly/reading a lot to build their new language ability?
- Broken_Hippo 10y ago
  I am just coming off of 2 years intensive Norwegian classes, and passed the required tests at an intermediate level, reading and listening were at a high intermediate level. Both of the methods have their strengths. 1. Reading and understanding with dictionary: This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news articles. You wind up doing a lot of writing because of memory constraints, and a lot of rereading paragraphs to get the context. However, this is great for increasing vocabulary. Until you are to a certain point, however, it is probably better to learn main vocabulary words first, and then words that you will be using (interests, work, etc), and then work on the nuances. 2. Skimming: I'd not advise doing it as fast as possible, but this is good for figuring out key words you might not know and gives a clue on context. The second read, without a dictionary, you can pay more attention to details and figure some things out as you go along. I do this often and it helps me have a better grasp on the context - which is really more important.
  - zzzcpan 10y ago
    > This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news articles. Movies with subtitles are much better for this. An hour or two per day for a couple of months and you get like 10x further compared to reading.
groby_b 10y ago
And in the second half of his article, Scott forgets to do research again: "How to read a book" by Mortimer Adler is the classic on improving comprehension.
mlvljr 10y ago
How about this fella then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind-people-process/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind... and https://rdouglasfields.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/extraordinary-ability-of-blind-people-to-hear-ultrafast-speech/ https://rdouglasfields.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/extraordinar... for some quickly-googled refs :)
johnwatson11218 10y ago
I have used the zapreader.com website to read longer articles before and found that I can understand everything when I keep it to about 500 wpm. Recently I started downloading the audible.com audio books for novels that I have laying around. Then I listen to the book at 2X while reading the paperback. This really does seem like a large improvement. When I listen to just the audio book my mind tends to wander as I'm usually doing other things. Reading and hearing reinforce each other. I would be interested to try something like the spritz method with audio that stayed synchronized.
- wamatt 10y ago
  That's an interesting idea. Do you find it works equally well with non-fiction and fiction?
  - johnwatson11218 10y ago
    So far I have only tried fiction. I have Bose headphones so I can pause the audio with a button on the headphones which is nice when I need to stop and go back over a paragraph. If I were reading non-fiction and there were charts or diagrams I imagine I would use that feature a lot. It seems like when I was younger it was easier for me to get completely immersed in a book to the point where I wasn't really seeing the individual words anymore. I would enter a flow state where I would just see the contents of the book unfolding in my mind's eye. Listening to the audio while I read puts me back into that state very quickly and keeps me focused. I have only been doing this for a couple of weeks so it is still early days. It seems like I keep more of it in my mind and notice larger patterns and themes that unfold over many pages.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- mcshicks 10y ago
  I like spray-mode in emacs. Not so much for reading faster, but I scan articles really fast, and sometimes after scanning a bit I decide I want to read and entire long (usually non-fiction) article. For me it's actually easier, and less tiring for a long article to use spray-mode. Since I usually use w3m or eww for reading web pages in emacs, it's really easy to do.
edpichler 10y ago
I don't do speed reading, I vocalize. As I am Brazilian, I only read English books to practice my second language. I noticed that I improved my listening and speaking a lot, just reading. The improvement was bigger than usual when I read The Lord of the Rings, that has a rich vocabulary. I think this is because I sub-vocalize when I am reading. Speed reading also don't give me pleasure.
ACow_Adonis 10y ago
I believe I can read nicely formatted easy fiction at about 500 - 600 wpm. I also believe, through experience in professional environments, that I'm at about the top of the bell curve in terms of reading speed in my native language. I don't meet many/any people to the right of me on a day to day basis. My position is not that surprising: while I didn't get to start coding at 5 like some people with early access to computers, I certainly got to start reading early: my parents effectively had a library of books, we had frequent and regular trips to the library as a child to pick up a stack of new books each week or two (it was considered a treat), and I was repeatedly being told to stop reading in polite company, turn the light off and go to sleep, etc etc etc. This speed slows down significantly for technical articles, and I've often told people they should get used to having to read some 5 or 6 times, and shouldn't feel stupider/behind the pack if they have to do so. If they don't have to do so, it suggests they either already have experience with the material being presented, or its not that dense/new/hard/original. Most people in academia/corporate aren't reading/understanding the articles anyway, no matter what they say, which is of course our society's dirty little secret: image over doing... Anyway... My conclusion is that speed reading (significantly beyond this speed barring all but MAYBE in the rare case of cognitive/physical mutations) is effectively bunkum, because I've never seen it: and yet it just keeps popping up like a kind of zombie-myth that just won't die. I've also found you quickly get into the comprehension/read-speed debate with "speed readers", to which my general response is actually very similar to programming algorithm efficiency: You can't speed up a computer, but you can change the amount of work it does. If your definition of speed reading is lowering your comprehension, to me, "lowering comprehension" is just another way of saying "not reading". So i'll say that again as a rule of thumb: if your comprehension of a piece is dropping below the 100% you'd achieve normally, that's not called "speed reading", its called "not reading".
nashashmi 10y ago
Article title is missing publication year 2015.
KVFinn 10y ago
My default reading mode is to speed through text. It's useful for skimming for answers to specific questions but in other scenarios it's a bad impulse that I intentionally check. Whether it's dense full of ideas or just has wonderful prose -- I get so much more out of it when I really take my time.
WalterBright 10y ago
I have recently taken up watching video at increased playback speeds from 1.1x to 2.0x. It greatly increases the variety of things I might be interested in watching. The Chrome browser with video speed controller plugin is exceptionally good at this. The main difficulty now is I am frustrated that my DVR, Roku, and DVD player do not support this.
Read-Speeder 10y ago
Of course you aren't going to read 1,000s of wpm! Unless you're some kind of savant. BUT... if you are a slow reader, reading below 200 wpm, then you can definitely learn to read faster. And even increasing your speed to 400 wpm would be absolutely life-changing. As the author of Reading with the Right Brain, and Speed Reading Practice, I have seen many people turn their reading from drudgery to enjoyment. From a word-by-word slog, to a mental movie playing in their head.
- _mhr_ 10y ago
  I've always found that when I read a (fictional) book, I naturally have a mental movie playing in my head, and I cease to see words at all. I become hyper-focused and immersed in the image. If people talk to me while I'm reading (again, only fiction), I don't hear them unless they breach my focus with a louder voice or a tap on the shoulder. It's interesting to read that this can be taught.
foobar1962 10y ago
That article needs a TL;DR summary.
InclinedPlane 10y ago
No, frickin' duh. If you want to skim materials, go ahead and skim. But if you need to understand something, want to enjoy reading something, or need to remember the details from something, you have to read at a "normal" speed instead of skimming. If you find yourself immersed in a lot of material that is so vapid, uninteresting, and inconsequential that you can simply skim all of it with no negative consequences, I'd suggest that perhaps you have some life choices to re-examine.
cel1ne 10y ago
Reading something fast is one thing, but thinking about it, concluding and understand is a whole other area, which can easily take days or weeks or at least a night to sleep over. When the topic isn't technical documentation. I seriously don't believe much use comes out of ingesting as many letters as possible. People don't work that way, especially when it comes to self-improvement. Your thought-patterns are able to change fast, but your emotional patterns are not. Real intellectual and emotional growth takes it's time.
pipio21 10y ago
I don't know what speed reading course this man took, but the one I took in Spain forced you to answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your comprehension. Also, proper speed reading focuses on science and training. About subvocalization, I couldn't care less if it disappears completely or not. The important thing is that you start training other parts of your brain to be associated with common words first as images. You certainly get a deeper understanding when you could understand words as images. As someone who can program myself I can speed read extremely fast if I manipulate the text "on my own terms" with my own software. Something like spritz but reading more and more words at once, and using different colors for different things. With training you can be extremely fast, in the same way with training you can do a backflip with a motorbike if you train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI You have to evaluate if it is worth the effort for you to get the skills. If you need to read a lot I believe it is. The biggest problem I have is the convenience problem of having to violate copyright restrictions like cracking epub to remove DRM or OCRing books in order to access the content for my programs. It is a convenience thing, yes I can read much faster, but I need to spend a lot of time breaking the DRM or correcting the OCR. It only makes sense with few specific texts.
- alister 10y ago
  > answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your comprehension Did you consider the possibility that they rigged the test? You read a difficult text at your normal slow rate, and you score 90% comprehension. Then they give you an easy text to speed read, and surprise-surprise, you score 90% on the easy test. Or they could give you a difficult text but ask easy questions about it. There are so many ways to cheat the methodology. I'm wondering if a speed reading course is going to do objective tests on its paying customers. Funny story: I once saw a Rubik's Cube competition in which players were competing to see who solved it the fastest. There were 3 rounds to competition, and in each round all the players got a freshly scrambled cube (each players' cube scrambled the same way of course). In the 1st round, the fastest player took about a minute; in the 2nd round, 45 seconds, and in the 3rd round, someone solved it in 20 seconds! It was obvious to me that the competition organizers had chosen highly disordered cubes for the 1st round and less disordered cubes for the 3rd round. They rigged the test because they want more drama for the final round.

137 points by selmat 10y ago

imron 10y ago

Although I agree that hyper speeds are not really possible/practical, this article still points out that if you have an average reading speed (200-400 wpm) you should still be able to double or significantly increase your reading speed through training. The benefits of this are clear and obvious for people who do large amounts if reading out of necessity or pleasure.

michaelmrose 10y ago
Would you take more pleasure in reading faster? Apply that to any other enjoyable activity. Have sex faster!
- sndean 10y ago
  I think another component is the ability to do more because you're doing it faster. And doing more might be more pleasurable. So "Have more (enjoyable activity), faster!" That might not apply to sex.
- comex 10y ago
  I have the opposite problem, sort of. For me, speed reading novels (I haven't measured how fast, but I think I'm pretty fast) comes as a natural consequence of wanting to know what happens next. The faster I go, the more I lose myself in the story, the more intense the drama: an immensely pleasant feeling. But I think I tend to start going too fast and having my comprehension suffer.
- kaybe 10y ago
  Being a fast reader gives you a small boost in many areas. Most reading is not done for pleasure but for information intake.
- JetSpiegel 10y ago
  You never know, there was someone here some time ago that said that he/she had never read a book for pleasure in their entire life.
- RogerL 10y ago
  Why not? I'm a very fast reader, and take great pleasure in reading. If you (generic 'you', not michaelmrose you) read half as fast as I do, then take it for granted that you could double your speed and take pleasure in it. And, as an added bonus, you get to read twice as much. Who wouldn't want that? I'd certainly take a doubling of my current reading speed if I could. And after that, I'd accept another doubling. And another. There are so many great books, and so little time.
thaumasiotes 10y ago
People who do large amounts of reading are already fast.

mindcrime 10y ago

Interesting. I have always been intrigued by the idea of speed reading, but my "natural" reading speed always seemed just fast enough (around 500 wpm) that it never seemed worthwile to invest the time to get what I assumed would be a marginal increase in speed. But if this is right, I made a good call by not spending the time trying to learn to "speed read" as I'm close to the max anyway. I don't know if I should feel happy or sad about that. It would be nice to be able to read faster, but... at least I know I'm not a complete laggard.

ddebernardy 10y ago

It really depends on what you're reading. You can take a great many non-fiction e.g. social science books and stick to the introduction and conclusion, plus some skimming of what's in between, and still grok the general gist of what's in there. Not saying you get full comprehension - far from it. But you'll get a lot of it because it's massively redundant, especially if you're familiar with the underlying patterns and heuristics (which I'd argue are largely grounded in experimental social psychology).

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
That's exactly my experience - especially the part about massive redundancy. Sometimes you need to slow right down, but a lot of the time you can skim and still get full comprehension. This is very content dependent, so it's clearly inaccurate to assume that reading is reading, and one speed fits all.

wallflower 10y ago

When you are learning a new language and in the beginner to intermediate chasm, reading in your native language is like speed reading compared to reading in your new language. It depends on the context of what you are reading, of course but it can be 10x - 100x slower. However, many polyglots write in most articles about reading in a new language about one of two approaches: 1) Reading and understanding everything (to the point of dictionary lookups ad nauseam) 2) Skimming the text as fast as possible to build your pattern /phrase recognition abilities. I wonder what applying speed reading techniques to reading a new language would do. Would it help you "skim" faster? Skimming the text of the new language as fast as possible is still pretty slow. Does anyone have experience with reading quickly/reading a lot to build their new language ability?

Broken_Hippo 10y ago
I am just coming off of 2 years intensive Norwegian classes, and passed the required tests at an intermediate level, reading and listening were at a high intermediate level. Both of the methods have their strengths. 1. Reading and understanding with dictionary: This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news articles. You wind up doing a lot of writing because of memory constraints, and a lot of rereading paragraphs to get the context. However, this is great for increasing vocabulary. Until you are to a certain point, however, it is probably better to learn main vocabulary words first, and then words that you will be using (interests, work, etc), and then work on the nuances. 2. Skimming: I'd not advise doing it as fast as possible, but this is good for figuring out key words you might not know and gives a clue on context. The second read, without a dictionary, you can pay more attention to details and figure some things out as you go along. I do this often and it helps me have a better grasp on the context - which is really more important.
- zzzcpan 10y ago
  > This takes a really, really long time just to read children's books and news articles. Movies with subtitles are much better for this. An hour or two per day for a couple of months and you get like 10x further compared to reading.

groby_b 10y ago

And in the second half of his article, Scott forgets to do research again: "How to read a book" by Mortimer Adler is the classic on improving comprehension.

mlvljr 10y ago

How about this fella then: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92pM6hJG6Wo See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind-people-process/ http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-can-some-blind... and https://rdouglasfields.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/extraordinary-ability-of-blind-people-to-hear-ultrafast-speech/ https://rdouglasfields.wordpress.com/2010/12/14/extraordinar... for some quickly-googled refs :)

johnwatson11218 10y ago

I have used the zapreader.com website to read longer articles before and found that I can understand everything when I keep it to about 500 wpm. Recently I started downloading the audible.com audio books for novels that I have laying around. Then I listen to the book at 2X while reading the paperback. This really does seem like a large improvement. When I listen to just the audio book my mind tends to wander as I'm usually doing other things. Reading and hearing reinforce each other. I would be interested to try something like the spritz method with audio that stayed synchronized.

wamatt 10y ago
That's an interesting idea. Do you find it works equally well with non-fiction and fiction?
- johnwatson11218 10y ago
  So far I have only tried fiction. I have Bose headphones so I can pause the audio with a button on the headphones which is nice when I need to stop and go back over a paragraph. If I were reading non-fiction and there were charts or diagrams I imagine I would use that feature a lot. It seems like when I was younger it was easier for me to get completely immersed in a book to the point where I wasn't really seeing the individual words anymore. I would enter a flow state where I would just see the contents of the book unfolding in my mind's eye. Listening to the audio while I read puts me back into that state very quickly and keeps me focused. I have only been doing this for a couple of weeks so it is still early days. It seems like I keep more of it in my mind and notice larger patterns and themes that unfold over many pages.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mcshicks 10y ago
I like spray-mode in emacs. Not so much for reading faster, but I scan articles really fast, and sometimes after scanning a bit I decide I want to read and entire long (usually non-fiction) article. For me it's actually easier, and less tiring for a long article to use spray-mode. Since I usually use w3m or eww for reading web pages in emacs, it's really easy to do.

edpichler 10y ago

I don't do speed reading, I vocalize. As I am Brazilian, I only read English books to practice my second language. I noticed that I improved my listening and speaking a lot, just reading. The improvement was bigger than usual when I read The Lord of the Rings, that has a rich vocabulary. I think this is because I sub-vocalize when I am reading. Speed reading also don't give me pleasure.

ACow_Adonis 10y ago

I believe I can read nicely formatted easy fiction at about 500 - 600 wpm. I also believe, through experience in professional environments, that I'm at about the top of the bell curve in terms of reading speed in my native language. I don't meet many/any people to the right of me on a day to day basis. My position is not that surprising: while I didn't get to start coding at 5 like some people with early access to computers, I certainly got to start reading early: my parents effectively had a library of books, we had frequent and regular trips to the library as a child to pick up a stack of new books each week or two (it was considered a treat), and I was repeatedly being told to stop reading in polite company, turn the light off and go to sleep, etc etc etc. This speed slows down significantly for technical articles, and I've often told people they should get used to having to read some 5 or 6 times, and shouldn't feel stupider/behind the pack if they have to do so. If they don't have to do so, it suggests they either already have experience with the material being presented, or its not that dense/new/hard/original. Most people in academia/corporate aren't reading/understanding the articles anyway, no matter what they say, which is of course our society's dirty little secret: image over doing... Anyway... My conclusion is that speed reading (significantly beyond this speed barring all but MAYBE in the rare case of cognitive/physical mutations) is effectively bunkum, because I've never seen it: and yet it just keeps popping up like a kind of zombie-myth that just won't die. I've also found you quickly get into the comprehension/read-speed debate with "speed readers", to which my general response is actually very similar to programming algorithm efficiency: You can't speed up a computer, but you can change the amount of work it does. If your definition of speed reading is lowering your comprehension, to me, "lowering comprehension" is just another way of saying "not reading". So i'll say that again as a rule of thumb: if your comprehension of a piece is dropping below the 100% you'd achieve normally, that's not called "speed reading", its called "not reading".

nashashmi 10y ago

Article title is missing publication year 2015.

KVFinn 10y ago

My default reading mode is to speed through text. It's useful for skimming for answers to specific questions but in other scenarios it's a bad impulse that I intentionally check. Whether it's dense full of ideas or just has wonderful prose -- I get so much more out of it when I really take my time.

WalterBright 10y ago

I have recently taken up watching video at increased playback speeds from 1.1x to 2.0x. It greatly increases the variety of things I might be interested in watching. The Chrome browser with video speed controller plugin is exceptionally good at this. The main difficulty now is I am frustrated that my DVR, Roku, and DVD player do not support this.

Read-Speeder 10y ago

Of course you aren't going to read 1,000s of wpm! Unless you're some kind of savant. BUT... if you are a slow reader, reading below 200 wpm, then you can definitely learn to read faster. And even increasing your speed to 400 wpm would be absolutely life-changing. As the author of Reading with the Right Brain, and Speed Reading Practice, I have seen many people turn their reading from drudgery to enjoyment. From a word-by-word slog, to a mental movie playing in their head.

_mhr_ 10y ago
I've always found that when I read a (fictional) book, I naturally have a mental movie playing in my head, and I cease to see words at all. I become hyper-focused and immersed in the image. If people talk to me while I'm reading (again, only fiction), I don't hear them unless they breach my focus with a louder voice or a tap on the shoulder. It's interesting to read that this can be taught.

foobar1962 10y ago

That article needs a TL;DR summary.

InclinedPlane 10y ago

No, frickin' duh. If you want to skim materials, go ahead and skim. But if you need to understand something, want to enjoy reading something, or need to remember the details from something, you have to read at a "normal" speed instead of skimming. If you find yourself immersed in a lot of material that is so vapid, uninteresting, and inconsequential that you can simply skim all of it with no negative consequences, I'd suggest that perhaps you have some life choices to re-examine.

cel1ne 10y ago

Reading something fast is one thing, but thinking about it, concluding and understand is a whole other area, which can easily take days or weeks or at least a night to sleep over. When the topic isn't technical documentation. I seriously don't believe much use comes out of ingesting as many letters as possible. People don't work that way, especially when it comes to self-improvement. Your thought-patterns are able to change fast, but your emotional patterns are not. Real intellectual and emotional growth takes it's time.

pipio21 10y ago

I don't know what speed reading course this man took, but the one I took in Spain forced you to answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your comprehension. Also, proper speed reading focuses on science and training. About subvocalization, I couldn't care less if it disappears completely or not. The important thing is that you start training other parts of your brain to be associated with common words first as images. You certainly get a deeper understanding when you could understand words as images. As someone who can program myself I can speed read extremely fast if I manipulate the text "on my own terms" with my own software. Something like spritz but reading more and more words at once, and using different colors for different things. With training you can be extremely fast, in the same way with training you can do a backflip with a motorbike if you train: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFLwxGB1qFI You have to evaluate if it is worth the effort for you to get the skills. If you need to read a lot I believe it is. The biggest problem I have is the convenience problem of having to violate copyright restrictions like cracking epub to remove DRM or OCRing books in order to access the content for my programs. It is a convenience thing, yes I can read much faster, but I need to spend a lot of time breaking the DRM or correcting the OCR. It only makes sense with few specific texts.

alister 10y ago
> answer detailed questions in order to evaluate the percentage of your comprehension Did you consider the possibility that they rigged the test? You read a difficult text at your normal slow rate, and you score 90% comprehension. Then they give you an easy text to speed read, and surprise-surprise, you score 90% on the easy test. Or they could give you a difficult text but ask easy questions about it. There are so many ways to cheat the methodology. I'm wondering if a speed reading course is going to do objective tests on its paying customers. Funny story: I once saw a Rubik's Cube competition in which players were competing to see who solved it the fastest. There were 3 rounds to competition, and in each round all the players got a freshly scrambled cube (each players' cube scrambled the same way of course). In the 1st round, the fastest player took about a minute; in the 2nd round, 45 seconds, and in the 3rd round, someone solved it in 20 seconds! It was obvious to me that the competition organizers had chosen highly disordered cubes for the 1st round and less disordered cubes for the 3rd round. They rigged the test because they want more drama for the final round.