> At least not with reading every word. That's the crux of the issue though, isn't it? I don't read words by reading single letters, and I don't think I read s

> At least not with reading every word. That's the crux of the issue though, isn't it? I don't read words by reading single letters, and I don't think I read sentences by reading every single word either. That'd be the main reason why listening is slower than reading: the forced linearity. To be fair, my "all" was clearly an exaggeration, I'm sure there are people for whom this doesn't apply, but I'd still expect it to apply to 50%+ of the populations of countries where literacy is not a significant issue anymore.