Test Your Reading Speed Today so You Can Improve It For Tomorrow

“In any learning or self-improvement situation, it is essential to find the true base from which you start. Only an accurate assessment of where you are positioned at present, whatever that position is, will form a solid foundation from which you can springboard to your ultimate goal.” Tony Buzan

Speed reading isn’t just about reading faster, it’s also a way to improve your comprehension and your memory. These abilities can be measured using a reading test. It’s important to do these tests, not just to find your starting point, but also to measure your progress. In this post I mention a few different reading tests and I recommend you repeat them at regular intervals.

What are Average Reading Speeds?

Tony Buzan provides us with two different statistics for the average reading speed. First, he gives an indication of the performance levels of ‘poor’ to ‘best’ readers. Then he compares the reading speeds of people at different educational levels. In the last graph you can clearly see that people at a higher educational level read much faster. Tony believes this improvement in words per minute (wpm) cannot be attributed to the gain of extra knowledge, or to better reading skills, but is instead down to motivation. It’s the pressure of having to read a lot of books, in a short space of time. Short deadlines increase effectiveness. Once there are no more deadlines, after graduation, for example, adult reading returns to primary school levels.

Every time you do the reading tests, you should look at these graphs to measure your improvement. They can be used to check both your reading speed and your level of comprehension. Once you have your results, you’ll know what to focus on the next time you practice.

Performance level	Speed (wpm)	Comprehension (%)
Poor reader	10-100	30-50
Average reader	200-240	200-240
Functionally literate	400	400
Best reader of a 100	800-1000	800-1000
Best reader of a 1000	1000+	1000+

Graph of Reading Speeds of Different Educational Levels

Speed Reading Test on Paper

What you need to make your own?

A simple novel.
A stopwatch or other form of timer.
A count of the average words per page.

To do this last part you should:

Count the words of 10 lines, add them together, and divide that number by 10. – Now you have the average number of words per line.
Count the number of lines on 5 separate pages, add them all together, and divide that number by 5. – Now you have the average number of lines per page.
Multiply the two totals together and you have the average number of words per page. E.G. 110 (words) ÷ 10 (lines) = 11.1 (words per line), 150 (lines) ÷ 5 (pages) = 30 (lines per page), 11.1 (words per line) x 30 (lines per page) = 333 words per page

Now read 10 complete pages and time yourself using the stopwatch.
You can now determine your reading speed in Words Per Minute (wpm). You do this by dividing the number of words read (wr) by the time (t) it took you to do so. For the logically minded, that’s: wpm = wr ÷ t

Speed Reading Tests on the Internet

Ace Reader. Ace Reader is an online speed reading test where you first choose your reading level; child, adult, or advanced. And where each level contains several short stories which are followed by some questions. This is a gauge of both your reading speed and your level of comprehension, and it’s recommended you take several tests to verify your results.
Reading Soft. Reading Soft is another online speed reading test. This is a lot less extensive than Ace Reader and the ‘design’ of the website is not very good at all. But it can give you a quick impression of both your reading speed and comprehension level. And it also provides the general characteristics of readers at certain levels; from poor right up to excellent.