Introduction
Ask a room of students how fast they read and you will not get unsure answers. Most people have never measured it. This matters because your reading speed is key to your degree.
Typical Reading Speeds
Adults typically read 200 to 250 words per minute. On academic material, with its longer sentences and denser vocabulary, most people run meaningfully slower, often 150 to 200. For context, people speak at roughly 150 to 180 words per minute. A reader who pronounces every word as they read it will find their reading speed anchored to their speaking speed.
Skilled readers sustain 400 to 800 words per minute on material within their subject area with high levels of understanding.
Why you should measure
1) Planning: Once you know your reading speed, it becomes easier to estimate the time spent on work.
2) Diagnosis and solution: If you have a slow reading speed, you can work on a fix. If you have poor comprehension, you can train that too.
3) Training: You can understand which techniques work for you by measuring how much they are improving your effective reading rate.
How to measure it
Choose a section of your own course material that you have not yet read, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,500 words.
Read it once, timed, at your natural pace. Divide the word count by the time taken in minutes. That is your speed in words per minute (wpm).
Now close the text and test comprehension. Input the text into an LLM and ask it to ask you comprehension questions about it. Get your answer as a percentage of the text understood e.g. if you get 4/5 questions correct, then you have an 80% comprehension rate.
Multiply comprehension by wpm to get your effective reading rate.
You can take reading tests on Lexo to measure your effective reading rate to simplify the process.
The common errors
1) Testing on easy text which flatters everyone.
2) Testing once, when reading speed varies with fatigue, interest and difficulty. Take two or three tests and work out the average.
3) Racing during the test which measures a pace you cannot sustain for an hour.
4) Ignoring comprehension entirely.
The result
Below 200 words per minute usually means habitual regression and full word-by-word subvocalisation. Between 200 and 300 is typical. Between 300 and 600 with comprehension holding is good. Beyond that, on dense academic text, high effective rates are rare and usually reflect deep familiarity with the field rather than technique alone.
The key is to measure your effective reading rate. You have a baseline to improve upon. This is why Lexo baselines every student’s effective reading rate and tracks progress. Anyone can double their reading speed with the right tools.