Reading Speed Test

About the Reading Speed Test

Find out how fast you read and how much you take in. Pick one of eight short passages written for this page (four non-fiction, four stories, about 370 to 420 words each), read it silently at your usual pace while the page times you, then answer five questions about it from memory. You get your words per minute, your comprehension (questions right) and your effective reading rate: speed multiplied by comprehension, so skimming does not flatter you.

Your result is compared with the averages from a meta-analysis of 190 reading studies: adults read English non-fiction silently at about 238 words per minute and fiction at about 260, and most fall between 175 and 300 (non-fiction) or 200 and 320 (fiction). You can also time yourself on your own text, and try RSVP practice, which flashes the words one at a time at a speed you choose, then asks the same questions so you can see what speed does to understanding.

Common uses

• Finding out your own reading speed before planning how long a reading list or an exam paper will take you.
• Checking whether reading faster costs you understanding, with the effective rate as the score to beat.
• Timing yourself on your own textbook or work documents, which are harder than a short story and give a more useful number for study planning.
• Teachers and parents giving confident readers a short, quiet reading task with questions.
• Trying out RSVP (one word at a time) at different speeds and seeing for yourself what happens to comprehension.

How your result is worked out

The clock starts when the passage appears and stops when you press I have finished reading. If you switch to another tab or app, the clock pauses and the result says for how long.

• Words per minute = words in the passage ÷ minutes taken. 378 words in 1 minute 30 seconds is 378 ÷ 1.5 = 252.
• Comprehension = questions answered correctly ÷ 5. Each question is worth 20%; one left unanswered counts as wrong.
• Effective reading rate = words per minute × comprehension. 252 words per minute at 80% gives 202.

A word is anything between spaces that contains a letter or a digit, so well-kneaded and don’t count as one word. Texts in scripts written without spaces (Chinese, Japanese, Thai and others) are measured in characters per minute instead.

Where the averages come from

The comparison uses Marc Brysbaert’s review and meta-analysis of reading rate, which pooled 190 studies with 18,573 readers. Adults reading English silently averaged about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction; most read non-fiction at 175 to 300 and fiction at 200 to 320 words per minute. Reading aloud averaged about 183. The review explains the gap between fiction and non-fiction by word length (non-fiction uses longer words), and its estimates are lower than figures often repeated elsewhere.

The same review reports slower rates for children, for older adults and for people reading in a second language, so the adult averages are only a rough guide for them. Rates in other languages can be predicted fairly well from how many words each language needs to say the same thing as English.

Speed and understanding

A major review of speed-reading research found a trade-off between speed and accuracy: it is unlikely that readers can double or triple their normal speed and still understand a text as well. Skimming gets you through faster with only moderate understanding, which is fine when that is all you need. The review’s advice for reading faster without losing understanding is to read more and build your language skills, such as vocabulary.

That is why this page reports the effective reading rate. When your speed is more than twice the average, or you answer fewer than three questions out of five correctly, the result says so.

About RSVP practice

RSVP (rapid serial visual presentation) shows a text one word, or a few words, at a time in the same spot, so your eyes do not have to move along the lines. Choose a speed from 60 to 1,000 words per minute and 1 to 3 words at a time. With Pause at punctuation on, a flash that ends a sentence gets one extra word’s time, one that ends at a comma, colon or semicolon half a word more, the last flash of a paragraph one and a half words more, and each word of nine letters or more a quarter more. That time comes out of the other words, so the whole run takes exactly as long as your chosen speed says. If you skip ahead or go back, the result counts the words that were really shown.

RSVP takes away your chance to look back at earlier words, and an eye-tracking study found that readers understood less when they could not look back. Use it to see how far you can push your speed, then answer the questions to see what it cost.

Getting a fair result

• Read the way you normally read for study or pleasure, in a quiet place, without stopping.
• Choose a passage you have not read before: the page offers one automatically and marks the ones you have read.
• Take two or three tests and look at the average: a single result moves with the topic, your attention and the time of day.
• Compare like with like. A textbook chapter is read more slowly than a story, so time yourself on your own material when you want a number for planning.

Limitations

• Five questions per passage make comprehension a rough guide: each question is worth 20%.
• The averages are for adults reading English silently. Children, people reading in a second language and readers of other languages usually read at different rates.
• Your own text gets no questions, so only its speed is measured.
• RSVP practice needs a text with spaces between its words. Texts in Chinese, Japanese, Thai and other scripts written without spaces can be timed with the speed test, in characters per minute.
• This is a practice tool, not an assessment of reading difficulties such as dyslexia: if you are worried about your own or a child’s reading, ask a teacher or a specialist.
• Results are kept in this browser only; they do not follow you to another device.

Privacy

Everything runs in your browser. Your answers and results are kept in this browser’s storage so that you can see your progress, and Clear results deletes them. Text you paste is used only for the test and is not saved or uploaded.