Yuffie's Writing How-To's

How to INCREASE READING SPEED

Reading is important. Duh. In all walks of life you gotta read signs and furniture assembly instructions and textbooks and ACT questions and novels. How awesome would it be if you could double your reading speed and read twice the number of books? What if you tripled it?

Here are several tools that calculates how many words you can read and comprehend in a minute:

http://projects.wsj.com/speedread/

http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/index.html

http://www.readingsoft.com/index.html

I don't know which is most accurate, so I'm just throwing them all out there. Each of them are different reading levels, so don't try to compare one to another. Pick one and read at your normal reading speed. Don't try to speedread yet.

With the second link, I got around 350 wpm.

Now, for improving that number. Follow along this short video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZqXBhGR_W8 (video up top or Youtube "Learn To Speed Read: Read 300% Faster in 15 Minutes")

It claims you can improve your reading speed by 300% (or get 3x faster) by practicing this method consistently.

After practicing with the video, I improved from 350 wpm to 650 wpm! I spent all of yesterday reading Dune in this method, and I took the quiz again. I got 850 wpm (though my comprehension was questionable...). At that speed, I supposedly can read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 1.5 hours. (no idea if that claim is accurate, so take it with a grain of salt)

And here are even more great tips on increasing your reading speed: http://www.wikihow.com/Learn-Speed-Reading (Linked to in the External Link, or Google "wikihow how to learn speed reading")

If anyone else wants to join me in this little experiment, let me know how you do! Take one of the reading speed quizzes I linked you to as a pretest, watch and follow along with this video, then take the same reading quiz again to see how much you've improved. Practice speedreading for a few days, do the video again, and then take another quiz. How fast can you get (while keeping decent comprehension, of course)? Comment below with your results!