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What’s your extensive reading speed? | ||
Tags: Time to learn | Reading | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Learning Techniques, Methods & Strategies |  | |
| Bakunin Diglot Senior Member Switzerland outerkhmer.blogspot. Joined 4942 days ago 531 posts - 1126 votes  Speaks: German*, Thai Studies: Khmer | Message 1 of 10 03 April 2013 at 7:46pm | IP Logged |
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My extensive reading speed in Thai after 4 years of engagement with the language is 110 words per minute (details below). What's your's? (I'm particularly interested in reading speeds in languages with a non-latin script, but any other data point is welcome…)
Doing stats for my TAC 2013 log, I've just estimated my reading speed in Thai when reading extensively. Quick and dirty. Here's my calculation: The book I'm currently reading has 18.5 words per full line (I counted two lines, 17 and 20 words), 24 lines per page. I adjust that product by 0.7 to account for the fact that many lines are not full. From several measurements during the last week I know that I need a bit under 3 minutes per page when reading full chapters. Comes out at about 110 words per minute (wpm). Here's an overview of reading speeds from a random website (Forbes), sanity-checked with figures on wikipedia: Third-grade students = 150 wpm Eight grade students = 250 wpm Average college student = 450 wpm [...] Average adult: 300 wpm Compared to the 300 wpm given for an average adult, 110 wpm sucks… but that's the way it is. What's your reading speed or related experience? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| daegga Tetraglot Senior Member Austria lang-8.com/553301 Joined 4333 days ago 1076 posts - 1792 votes Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Swedish, Norwegian Studies: Danish, French, Finnish, Icelandic | Message 2 of 10 03 April 2013 at 8:13pm | IP Logged |
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I found Paul Nation's lecture on reading fluency interesting.
When reading for pleasure and full comprehension, I read at about 250 wpm in German and English and at about 150 wpm in Norwegian. I can read a lot faster (up to 1000 wpm in English), but only for getting an overview over an article. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
 emk Diglot Moderator United States Joined 5344 days ago 2615 posts - 8806 votes Speaks: English*, FrenchB2 Studies: Spanish, Ancient Egyptian Personal Language Map | Message 3 of 10 03 April 2013 at 8:16pm | IP Logged |
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About 30 pages per hour in French, sometimes a bit more. Assuming 250 words per page (which is actually pretty accurate for French paperbacks), that works out to 125 words per minute. I usually read about 60 to 100 pages per hour in English, though I can go higher for certain kinds of books.
I don't find my French reading speed discouraging at all. In fact, I'm a little bit amazed that I can read for pleasure in another language without a dictionary, and a 50% loss in reading speed seems a small price to pay. Plus, native speech only averages 150–170 words per minute, so there's really great skills transfer between reading and listening at this speed. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4519 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 4 of 10 03 April 2013 at 10:21pm | IP Logged |
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I managed 400 pages of Swedish in 3-4 hours once, at 4 months of study (bizarre
experience, by the way). I routinely read books in my five best languages (no idea about my Russian as I haven't tried, put simply) at speeds of over 100 pages an hour. I have no idea, but I think that for most English books I manage a little over 100 pages an hour on average. I can get fairly close to this in French and Swedish. I probably could read faster if my eyes would work together better. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5578 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 10 03 April 2013 at 11:26pm | IP Logged |
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The pace I can sustain for hours is between 350 wpm and 500 wpm in English and German, depending on the difficulty of the text and how alert I am. Reading speed tests gave me close to perfect retention, but that's probably because I know how to search for the kind of information that's likely to be asked in the comprehension quiz ...
Spanish and French are much slower, maybe around 150wpm and 100wpm? In Japanese I'm around 200 characters per minute, which would roughly make a bit less than 100wpm. I hope I'll be able to read at talking speed in the latter languages sooner or later. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
 jeff_lindqvist Diglot Moderator SwedenRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6721 days ago 4250 posts - 5710 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: German, Spanish, Russian, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Irish, French Personal Language Map | Message 6 of 10 03 April 2013 at 11:37pm | IP Logged |
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As long as I understand the content: two pages per minute (Swedish/English), up to three pages per minute if it's an "easy" text. At least one page per minute in German and Spanish, slightly slower for French and Russian. (It was ages since I read anything in Fr/Ru)
Probably a lot faster for Danish/Norwegian (almost at the speed of Swedish/English). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| osoymar Tetraglot Pro Member United States Joined 4548 days ago 190 posts - 344 votes Speaks: English*, German, Portuguese, Japanese Studies: Spanish, French Personal Language Map | Message 7 of 10 04 April 2013 at 1:04am | IP Logged |
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About 188 Japanese characters per minute in a text on a subject I'm more or less familiar
with. 130 Germans words per minute in a newspaper article on a subject that you pretty much can't avoid if you read German language news- criticisms of Angela Merkel from Mediterranean countries. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| zerrubabbel Senior Member United States Joined 4412 days ago 232 posts - 287 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 8 of 10 04 April 2013 at 9:39pm | IP Logged |
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This is rather tough for me to answer for the time being... In English, I would assume I'm about average, never paid
much attention, but I don't think I would have any trouble clearing a page per minute, give or take. However, my Japanese reading is far below my speaking ability. Just for reference, I have a knowledge of about 300 or so Kanji, and with some matters, for instance, Facebook posts, I can read quite fast. But I also have a book about Hiroshima Ken which I like to read, and it goes into many detail that I still have no concept of. With a dictionary, it may be an hour before Im able to understand the page, and turn it. and I certainly wont retain the readings of all the new kanji. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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