Every civilized person must be able to read. We all learned this in early childhood and now we don’t even notice how we do it daily. We read everything: signs of shops, checks, names of bus routes or metro stations, product labels and so on. Therefore, even if you have not picked up a book for a hundred years, this does not mean at all that you are not reading. In an adult, this skill is so fixed that often he simply does not realize this moment.
Despite this dependence on the process of reproducing letters and numbers, we, it turns out, are unaware of the hundreds of interesting points associated with this skill. For example, do you know who set the world record for reading speed? Or how exactly does the process go? Today we will tell you about these and other interesting facts.
Ordinary person reading speed
Each of us set his own reading speed record. Someone read fluently in 3-4 years, someone got acquainted with the letters, going to first grade. But by the age of 10, the bulk of students come to some average indicators.
Every year, the Ministry of Education of many countries revises reading standards and rules for checking them. In this matter, it all depends on the curriculum and the age of the child. From the first to the fourth grade, reading standards can vary annually, but by the end of this period, the student’s reading speed should average 130–140 words per minute. Is it a lot or a little?
The average adult in its parameters is not too “gone” from the child. When reading a text out loud, a mature person can reproduce no more than 250–260 words per minute, and many people read it even more slowly. Moreover, the older a person becomes, the more his reading speed decreases. The vast majority of adults are not able to reproduce text at a speed of more than 180 words per minute.
Most likely, this is due not only to the ability of the brain to process information, but also to the ability of the human vocal apparatus to reproduce certain sounds. It has been established that the reading speed of an ordinary person can reach 450–500 words per minute, provided that he will do it silently, simply by moving his eyes through the text.
There are also numerous speed reading techniques. These are special training programs that can help a person learn to read several times faster. The developers of such techniques claim that any person, using such techniques in practice, can achieve a reading speed of up to 10 thousand words in one minute. In some cases, this indicator may be several times larger.
How do we do this?
If you decide to set your own record for reading speed per minute and are ready to start practicing the appropriate techniques, first read this article carefully. Surely you never thought about exactly how we read. How does our gaze move? Most people are convinced that in traditional reading, our eyes glide smoothly from letter to letter, folding words into long sentences. In practice, this is absolutely not the case. During reading, the person’s eyes do not move along the lines smoothly. They seem to “jump” through the text, simultaneously covering several words and sending information to the brain. The faster a person reads, the fewer stops his eyes make on each line. An average reader of such “stops” can have from 12 to 16. A person who reads quickly makes only 2-3 stops.
When a person reads slowly, his eyes make reciprocating movements. The brain, as it were, seeks to obtain confirmation that the eyes saw everything correctly. Therefore, younger students can make up to 25 regressive passes. For students and high school students, this figure drops to 13-15. Due to such return movements, a person’s eyes “run through” a distance 13–15 times greater than what is needed to comprehend information.
During stops, the human eye captures only individual letters. Moreover, 53% of the time the eyes allocate one letter, and 47% spend fixing several several standing next to them. Further, the brain combines everything into a single image and processes the information received.
Since with a quick reading a person rarely returns along a line to what he has already read, his eyes get tired less.
Record holder from Ukraine
A Kiev girl Irochka Ivachenko set a personal reading speed record at the age of 16. It amounted to 163,333 words per minute. In addition, she was able to fully absorb the content of the material she read. This result has been officially recorded and is still unsurpassed.
Unfixed Phenomenon
Literally a fantastic record of reading speed belongs to another resident of Kiev - Zhenya Alekseenko. At the time of its establishment, she was also only 16 years old. In the presence of 20 students of special speed reading courses, she managed to read 1 390 words in 0.2 seconds. After that, she retold the learned text for several hours, without missing out on small details.
Interestingly, until the age of 15, no one had any idea about the amazing abilities of the girl, and she herself believed that everyone could do that. Father Eugenia discovered unique qualities. He gave his daughter a long publication in a local newspaper. When after a couple of seconds the girl said that the content of the article was quite interesting, her father did not believe her and thought that she was joking. Nevertheless, Eugene accurately retold the content of the article and answered all the questions that her dad had posed to her. As it turns out, she could not explain.
Other speed reading records
The Russian woman Svetlana Arkhipova recorded her record in reading speed per unit time. It was entered in the Guinness Book of Records and amounted to 60 thousand characters per minute.
Annie Jones from England won 6 times in the world speed reading contest. Its result is 4,253 words in 60 seconds.
The heads of America: Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy also persistently practiced fast reading . Each of them read at a speed of more than 1,000 words per minute.
Interesting Reading Information
It is believed that with special and regular training everyone can set a reading speed record. But in practice, very few are capable of this.
- The most favorable age for starting learning to read is 4–5 years. It is at this age that the human brain is most flexible and adaptive to the assimilation of new practices. Learning to read a child 7-8 years old is much more difficult. Those students who have not learned to read well and quickly to the third grade are unlikely to be able to do this in high school.
- It is proved that the faster a person reads, the more information he learns in the end.
- The average reading speed of an adult is about 2 pages per minute.
- One sixth of the time spent on reading, we devote returns to already read.
- Napoleon read at a speed of 2,000 words per minute, and Maxim Gorky "gave out" twice as high indicators.
Known Benefits of Reading
Of course, it is not necessary to set a record for reading speed, you can just enjoy the process. Moreover, this is an incredibly useful activity:
Reading enhances brain health. Folding letters into words and sentences can be regarded as a kind of gymnastics for this body.
Reading broadens the mind. You will become better at understanding and accepting what is happening around you.
Reading develops the ability to concentrate. You can do this without paying attention to various factors happening around. You can read to music, in transport, in a large and noisy family, on the beach and in any other situations.
Reading is a great way to profitably “kill” time. If you manage to love reading, it will never bother you. Indeed, there are so many interesting books that hundreds of human lives will not be enough to read even half of what is written. Just find your favorite genre, or maybe even a few, and enjoy the process.