The Guardian – Pete Etchells
“We are constantly surrounded by information, whether it’s emails, Facebook posts, or revision notes. Fluent readers can average a rate of 200-400 words per minute, so there is only so much content that one person can get through in a day. But what if we were able to double, or even triple, that rate? Would a faster reading speed mean that we could learn more? Some people claim that it’s possible. In July last year, six-time speed reading champion Anne Jones sat down to read Harper Lee’s Go Set a Watchman. Just 25 minutes and 31 seconds later, she was finished – which equates to a reading rate of around 3,700 words per minute. Jones runs training courses teaching speed reading, recall and concentration techniques and there are numerous speed reading apps that have appeared on the market over the past few years. But do they actually work? First, we need to understand how we read.”(more)