How Fast Should You Read English? Measuring and Improving Your WPM

In 2019, Marc Brysbaert of Ghent University published a meta-analysis of reading speed in the Journal of Memory and Language, based on 190 studies and 18,573 participants. Adults reading silently in their native English averaged 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction. Most people fell between 175 and 300 words per minute for non-fiction, and between 200 and 320 for fiction.

Reading speed is usually given as words per minute, or WPM. If you are learning English and feel you read slowly, this post gives you some numbers to compare yourself with, a simple way to measure your own speed, and ways to raise it.

How fast do learners read?

Brysbaert’s paper notes that people reading English as a second language read considerably more slowly, and that rates below 100 words per minute are not uncommon. One study it describes is Hirai (1999), which tested Japanese university students who had studied English for six years at school. On easy passages, students who answered more than 75% of the questions correctly read at 139 words per minute. The others read at 61.

The target most often quoted for learners comes from Paul Nation, known for his work on vocabulary. In his 2009 paper “Reading faster” (International Journal of English Studies), he writes that around 250 words per minute is a reasonable goal for second language learners reading material with no unknown vocabulary or grammar and easy content. He gives about 150 words per minute as a good speed for reading aloud and about 500 for skimming.

For extensive reading, the Extensive Reading Foundation’s guide gives 150 to 200 words per minute, which I wrote about in How to Do Extensive Reading in English.

Putting these together gives a rough picture. Around 100 words per minute is normal for a learner. At 150 to 200, extensive reading becomes comfortable. Reach 250 on easy books and you are at Nation’s target.

How fast do you need to read for an exam?

Take the IELTS Academic Reading test as an example. According to the official format page, you have 60 minutes to read three sections of text and answer 40 questions. The texts total 2,150 to 2,750 words.

Divide one by the other and you get only 40-something words a minute, which makes it look as if slow reading would do. In practice you also have to read the questions and options and go back into the text to find the evidence for each answer. If a first reading of the text takes too long, there is no time left for searching. The speed an exam asks for is your normal reading speed plus the speed at which you can search a text.

Measuring your speed in one minute

All you need is a timer. Nation describes an activity called One minute reading, which is simple to do on your own.

1. Choose an easy text with almost no unknown words.
2. Set a timer for one minute and read silently at your normal pace.
3. When the minute is up, stop and mark where you got to.
4. Count the words up to that point. That is your WPM.

If counting every word is too tedious, count the words in three lines, work out the average per line, and multiply by the number of lines you read. A rough figure is fine.

After you measure, check that you can say in a sentence what you read. If you measure only speed, it is easy to move your eyes across the page and keep nothing.

Measuring about once a month, with texts of similar difficulty, will show you whether you are improving. There is no need to measure every day. Watching the number too closely can take the pleasure out of reading.

Reading fast and reading with understanding

Nation also gives a guide for comprehension. For careful reading, the right speed is one at which you get seven or eight out of ten comprehension questions right. If you score higher, you have room to read faster. At six or below you are going too fast, and should keep reading at the same speed until comprehension recovers.

There is a ceiling too. Nation writes that speeds above 300 to 400 words per minute are the result of skimming, not careful reading. Brysbaert, citing a 2016 review by Rayner and colleagues, explains that reading faster than 1,000 words per minute is impossible without a serious loss of understanding.

There is also a view that what a learner should aim for is less “reading fast” than “reading without stopping”: moving forward without translating word by word into your own language or rereading the same line several times. Speed follows from that.

How to read faster

Here are three things to try.

Read a lot of easy text. Speed grows when you recognise the words you know the moment you see them. A text full of unknown words is no use for speed practice. How many words you need is in How Many English Words Do You Need to Read a Novel?, and research showing extensive reading raising reading speed is in Does Extensive Reading Help with IELTS, TOEFL and TOEIC?.

Time yourself on short texts. Nation describes speed reading courses for learners: read a short, easy text against the clock, answer questions on it, and record your speed and score on graphs, two or three times a week for about seven weeks. You can do the same on your own.

Reread the same text. A text you have read once goes faster the second time. Among the remedies Nation suggests when speed is not improving are repeated reading and skimming a text before reading it.

Nation also mentions research showing that raising your reading speed in one language can raise it in another language you know. Practice in English might help your reading in your own language as well.

Reading with ABC George

ABC George, an app I make for iPhone and iPad, lets you read Project Gutenberg classics with a built-in dictionary. It is free, with no ads and no in-app purchases, and the dictionary works without a connection.

The reader has three views. For measuring speed, you can use Pages. Estimate the words on one page with the method above, then see how many pages you read in a set number of minutes. Changing the text size changes the words per page, so keep the same settings while you measure.

In Chat view, the chapter arrives one sentence at a time in speech bubbles. Tap Next at the bottom to bring on the next sentence; you can’t see what comes after until you do. The screen shows how far through the chapter you are, as in “12 of 80 lines.” This view suits practice in keeping your attention moving forward.

The play button beside Next (Play through) advances the sentences automatically. Its pace can’t be changed in the settings, though. To read at your own speed, tapping Next yourself works better. The automatic mode can show whether you can keep up.

Long-press a word and tap Look up to check it. The word is saved to your word book with the sentence you met it in. For speed practice, look up as few words as you can and choose a book where you know most of them. Which book to start with is in Choosing English Books by Level, keeping up daily is in Practical Tips for Reading with ABC George Every Day, and Getting Started with ABC George walks through your first book.