Just took a reading test from Staples and confirmed that I am still a slower-than-average reader. I mean, I read a LOT, and I love it, and I’ve gotten much faster over the years. But while my dyslexia is mild, it is not something I’ll ever get over, I guess.
You can test yourself here, just remember that these tests don’t really say anything about how smart you are or your potential for success or whatever. I like to think that whatever neurological weirdness makes it hard for me to process written words also gives me a different way of looking at the world that gives more than it takes.
I wish I was capable of reading slow. I end up losing a lot of enjoyment out of books because of how fast I steam through them. The more I like the book, the faster I involuntarily read; I’ve broken 3300 wpm on Stranger in a Strange Land.
This probably isn’t the greatest of tests either. For instance, I speed up the longer that I read, and I’m reasonably sure most people do as well. Plus this is a passage with no context; context is everything. :)
Take 1 on this, I only had 1200 wpm. Reading at a higher speed like I would in the middle of a normal book, around double that.
At least in my case, it isn’t that I’m really picking up on words when I’m speed-reading; I can’t tell you what word is listed on what page, and I even stop being able to tell you when a word is misspelled. My brain basically skips over artificial / superfluous language constructs to grab the keys of a sentence (objects, subjects, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and a few other parts of speech, but no conjunctions), harvests the correct words and then plays a story in my brain. If you’ve ever seen the older kids TV show Wishbone, that’s pretty much exactly what my brain does to me.
Then it ends and I notice that I’ve lost a couple of hours of time where I’m not even cognizant of my surroundings. It usually only takes me a couple of hours to finish a novel.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that I agree that speed reading isn’t anything about how smart you are. In fact, speed reading in general isn’t even necessarily a plus, if that’s all you can read.