Extensive reading and reading speed

[raymond2]

Regarding reading speed - the 250 cpm is for conversing, right? In my mind if you are reading out loud, like I am (making sure I don't cheat on pronunciation, haha), this is a good number to compare to. I'm at around 80 cpm now, and I'm shooting for half native speed, or 125. But people normally read silently at about 50% faster than they speak. So I'm wondering - do you guys read silently, out loud, or some combo? 

[Johnny-5]

I read along with text to speech and that is much faster than I can read normally, but still slower than my wife reads 

[Dr Mack Rettosy]

Update on reading speed

 

I've read a cumulative of 1.7 million characters since April 2nd 2021. Here is how I proceeded:

• started with graded readers (Rainbow Bridge and Mandarin Companion)
• translated children's books (Winnie the Pooh, Roald Dahl)
• native children's / young adult fiction (曹文轩，夏正正，孙幼军，张天翼著)
• and now native adult fiction (余华 novels and short stories，刘慈欣 short stories, 紫金陈's King of Reason i.e. bad kids trilogy)

 

Note the reading speed also includes time looking up words (Pleco dictionary) and translating occasional sentences. Recently I have been trying monolingual dictionaries which also slow my CPM.

 

Tracking my reading speed was a really important motivator in the beginning, now its more or less a habit and something I do to share with others.  I plan to continue tracking at least until I hit 10+ million plus or when I start reading paper books, whichever comes first. These days my interests have shifted to exploring native Chinese literature, discovering new authors, building and working through my reading list.

 

Cheers and happy reading!

 

[Woodford]

Revisiting this thread, I can see that my experience isn't much different from Pinion's so far. Back in October 2021, I had read 2.8 million characters (about 14 books), and I clocked my reading speed at 129 CPM. Now, about 3.5 years later, having read about 10 million characters (50 books), my reading speed has been upgraded to 172 CPM (about a 33% improvement!). 

 

My habit of uttering words under my breath (a habit that Pinion abandoned early on) has unfortunately continued with me, probably slowing me down somewhat. I've also habitually been stopping to look up words in the dictionary and approaching the task of reading as a "learner," with a formalistic, rigid, academic process; I've seldom ever just "let loose" and read casually, not caring whether I get every tone, word, and pronunciation correct. So if I change these habits, I think I can squeak past 200 CPM. Overall, I'm fairly happy.

[Wei-Ming 魏明]

In the last year, I got interested in this question as well. I wanted an accurate predictor of my reading speed upon starting a new text. I'm worthless at maths, but I came across the terms "linear regression" and "multiple regression." https://stats.blue/Stats_Suite/multiple_linear_regression_calculator.html

 

I pasted in months of spreadsheet data for each chapter or section I've read. a. Text length b. Ratio of familiar characters c. Instance density of unfamiliar characters. d. Time it took to read. The calculator above spat out a very short equation with some curious numbers in it. (I had to conclude that "coefficients" are just "magic numbers" because I'm worthless at maths.) But now I have a simple calculator that can predict, down to a couple of minutes, how long it's going to take me to read something. I'm WAY slower than you guys, though. I range between 45 and 62 CPM.