Some speed reading programs say you can read thousands of words a minute. Is it true? Psychologists say no. When you read faster, you usually understand less. The limit is not your eyes, but how fast your brain understands words and sentences.

But there is a good way. Japanese university students who read many easy English books for a year read much faster, and they still understood well.

Many speed reading programs promise that you can read several times faster. In 2016, Rayner and four other researchers reviewed research on reading and concluded that there is a trade-off between speed and comprehension. It is very unlikely that people can double or triple their reading speed while keeping good understanding.

The main limit is language processing, not eye movement. In 2019, a meta-analysis of 190 studies found that adults reading English silently read about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and about 260 for fiction. However, a 2012 study of 97 Japanese university students found that a year of pleasure reading increased reading speed without lowering comprehension.

Speed reading courses often claim that readers can absorb thousands of words a minute, but psychological research is skeptical. In a 2016 review, Rayner and four colleagues concluded that speed and accuracy trade off: readers can skim quickly, but comprehension then becomes only moderate, and doubling or tripling a typical rate of about 250 words per minute while maintaining understanding is highly unlikely. The bottleneck lies not in eye movements but in recognizing words and building meaning. A 2019 meta-analysis of 190 studies with roughly 18,600 participants estimated that adults read English silently at about 238 words per minute for non-fiction and 260 for fiction, and second language readers are slower.

In a year-long study of 97 Japanese university students, all groups who did pleasure reading increased their reading rate more than a group that focused on intensive reading, with larger gains for those who read at least one book every two weeks and for those using simplified texts, while comprehension remained high. Timed reading practice also helped Taiwanese students gain about 29 words per minute over 13 weeks. However, the Japanese study was not randomized, so differences between groups may have influenced the results.