Increasing reading speed in university-level reading?

[Genecks]

I once talked to an English teacher about "reading speed." Him and I both felt that we like to take our time with reading. This means we don't try to rush and read 14 pages an hour. I attempt to understand and comprehend what I am reading. Personally, I've been able to move my reading speed from about 5 pages an hour to about 7 to 8 pages an hour in the past year. I think that's good progress. However, I'm thinking that it's still considerably slow. I'm mostly reading either chemistry books or biology books these days.

 

I think a lot of my reading speed has to do with whether or not I'm familiar with the material. Sometimes it has to do with me losing visual focus, and my eyes trail off the line of text to somewhere else. I'm not sure if that's a lack of attention span or else just part of having vision problems. So, I find that if I am not progressing, I'll take a nice pencil and trail along the lines of text until I get done with the page(s) I need to read.

 

What do all of you think of reading speed? Does it increase throughout the college years? Through the graduate school years? Post-doc?

 

This semester is the first semester I've been given books that were around 700 pages each (I'm an undergrad). Last semester, I had about 500 pages per class. That wasn't so bad. Obviously, the reading is a lot more this semester, but I feel I can keep up with it. Still, the increased amount of reading makes me wonder if I'm being slow and perhaps I'm not reading and comprehending as fast as I should.

 

I find that a steady pace keeps me on task, but I can't help but wonder I'm doing something wrong.

 

Any input would be appreciated.

Edited January 23, 2010 by Genecks

[CharonY]

Well the time-limiting step is generally not the reading, but the comprehension step. As you mentioned, in field you are familiar with or have gained familiarity you can easily breeze through the literature. Often the papers used a condensed language easily understandable with anyone somewhat proficient on the given field. For a beginner papers therefore take disproportionately longer to read than textbooks, as the latter are more geared towards easy comprehension.