Reading Speed: How Fast Is Fast Enough
Reading rate is only worth improving up to a point, and that point is lower than most candidates think. Here is where it actually is, part by part.
What the section actually asks you to read
Candidates estimate the reading load of this section from the passages, and the passages are the smaller half. A Part 1 message is 300 to 400 words, but the part also contains a reply of a hundred-odd words and eleven questions with four options each. The words on screen across the part are two or three times the words in the letter.
The same is true everywhere. Part 4 has an article of 450 to 600 words, a reader comment, and ten questions with forty options. Part 2 has the least prose in the section and eight questions whose options are dense with numbers and features. Part 3 has a passage plus nine statements, each of which has to be read at least twice.
So a rate target based on passages alone will leave you short. What matters is a first-pass rate fast enough to leave time for the second and third readings that the questions force, because you never read anything in this section exactly once.
First-pass targets that work
Derive the target from the budget rather than from a general ambition. In Part 1 the plan is about 90 seconds for the message before you look at any question. A 350 word letter in 90 seconds is roughly 230 words a minute, with comprehension good enough to catch a tone shift.
In Part 4 the plan is about three minutes for the article and the ledger. A 550 word article in three minutes, with a four line record built as you go, works out to an effective rate around 180 words a minute, because part of those three minutes is spent writing rather than reading.
Part 3 is not a rate problem at all. The one minute map is a skim for topic, which everybody can do, and the rest of the part is targeted searching. Part 2 has so little prose that rate is irrelevant, and the time is spent cross-referencing.
That gives a single practical answer. A comfortable first-pass rate of about 200 to 250 words a minute on ordinary non-technical English, with real comprehension, is enough for every part of this section. Above that, further speed buys you nothing, because the remaining time is spent on searching, checking and deciding rather than on reading.
How to tell whether rate is your problem
Most candidates who believe they read too slowly do not. The test is simple and worth running before you spend weeks on the wrong thing.
Take a practice part and do it untimed, noting how long it actually took. If you finish a Part 4 in fourteen minutes rather than twelve, rate is not your problem: two minutes over is a procedure problem, and the procedure lessons will recover it. If you finish in twenty-two minutes, rate is genuinely part of the problem.
The second test is about accuracy under the clock. Do one part timed and one part untimed on different days, and compare the scores. If untimed accuracy is much higher, you are being cut short and the issue is pacing or rate. If untimed accuracy is the same, going faster would not help you, and speed work would be wasted.
A third signal is where the time goes. If you are slow because you reread, that is not a rate problem either, it is an order problem, and rereading is cured by committing to one opening move per part rather than by moving your eyes faster.
Test whether rate is really your problem before working on it: do one part timed and the same kind of part untimed, and compare accuracy. If untimed accuracy is no better, speed work would buy you nothing.
Drills that raise rate honestly
Timed first passes with a recall check. Take any 500 word article, set 2 minutes 30, read it once, then write four sentences on what it said and who said what. The recall check is the important half. Reading faster while retaining less is not improvement, it is just skimming with a stopwatch.
Subvocalisation reduction, cautiously. Many readers say each word internally, which caps rate at roughly speaking speed. Widening your eye span to take in phrases rather than words raises the ceiling. Do this on easy material only, and expect comprehension to dip for a week or two before it recovers.
Paragraph-shape reading. Practise identifying the function of each paragraph rather than its content: this one introduces, this one objects, this one concedes. This is the skill Part 3 mapping and Part 4 ledger building rest on, and it makes long texts feel much shorter.
Option reading under pressure. An underrated drill. Take four options from any practice question and read all four properly, to the full stop, in twelve seconds. Most candidates are slower at reading options than at reading prose, and options are a third of the words in the section.
Pair every speed drill with a recall check. Four sentences on what the text said, written from memory, is the only thing that distinguishes faster reading from skimming.
What to read, and how often
Rate improves with volume of ordinary reading at a level slightly below your ceiling. It does not improve much with practice tests, because a test is 39 minutes of reading with 39 minutes of anxiety attached and only a handful of passages.
Read the kinds of text the section is drawn from: municipal news coverage, consumer comparison articles, community newsletters, letters pages and opinion columns from Canadian publications. Fifteen to twenty minutes a day is more effective than two hours at the weekend, because rate is a habit of attention rather than a body of knowledge.
Vary the register deliberately. A candidate comfortable with news prose and uncomfortable with a chatty personal letter will find Part 1 harder than Part 4, which is the reverse of the usual difficulty order and entirely a familiarity effect.
Expect slow progress and do not measure it weekly. Reading rate moves over months, and the fortnight before a test is not the time to try to change it. If your test is close, the pacing and procedure lessons will give you more marks per hour of preparation than any speed work can.
When faster is worse
There is a real ceiling above which more speed costs marks, and Part 1 is where candidates cross it. A personal message carries its meaning in tone, in what gets one sentence and what gets a paragraph, and in what the writer avoids saying. Those signals are the first thing lost when the eye accelerates.
Fast literal readers routinely score worse on Part 1 than slower careful ones, which is the clearest evidence in the section that rate is not the target. It is also why the advice for that part is to read the letter like a letter, once, at a normal pace.
The general rule is that speed is worth having only where reading is the bottleneck. In this section it is the bottleneck in roughly one and a half parts out of four. Everywhere else the bottleneck is knowing what to look for, holding it once found, and checking it against the stem. Those are the cheap improvements, and they are available in days rather than months.
Practise reading four answer options to the full stop in about twelve seconds. Options are roughly a third of the words in the section and most candidates read them more slowly than prose.
Practise it
Five questions on reading rate: what target is enough, how to test whether it is your limit, and where speed starts to cost you.