# Getting Used to Speed: The 5 Practice Stages

> Speed Readingo's course trains speed in five practice stages, from 250 to 1,000 wpm. Learn how to climb them and why your real reading pace will settle lower.

Page: https://speedreadingo.fastemy.com/lessons/speed-stages/ · Updated: 2026-11-02 · By: Abdullah Yılmaz · Speed Readingo

## The short answer

Speed Readingo's course trains speed in five practice stages: 250, 350, 500, 700 and 1,000 words per minute. You read real texts a little above your comfort zone, like adding weight at the gym, and move up when a stage stops feeling hard. Treat the top stages as training paces: research finds comprehension drops sharply above about 600 wpm.

1. Start at 250 words per minute, about a page a minute, and move on quickly.
2. Practise on real texts for about 10 minutes a day at a stage that feels a little too fast.
3. Use a speed-reader tool for your first 5 to 10 texts only, then switch to normal pages.
4. Step up to 350, 500, 700 and 1,000 as each stage stops feeling hard.
5. Keep your everyday reading at the pace where you still understand.

## Why the course starts fast

You now have the two moves of reading with your eyes: a quieter inner voice and a few pit words per line. The next job is getting used to doing them at speed.

The course does something that surprises most people: its first read-along starts fast on purpose. Its reasoning: below a certain pace the inner voice is hard to shake, so a slow start would only rebuild the old habit. As the course puts it, you have probably missed most of the text, and that's normal, like starting at the gym with heavy weights.

In those first runs, focus on only two things: reading with your eyes and landing on your pit words. Understanding comes later.

## The five practice stages

The course climbs through five paces. They are practice paces, chosen to stretch you, not reading speeds you are meant to hold on every text.

| Stage | Practice pace | One 250-word page takes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 250 wpm | about 1 minute |
| 2 | 350 wpm | about 43 seconds |
| 3 | 500 wpm | about 30 seconds |
| 4 | 700 wpm | about 21 seconds |
| 5 | 1,000 wpm | about 15 seconds |

Stage 1 is only for getting used to fast reading and marking, so move on quickly. The course aims to get you practising at stage 5, and counts holding 700 to 1,000 in practice as a real achievement. Its reason for pushing comes from sport: practice alone isn't enough, and now and then you have to push yourself to make progress.

## How to practise

1. **Use a speed-reader tool, briefly.** The course's tool shows a text a few words at a time at the pace you choose, while your eyes stay on the middle. Use it for 5 to 10 texts, then move to normal pages: it is a training aid, not a way to read. Our [RSVP reader](https://speedreadingo.fastemy.com/rsvp-reader/) works the same way. Paste a text, set the speed, and show one to three words at a time.
2. **Read real texts daily.** About 10 minutes a day at your current stage. The course suggests practising on whatever you are researching at the moment.
3. **Move up when it stops feeling hard.** Once reading with your eyes and landing on pit words happen without thinking, turn your attention to the text itself. When that feels steady too, go up a stage.

## What the research says

Pushing your pace in practice is reasonable. Treating the top stages as reading speeds is not.

- **Most adults read at about 175 to 300 words per minute.** The average for non-fiction is about 238 across 190 studies ([Brysbaert, 2019](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047)). Stage 1 sits near that average; stage 2 is already above the typical range.
- **Comprehension falls off above about 600.** When some of the world's best readers, trained speed readers among them, were tested, comprehension dropped sharply past roughly 600 words per minute ([Carver, 1985](https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ319724)). Trained speed readers at 600 to 700 did no better than skimmers on detail questions (reviewed in [Rayner et al., 2016](https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267)).
- **Word-by-word display has a ceiling too.** It matched normal reading at around 200 words per minute, and recall of details fell as the pace rose to 400 and 600 (Rayner et al., 2016). At 700 and 1,000, people understood ordinary text better than word-by-word display ([Acklin & Papesh, 2017](https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.130.2.0183)). That is a good reason to keep the tool to a handful of texts, as the course does.

So stages 3 to 5 are like a heavy set at the gym: good for stretching you, not the weight you carry all day. Your everyday pace is the one where you still understand, and [lesson 8](https://speedreadingo.fastemy.com/lessons/comprehension/) shows how to find it.

## At work and in study

Practise on reading you have to do anyway: background articles for a project, industry news, a chapter of a non-fiction book. Use the higher stages where the gist is enough. When a text matters in detail, such as a contract, a dataset or exam material, read at your normal pace.

## Try it

Play the drill at the top of this page at 250 words per minute, then raise it to 350 and 500 for a minute each. Afterwards, read a normal page at your own pace. Then take the [reading speed test](https://speedreadingo.fastemy.com/reading-speed-test/) to see your real pace today, checked against comprehension.

Next lesson: [marking, or how to tie what matters to a picture](https://speedreadingo.fastemy.com/lessons/marking/).

## FAQ

### Can you really read 1,000 words per minute?

Not with good comprehension of a normal text. In tests of some of the world's best readers, comprehension dropped sharply above about 600 words per minute (Carver, 1985). The course uses 1,000 as a practice pace, not a reading speed.

### What speed should I practise speed reading at?

Start one stage above your measured speed and stay there until it stops feeling hard. Most adults read non-fiction silently at about 175 to 300 words per minute (Brysbaert, 2019), so 250 or 350 is a sensible first stage.

### How long does it take to get used to speed reading?

There is no fixed timeline. The course warns that the skill grows slowly with practice, like any other, and research agrees that reading practice helps only gradually (Rayner et al., 2016). Move up a stage when the current one stops feeling hard.

## Sources

1. Brysbaert, M. (2019). How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate. Journal of Memory and Language, 109, 104047. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2019.104047
2. Carver, R. P. (1985). How good are some of the world’s best readers?. Reading Research Quarterly, 20(4), 389–419. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ319724
3. Rayner, K., Schotter, E. R., Masson, M. E. J., Potter, M. C., & Treiman, R. (2016). So much to read, so little time: How do we read, and can speed reading help?. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 17(1), 4–34. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100615623267
4. Acklin, D., & Papesh, M. H. (2017). Modern speed-reading apps do not foster reading comprehension. American Journal of Psychology, 130(2), 183–199. https://doi.org/10.5406/amerjpsyc.130.2.0183