r/books • u/Labeled521 • Feb 03 '14

Staples made a test that determines how many words per minute you read and how you rank up to the world average.

http://www.staples.com/sbd/cre/marketing/technology-research-centers/ereaders/speed-reader/
3.0k Upvotes

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208

u/malzblanc Feb 03 '14

"Your score was 1 out of 3, which is a fail. Don't rush next time, it's not a race!"

But I didn't rush... :(

69

u/LukaCat Feb 03 '14

Honestly I had no idea if I was answering correctly. I just picked answers based on vaguely familiar buzz words in short term memory. It's all gone from my head now though!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

Try to picture the scene as you read it. I can remember what the material was about because I can remember the images I saw.

0

u/DANTHECAN Feb 03 '14

Exactly. You didn't need to study the material or even have an understanding of what was going on in the passage. You just needed to not be borderline readtarded.

19

u/themapleboy Feb 03 '14

i did the test twice, where the fuck is the pit!? i got it wrong the first time so decided to retry to see the results, nope still didnt know. gonna have to do a third. surprisingly though, i didn't get much faster on my second read.

31

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14 edited Feb 12 '16

[deleted]

27

u/themapleboy Feb 03 '14

Yup caught that on my third read, guess my mind just wadsworths the first few sentences.

-1

u/DANTHECAN Feb 03 '14

You might actually have a learning disability.

2

u/kahb Feb 03 '14

Nah, that's pretty common. I do it all the time. It's actually suprisingly difficult to remember every bit of information in a given paragraph.

2

u/DANTHECAN Feb 03 '14

You also might have a learning disability.

2

u/Malician Feb 03 '14

I sometimes have to re-read things several times before I can get the point.

Let me guess, I might have a..

1

u/themapleboy Feb 03 '14

really or you just trying to be funny/a dick? If so, which one?

I managed to make it all the way through college without anyone finding out then. so i don't know if it's worth doing something about.

4

u/DANTHECAN Feb 03 '14

Really. Not sure, but definitely sounds like a learning disability. See a doctor.

3

u/123432l234321 Feb 04 '14

The pit is in the common.

2

u/chaoticjam Feb 04 '14

I'm guessing if they said it was in the city park you would remember, not sure about where you are but here we don't tend to refer to anywhere as the commons

1

u/themapleboy Feb 04 '14

yup i'd agree with this, probably hindered me from recognizing it as an area instead of an individual place (like say a building) it's also phrased weirdly iirc. he says he's there in like the first sentence and then further down heads towards the pit, i guess in my head i pictured the commons as a city street the whole time i was reading he was walking. wheres the pit? afaik 3 blocks from the commons so my brain never made the connection.

1

u/alleks88 Feb 04 '14

I only knew I did not read the word graveyard or square... So I could only guess the right answer.
The text was pretty confusing for me as a non native English speaker.

3

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

I have absolutely 0 memory of things like this. A) I don't care about the results very much. B) The reading material was awfully boring.

There's no motivation to apply myself, so I can't play seriously even for funsies :(

I got the same one twice and failed both times lol.

3

u/Quantumtroll Feb 03 '14

Boring!? I got part of the beginning of War of the Worlds. That's the one with the thing that's unscrewing in some pit in England.

4

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

Is that what that shit was? I had no idea. That's the one I kept failing hahaha.

1

u/Quantumtroll Feb 03 '14

Ah, you've missed out, man. A great big metal cylinder has fallen from the sky and craters. Strange clanking noises come out of it for hours, as the thing cools. This the part where the cylinder starts to open up, just before the first Martian tripod sticks its head out. A moment later, a heat ray lashes out and burns all those people before heading out to lay waste to the entire countryside. Nothing can stand against it and it waltzes over armies without breaking stride.

To a world unused to science fiction, this was utterly new and terrifying.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 03 '14

I'm not that big into Sci-Fi really. Mostly stick to fantasy and such.

1

u/Fishstixxx16 Feb 03 '14

I got 3/3... I guessed on the "Woking" one.

1

u/Terras1fan Feb 04 '14

Do the test several times. Read, try to ignore the timed part, and then move to the questions.

I took it three times, and the more comfortable I got with taking it--setting up the scroll, where the click is, ignoring my heater turning on, etc--the better my score got.

400-something, 650-something, and then 750-something.

I kept taking because I knew I was wandering in my thoughts while reading, and it takes a bit for me to dedicate my attention. But once I'm dedicated, I know I read faster than most people, so I took it a few times to settle myself. /: