My effective WPM (meaning take the reading comprehension as a coefficient and multiply it by the raw WPM) ranges between 800 and 950.
Why do I keep running into people doubting speed reading is a thing? I had to practice at it above and beyond a love of reading.
I don't think anyone doubts that it exists. What remains doubtful is whether there's any retention of what's read.
"I took a speed-reading course so I could read 'War and Peace'. It's about Russia." -- Woody Allen
I don't understand why people are so scornful of speed reading :\
In other words, the same training with the same goal, but completely different outcomes.
Another issue is content. Some of what I read requires great concentration and repeated scanning of complex passages. Other content can be read quickly simply because it doesn't require much from the reader. So one might say that not all reading is created equal.
Example: how quickly can one absorb "It was a dark and stormy night"? I would guess pretty quickly. On the other hand, "Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana" might take a little longer. :)
It's a little bit disingenuous to suggest those speaking of speed reading are saying, "1,000 WPM ALL THE TIME ALL THE ABSORPTION IRRESPECTIVE OF MATERIAL!" - I don't think anybody is saying that.
The thing is? slowing down between words hurts comprehension, rather than helping it. The bottleneck in my system is short-term memory. The translation of letters to words to sentences to concepts is largely automatic; but if I have a pause there? that automatic process stops. If I'm talking in person with someone, and they say half a sentence, then stop and 'uhm' for a while, I completely lose the thread of conversation.
I find it pretty believable that others are twice as fast as I am at the letters on a page->concepts translation.
That bit about re-reading? that is the primary reason that I think reading would be superior, even if I could speed speech. saying "what?" is /way easier/ when you are reading than when you are listening.
(as an interesting aside, I know blind people often use text to speech software set to run, well, much faster than a normal human can talk. Apparently they start out at a normal speed and then slowly increase the speed. I've been talking for quite some time about getting me some of that gear and learning how to use it, but I have not done so yet. I suspect it would suffer from the same "difficult to repeat just the bit you want" part, but I haven't tried.)