Spritz speed reader will help you to read 1000 words in a minute. What? Yes, you read it right. The Boston based startup company has been working on Spritz for the past three years to help people read faster.
What stops us from reading faster?
Eye saccades prevent us from reading text faster. A saccade is nothing but a fast movement of your eyes in the same direction.
Spritz may sound familiar if you have ever heard about Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP). The primary difference between RSVP and Sprtitz is the alignment of words that is displayed to the end user. See the below image that depicts how the words are aligned in RSVP and Spritz.
Your eye looks out for something called Optimal Recognition Point (ORP) in every word and only when your eye finds that your brain starts to process it. The letters marked in red on the words in the above image is the ORP.
Where to get Spritz Speed Reader?
Spritz Speed Reader isn’t available yet for you to try it out. It will be available in Samsung Gear2 and S5 devices which will be out next month i.e. by April, 2014.
Image Source: Spritz
So does that mean you have to buy these devices? Nope, you can try the free Speed Reading Bookmarklet by Rich Jones called OpenSpritz . Though it doesn’t have to do anything with the actual Spritz Speed Reader, it should get you started for now.
Simply drag and drop the OpenSpritz this! Bookmarklet and click on it to pick your reading speed from the drop-down to get started. The maximum WPM (words per minute) available as of now is 950. Looking for more than that you should try Spreeder.
Spreeder
Spreeder is a free online reader that closely resembles Spritz Speed Reader which could help you to read text faster.
- Go to the website.
- Copy and paste the text that you would like to speed read and click the Spreed button.
- You can see the number of words that you have pasted and the speed that is set for you to read.
- You can increase or decrease the speed by using the shortcut keys + / –, which increases the speed by 25 wpm. I couldn’t see a maximum limit on the WPM in Spreeder.
- Press the ‘S‘ shortcut key to launch the settings window where you can set the words per minute, windows size, font size, font color, background color etc.
- You can also set the chunk size to set the number of words to be displayed.
- You can also click on the advanced settings to skip over stop words, set speed variations, etc.
- Click on new or press ‘N’ to start reading a new text or ‘R’ to restart.
- If you might be just interested to improve your vocabulary too, then you can try this.
Staples Speed Reader
Staples have an interactive eReader that you could use to test your reading speed.
You will be provided with a passage which you have to read and answer few questions asked in the next screen. This helps to determine not only your reading speed but also how well you have understood the passage. It also shows you some of the famous books and the time that you would need to complete them.
I agree that one tend to increase the wpm while reading if he/she possess the habit of reading. But never thought of “fast reading” as a reading parameter! forget about championship
Good post by the way.
The app sounds OK. I do not understand why someone should read faster than they actually could?
Faster reading may lead to misunderstanding or nil understanding of what they read, isn’t?
Hi Anand,
These apps are used to train you to improve your reading speed. First, test your wpm using any of these tools. All you have to do is just set a wpm and start reading a text to see how you do. The average wpm of a normal reader should be somewhere around 250 and 300.
I perfectly agree that when you read at a higher wpm you may get confused or might lose track of what you are reading, but the point is, you shouldn’t do it right away. Like any other skill this requires practice too, practice makes a man perfect, isn’t it? Gradually increase your speed and you should be able to see that this really works.
Anne Jones is a world champion speed reader (yeah they have championship for this too) read J.K.Rowling’s Deathly Hallows in just 47 minutes which would take more than 24 hours for an average user. And to answer your query she also did a review on that book after reading it to showcase her deep understanding on the book
which clearly shows she wasn’t just skimming the book.
Thanks for asking, have a wonderful day.
Hey Sri Varshan,
This is absolutely awesome! Never heard of this technique and someone out there working on this to help us read faster. The comparison made me realize that RSVP alignment take some time. But the one with Spritz can read faster. I just try OpenSpritz on few articles and that’s really cool
When it comes to reading, I like to take my time and enjoy the write up though, mate. Automate scrolling of a page was kinda distracting to me, hence always liked reading top to down. Probably, as we almost adapt to that style since we start reading books.
200 wpm was comfortable but above that was hard to catch up for me. Aren’t I slow? May be as I’m not a native English speaker. I’d like to try few more times to encourage myself to read more faster though. Lemme try and find out myself 😉 Could you read 1000 words in a minute?
May be this techniques can be immensely helpful the future tech such as Google Glass and so. I can see it coming right in front of our eyes
Have a fabulous weekend ahead mate!
Cheers…
Hi Mayura,
I have just tried that automated scrolling stuff and it was really cool, back in old days. I have also used Turn Off lights Firefox extension during night time to have a pleasant read. Spritz is really a wonderful technique to improve our reading skill, though most of us don’t have time, we can try these when time permits.
You are absolutely right about – sit back, relax and enjoy the book that you were longing to read. Though we can’t read a 600 plus page book in less than an hour, it would be great if we could read it in 6 or 7 hours (will still require a lot of practice). This way we can read more books in our short span of life
Well if I could read 1000 words in a minute, I would have tried for speed reading championship by now 😉 will hit that target soon. Thanks for dropping by, you too have wonderful weekend mate.