Spritz – read 500 words per minute without any training

For years 500 words per minute (approximately one printed page per minute) has been my baseline speed for most of the material I read in English. I read slower in my second languages, of course. Back in my college days, when I wanted to make sure I wasn't being slowed down in my studies by a too-slow reading speed, I read a lot of books from the university library about reading skill improvement, and several jointly suggested that improving vocabulary improves reading speed. I took a course about English vocabulary based on Latin and Greek word roots, and that did seem to help for years afterward in both reading speed and reading comprehension.

[1] http://readinginthebrain.pagesperso-orange.fr/intro.htm

AFTER EDIT, TO REPLY TO QUESTION:

In this context, "second languages" is a quite normal designation for language(s) acquired after one's native language(s) were acquired. My user profile lists most of mine. I read best in Chinese and in German, besides English.

I recently showed spreeder to my girlfriend who found the same thing.

500 wpm with no training is an exaggeration. wpm also depends a lot on which book you're reading. however, RSVP is the fastest way to read and way over 500 wpm is possible with practice.

This took practice. I was reading economics books by Mises at 300 wpm in spreeder for a while and gradually increased the speed. I kept the speed low enough to understand it. However, it was never worse than regular reading.

Also, I started with 3 word chunks. I found that a lot easier than 1 word chunks. I normally use two word chunks now but that took work to get used to. I wanted to lower chunk size to reduce sub-vocalizing and eye movement. I've tried 1 word chunks but I lose over 100 wpm with them.

Anyway, low retention is caused by many things but is not inherent in RSVP.

> Next, let’s talk about subvocalization. This is the process whereby, whenever you read, you talk to yourself, repeating every word in your head. The issue here is that most people can only speak at about 180wpm, maximum. Increasing speed beyond that means not saying every word to yourself.

This makes no sense to me. I've read at 600 wpm while sub-vocalizing every word. That's much much faster sub-vocalizing than they claim is possible. I've experienced it.