Does reading more books increase reading speed?

[Danelle Petersen]

Nope!

[Melissa Best]

Personally, I dislike reading with the aim of speed. Sure, I could browse through a book quickly, but that makes it incredibly easy to miss details or nuances. I enjoy reading at a pace that feels comfortable to me so I can take in the whole of a book, so it may increase a small bit with time, but I wouldn't say noticeably.

[Donna Walker]

This is a really good question. I don't think so. I'm pretty sure that I have always been a fast reader. I think my reading has actually slowed down a little since I started doing reviews because now I'm constantly checking for mistakes rather than just breezing through the text.

[nerudathething]

Yes, you can read faster if you read more books. Reading more can help you read faster and understand what you read better. You can also improve your reading speed by reading books with more difficult material.

[gonelli]

I have no literature on hand to argue one way or another, but I do believe that reading in general (books or otherwise) does tend to increase your reading speed. I think the main reason for this is that reading is a skill that develops and improves over time, as such it is also a skill you can lose if you don't continually use and practice it. Since reading speed, generally speaking, comes from your speed of comprehension, it would follow that your ability to recognize the meaning of new words through context, pick up on unusual sentence structure or word choices, and other things of that nature will dictate how fast you can read. If you're often getting tripped up by new words and having to stop to either look them up or consider the context around them to guess their meanings, that's going to slow you down. If more advanced or unusual sentence structures tend to confuse you and force you to re-read the sentence, that will slow you down. This can be applied to a lot of things regarding reading.
But the more you read and especially the more variety in your reading, the more you will come across these things and the faster you'll be able to recognize them when you see them again. I was reading a book the other day that used the word ameliorate. I had no clue what that word meant individually, didn't recognize any of its root components, but because of its surrounding context and my confidence in my literary skills I was able to understand roughly what it meant without breaking stride in my reading. Sometimes I'll read a sentence in one way, realize it doesn't make sense with the pauses and emphasis I applied to it initially, then rearrange the meaning without re-reading the sentence because I realize the structure is similar to something else I read and reading it that way makes it make sense. This applies even more to reading in languages that you aren't comfortable with or that you're still learning. The more you are exposed to all of these different things the more that knowledge is applied subconsciously and the easier it is to recognize patterns you've already seen.
I don't know if there is a plateau you can reach with reading speed, if it's dependent on your ability to comprehend what is being read, then my best guess would be no because we can always increase our speed at putting two and two together. I do believe that our reading speed can be increased by increasing not just the amount of what we read, but also the variety and sources of what we read to expose ourselves to even more patterns and styles.

[Ma Leonarda Castañares]

Not really, it depends on the quality of the book. If it's fast-paced then, I could devour the book in no time.

[MesfnKalu]

I would say a little, I'm just not sure but having a set target for a set period definitely increases speed

[Tomy Chandrafrost]

Yes. This improves understanding of words, reading speed, and for me, who reads this from the perspective of a non-native English speaker, it greatly helps me to understand the content of English books more quickly.

[Gary Bolton]

I definitely haven't found that it increases my speed. I'd say enjoyment is the main factor on speed. If i enjoy it, i go faster

[Darya Pogromska]

Very good question. From my personal experience, I must say that my reading speed surely has increased at least a little after reading plenty of books for many years. This has happened to me because I am able to absorb the meaning of each sentence quicker than I used to, I believe. I'm still unsure of the certainty of whether I'm reading faster, given that I've never actually performed an experiment like that.

If I were to conduct such an experiment, how should I do it?

[Ludovica Peruzzi]

I don't think so. I don't have as much time to read right now, but when I was a kid I read every day, all the time, and my reading speed never increased. I was always a very slow reader and that's just fine, it allows me to absorb what's going on (and prevents me from buying too many books 🫡)

[Silvia Sianto]

As far as cohesion and comprehension, definitely. I find that I'm better able to retain information the more I read, and if I'm keeping up on my reading, I don't end up having to go back to re-read so much in between putting the book down.

[Muhammad Haikal Birton]

From my own experience, I have found that reading more books can definitely increase reading speed. The more I read, the more I have noticed improvements in how quickly I can process and comprehend text.

[Tomy Chandrafrost]

Yes, because your understanding of various book contexts and new vocabulary will improve your reading speed.