The reading passages which follow are all of an average level of difficulty for your stage of instruction. They are all about five hundred words long. They are about topics of general interest which do not require a GREat deal of specialized knowledge. Thus they fall between the kind of reading you might find in your textbooks and the much less demanding kind you will find in a newspaper or light novel. If you read this kind of English, with understanding at four hundred words per minute, you might skim(浏览)through a newspaper at perhaps 650—700, while with a difficult textbook you might drop to two hundred or two hundred and fifty.
Perhaps you would like to know what reading speeds are common among native Englishspeaking university students and how those speeds can be improved. Tests in Minnesota, U.S.A., for example, Tolstoys War and Peace in translation, at speeds of between 240—250 words per minute with about seventy percent comprehension. Students in Minnesota claim that after twelve halfhour lessons, once a week, the reading speed can be increased, with no loss of comprehension, to around five hundred words per minute.
1.Where do you think the passage is taken from? _________________
2.According to the passage, how fast can you expect to read after you have attended twelve halfhour lessons in the University of Minnesota? _________________
3.What is the average speed of untrained native speakers in the University of Minnesota?
_________________
4.What does effective reading with higher speed most likely help you to do _________________ ?
Key:
1．The introduction to a book on fast reading．
2．You can double your reading speed．
3．About two hundred and forty-five words per minute．
4．Not only in your language study but also in other subjects．
