Assignment C - Part 2.i
Authentic Text
Check the Class Description and Notes on Part 2 on the assignment platform before you begin.
The text should be 500 - 700 words long. (4-5 minutes for listening texts).
In this document, provide a copy of the reading text or a transcript of the listening text you
have chosen.
Ensure the text is referenced, and if you have selected a listening text or video, provide a link.
If you choose a reading text, you can shorten and/or adapt it slightly.
Please supply a copy of the original and your adapted version.
If you have adapted the text, briefly explain the decisions you've made about changing the text
in section b) of the essay.
Highlight 12 vocabulary items (words or phrases) which would be useful to pre-teach.
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/04/take-it-from-the-experts-a-
pet-can-change-your-life/
Authentic text unedited(Original text)
Do You Read Fast Enough To Be
Successful?
Brett Nelson
Contributor
I discuss investing, strategy and management (and poke some fun, too)
Follow
Jun 4, 2012,09:09am EDT
The most successful people I know don’t just read---they inhale information.
It’s a habit especially prevalent among seasoned investors
and serial entrepreneurs: folks who speak in freakishly
polished prose, who punctuate their arguments with per-
fect metaphors, and who can pivot from financial arcana
to managerial nuance within a sip of coffee. Folks who
think---as one venture capitalist I know recently put
it---“at the intersections of things.”
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,Compared to mere mortals, these human Dyson vacuums manage to fit in what
amounts to an entire extra workday’s worth of reading every week. This ability is
a big part of what makes them so formidable---the sort you want to do business
with, not against.
Have what it takes to keep up? Let’s find out.
According to a speed-reading test sponsored by Staples as part of an e-book pro-
motion (brilliant marketing, by the way), here are the typical speeds at which hu-
mans read, and in theory comprehend, at various stages of educational develop-
ment:
Third-grade students = 150 words per minute (wpm)
Eight grade students = 250
Average college student = 450
Average “high level exec” = 575
Average college professor = 675
Speed readers = 1,500
World speed reading champion = 4,700
Average adult: 300 wpm
To put those rates in meaningful context, I applied them to the kind of serious
reading regimen favored by the super-successful set.
I'm sad to report that, for most of us, the words are winning.
Start with newspapers and blogs. Say you read 20 articles a day, each an av-
erage 500 words long. (Newspaper stories tend to run longer, blog posts
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, shorter.) At 300 words per minute (the average-adult speed), you’ll spend 33
minutes a day, including weekends, on that part of your regimen.
But we’re just getting warmed up. Let’s look at magazines (yes, many people
still read them). Consider that one page of text in a typical weekly or bimonthly
news-and-analysis-style publication (Forbes, The New Yorker, the New
York Times magazine, etc.) contains roughly 900 words. Each issue typically
runs between 60 and 150 pages. Say each publication is 100 pages long, the ratio
of advertising to editorial pages is 50/50, and you think just half of those pages
(25) are worth reading. At 300 words a minute, you’ll spend 75 minutes plowing
through one magazine. But super-successful types (and those who aspire to be
like them) don’t read just one publication. Say the number is more like five, and
each comes out once a week. Applying the ratios above, the total reading time
over the course of a month comes to 50 minutes a day.
So far we’ve chewed up nearly an hour and a half every day and we haven’t even
mentioned books---be it Michael Lewis’ latest financial best seller, the biogra-
phy of a famous entrepreneur, the random novel (to keep up at cocktail parties),
or whatever else happens to be on tap. Continuing the exercise, assume each
book contains 100,000 words (a reasonable estimate), and the goal is to read
one book a month. At 300 wpm, that comes to another 11 minutes a day. Out of
necessity (or masochism), some even might feel the need to consult a fortifying
textbook or How-To guide, so we'll round up the whole book load to 15 minutes
a day. That brings the daily total to 98 minutes.
We’re still not done. How about all those emails, texts and LinkedIn discussions
(never mind any active engagement with the authors). On the personal-finance
side, throw in an investment newsletter or two, to make sure you're not missing
some subtle but important trend.
All in, it’s not hard to imagine, at 300 words per minute, having to set
aside at least two hours of reading every day just to keep up---you
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