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This study found that Chinese native speakers read aloud at an average rate of 255 characters per minute (CPM) with a standard deviation of 29 CPM. Presumably this rate is significantly slower than if the test participants read silently.

Are there any studies that had test participants read a text silently, and then tested their comprehension of that text to make sure they weren't just blindly skimming?

This study initially seemed promising, but they don't present enough data (specifically, the length of the texts used in characters) to calculate a reading rate in CPM. I have contacted the authors of this study, and will report back here if they reply.

Jack Elsey
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    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it has nothing to do with studying Chinese – Tang Ho Nov 28 '18 at 00:58
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    If a person is studying Chinese, how can they assess their fluency without a native speaker benchmark for comparison? – Jack Elsey Nov 28 '18 at 01:18
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    See https://chinese.stackexchange.com/questions/2003/can-chinese-readers-scan-large-amounts-of-text-faster-more-accurately-than-their?rq=1 – dROOOze Nov 28 '18 at 01:21
  • talk with native Chinese speakers, you would know how good or bad your Chinese is – Tang Ho Nov 28 '18 at 01:21
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    I upvoted this question. I like an openly discussion forum. My similiar questions in the ELL section always are closed. – Zhang Nov 28 '18 at 02:20
  • 默念的话（比如看小说），可以以快速浏览模式，通常会忽略一些细节。比如网上流行的一段的“字汉的序顺实其不响影读阅”。 – Zhang Nov 28 '18 at 02:25
  • It is hard to measure though. – zyy Nov 28 '18 at 12:30
  • It is a statistical question. You might as well ask what percentage of Mandarin speaker mix a certain Cantonese term in their vocabulary, like "How many Mandarin speaker would say "作死你啊!?" instead of "你找死啊!?" – Tang Ho Nov 28 '18 at 16:37
  • I meant some people read fast, some people read slow in any language, take a big enough sample (over 10000 people from different age groups would be a good size), average their rate and you will get your answer – Tang Ho Nov 28 '18 at 16:45
  • I can read at a decent speed, but nowhere near as fast as any of my friends – Xetrov Dec 23 '18 at 15:39
  • Mandarin Chinese is my heritage language; and my ancestors spoke varieties of Mandarin. As far as I know, I can read Chinese subtitles of Korean dramas; and it is quite interesting to see the differences between the Chinese subs and the English subs! For my speed, I have no idea, but I bet it's quick enough to understand the subs. The trick is to learn how to speed-read Chinese by reading by the phrase instead of character-by-character. – Double U Mar 25 '20 at 01:23
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    Does this answer your question? Can Chinese readers scan large amounts of text faster/more accurately than their alphabet-using counterparts? – blackgreen Jul 13 '20 at 23:59

1 Answers1

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300-500CPM. This data is from a Chinese search engine.

asule
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  • As in all studies, the parameters upon which it is premised is critical. In this instance, the age, social circumstances and educational attainment, among others, of the subjects studied and the reading material concerned has to factored in. Without such strictures, any "data" proffered could at best be anecdotal. This has to be true for any language. – Wayne Cheah May 10 '20 at 02:48
  • If you can read Chinese, here is a link in Chinese shows the information you need. https://www.zhihu.com/question/20327487 – asule May 10 '20 at 03:02