Do Females Read Faster than Males An Empirical Study on Speed Rate of Reading Poetry and Prose between Iranian Youth

One of the inevitable aspects of every language is reading skill. The quality and authenticity of speech plays animportant role in it. This skill is important because it enables people to understand the concept of texts. This researchexamines the role of the sex on poetry and prose reading skill, in this case in Persian. Studies show speech rate altersdepending on the speaker s culture, geographical location, subject matter, gender, emotional state, fluency, professionor audience. This study illuminates if gender has effect on speed of reading or not, by testing two random groups ofmales and females who are native speakers of Persian with same age and education level. Speech of each case analyzedand their speed of reading calculated through some exact mathematic methods. Findings shows there are some kind ofconnection between sex of the speakers and their speed of reading. This research also suggests that men are faster thanwomen in reading poems but in prose, they are approximately equal. Then tries to define why and how such thisrelation exist.

Keywords:

Reading , Speed , Gender , prose , poetry