Speed-reading activities have been used in English classes in order to improve learners’ reading fluency. In speed-reading activities, learners read easy passages quickly, answer simple comprehension questions, and record their reading time. Reading speed increases as they repeat the procedure. To examine the effects of passage length, the previous study compared EFL learners’ reading speed for short passages (200 words) with longer passages (300 words), both of which were composed of familiar, high-frequency words. Results showed that learners read the 300-word passages faster than 200-word passages. This finding was unexpected, as a meta-analysis on speed reading indicated that the length of reading materials had no effect on reading speed. In order to re-examine these findings, this study investigates the effects of reading material length on Japanese EFL learners’ reading speed. This study used 200-word passages for the short-passage condition, and 400-word passages for the long-passage condition. A total of 37 intermediate-level Japanese university students participated, and reading time data of 26 were analysed. All participants read both shorter and longer passages, and their reading speeds under the two conditions were compared using a paired t-test. The results showed that learners read longer passages significantly faster than shorter ones. These findings confirm the effects of passage length on reading speed when texts are easy. Based on these results, the pedagogical implications for speed-reading activities were discussed.