This involves using transparent strip of plastic, about 5 cm wide, and placing in on a regular page, vertically down, right on the middle of the page. Then you only read the words under the plastic strip, and try to fill in the rest in your mind.
You will need more practice with this one, and it's a bit frustrating in the beginning, but, by the time you are ready to stop using the plastic strip and just follow the pattern in your mind, you reading speed has increased two or three times.
When you're looking for ways of how to learn speed reading, you are sure to stumble upon a method called "scanning" - which is not a reading technique in its own right, rather a sort of "pre-reading", highly useful if you have large materials to read and you suspect some of them may hold no interest to you (for instance, in many cases, when you're doing research, you have to read five books, when just several chapters in each of those books are important for your goals).
In order to practice scanning, start with a light novel.
Check the title, the author and the table of contents, and then make a rapid scan, at the speed of 10-15 second per page (but don't skip pages).
Look for recurring names, important events, people, and conflicts. At the end of each chapter take a very short break and try to fill in the parts that you didn't read. At the end of the book, do the same.
Then, if you think it may be worth your time, read it at your normal speed. This is just for exercise, since novels are easier to read - you won't use the scanning technique so much for literature (where you want to enjoy the text), but for technical and scientific texts.
