When looking at how to learn speed reading, you should consider that there are several such techniques, each adapted to a different purpose and different style of reader.
As you may know, there are various programs that promise to teach you how to learn speed reading, both online and offline. Most are probably good, but you will need to apply yourself to the task and to exercise whenever possible.
In brief, the point is not so much about how to learn speed reading, but how to get rid of poor habits that were taught to you in elementary school.
When you learnt reading, your speed settled at about 250 wpm, because that was how much a child’s brain is able to take in. In adulthood, your brain is able to process 500 wpm, but your reading skills have not improved – meaning that your brain is now free to think about something else while reading, and thus to lose interest and focus on the respective text.
Many people think they should not learn how to speed read, because they can’t remember what they are reading at the normal pace anyway. In fact, speed reading is about saving some time as well as taking in more of what you read. The golden rule of speed reading is to constantly re-evaluate what you are reading, and never to pass by a word or a concept that you do not understand.
There are many things that slow down your reading: an improper environment with many distractions, a turned on radio or television set, the attempt to vocalize the words in your brain (it takes longer to vocalize than the actual time needed to understand them), the speed at which your eyes can move on the sheet to follow the words, or poor reading patters (for instance, the habit of skipping lines while reading, turning back to read some lines again, and so on). Identifying these problems will help your speed increase considerably, because you can address each of them separately.
One very easy way to read faster is simply to push the speed ahead, to switch into a higher gear, without putting too much accent on motivation or concentration.
In order to do that, you need to use your finger, or a pen (or the mouse pointer, if you are doing the exercise on the computer) as an index, to follow the words you are reading.
Start at your normal reading speed and then gradually increase it, simply by moving the index faster. You will see that the brain adjusts easily, and you can still understand everything you are reading.
Another speed reading technique is called pacing.
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.