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No matter who you are, whether young or old and regardless of your profession, being able to read and comprehend as quickly as possible is an incredibly useful skill. Many never bother to push themselves to read faster once they acquire the ability to do so as a child. Like any other skill, however, reading improves with practice. When you exercise this skill, you will reap the dividends. All you need to get started speed reading is just a little study on the techniques used in the actual practice of it.

Give some thought to how you learned to read. Letters came first, then words. And you almost certainly were taught to read by sounding out words. As an adult though, there is no need to do so anymore. You can merely see a word on a page and immediately recognize it as such. Part of speed reading is understanding that the same principle can be applied to entire sentences. You can get the meaning of a sentence without necessarily looking at every single word.

On any given page of text, roughly half of the words used will be not irrelevant as such, but not needed to grasp the meaning of the text. Articles, conjunctions and other smaller words can be inferred from the context and passed over, drastically increasing the speed at which your eyes scan the page. As mentioned above, try looking at entire sentences at once the way one does with a word. This is one of the keys to being a successful speed reader.

Give yourself a mechanical cue as well. When you are reading a page, put a notecard or a piece of paper directly above the line that you are reading. Then as you read, scroll the piece of paper down the page. Essentially, you'll be chasing yourself down the page and you will find that your eyes will automatically try to keep pace with your notecard. Try this slowly at first and then let it speed up. You'll find that in only four or five sessions, you'll be able to read a great deal faster, and before too long, you'll be able to keep u the speed without the notecard at all.

It is important to note here that you shouldn't push yourself too hard when practicing. Your brain works its best in short bursts of activity; about twenty minutes is a good rule of thumb. Take a break now and then, you'll come back to the task at hand refreshed and ready to work efficiently at your reading. Even though it's called speed reading, there's no need to rush yourself.

Speed reading is a great skill to pick up for many reasons, so see what you can do with this powerful tool today!