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Whether you are a college student who needs to make sure that all of your reading gets done, or if you simply want to be able to assimilate material faster, you'll find that one of the most important skills that you pick up is speed reading. Many people believe that the speed that they read at is something that they cannot change, while nothing could be farther from the truth. Reading is a skill, and like any skill, it can be improved upon with a little bit of effort. Speed reading is easy once you find a technique that works for you.

Think back to the last book you read. Odds are that some parts were important enough to hold your interest, and others that you felt could have been passed over. Once you learn to identify these parts, you will find yourself skipping past these and absorbing only the relevant material. This means you can gain speed without sacrificing understanding (and doing without the filler).

Second, start skipping small words or phrases. This seems difficult to do at first, but if you've been reading for any length of time at all, you already know that words and phrases will follow patterns. For instance, if you read a line that begins 'She would cut off her nose...' you know that there is a good chance that it will end with 'to spite her face.' This skill is called inference, and you'll find that it is far easier than you think it is; once you start practicing it, you will start to improve dramatically.

One easy way to start speed reading is to lay a finger under the first line of text on the page and start moving it down. You'll find that your eyes want to stay with your finger, 'hurrying' along the words in order to keep up. You can start this fairly slowly, but remember to keep speeding it up so that you keep improving. This is a great method that even small children can use You'll find that when you use this technique, you can easily modulate the speed that you read at.

There are many benefits to mastering speed reading. Your brain works its best in the first 20 minutes of being engaged in a task. You can process what you read more quickly and efficiently during this window, and with speed reading you're prepared to make the most of it. Just imagine how much more on top of things you could be by managing your time so much more effectively.

Speed reading is far to valuable of a skill to be ignored. Take a little time and begin learning about what speed reading techniques can do for you.