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When you've got a lot of studying to do, speed reading can be a real life saver. Armed with this ability to pluck out only the relevant information from many pages of text is, to say the least, very useful. Being able to do this is the core of what speed reading is about. Of course, as with any skill, time must be given over to practice. Quite a few different techniques exist to teach yourself speed reading, there's certainly one out that will help you develop this ability.

Try putting your hand across a page, then sliding it downwards as you read. This forces your eye to 'race' against your hand to keep up. You can control the pace, and gradually increase the rate of movement as you find yourself able to keep up.

Even if you can't keep up with the movement of your hand at first, it will cause you to read faster. Alternatively, you can place a piece of paper or cardboard downwards over each word you read, forcing you to move down the page quickly. Like the exercise using your hand, be sure to keep a steady movement, not stopping to catch up.

This method trains the eye and mind to begin to read text on sight, rather than by playing back the text to oneself in a sort of internal monologue as many do. Do you 'hear' books? Try to unlearn this habit. If you are conditioned to think of reading in this way, no wonder the idea of speed reading seems daunting.

As your speed improves, you will notice that you make more and more use of your peripheral vision and comprehension. The exercises detailed above can be used to train yourself by not allowing you to read sentences individually as is common, but rather draw out the essential information within the text.

To help develop your ability to remember what you read, try first reading a page using one of the methods featured and then make note of what essential information you have been able to gather from it. This should, of course be done without looking again at the page. You may have to try this exercise a dozen times or more before it becomes second nature, but the rewards are well worth the effort.

Studying will be a much less onerous burden to the speed reader. You'll be able to run, rather than walk through books, picking up the important ideas along the way . This skill, of course, is not for students alone. We all spend more time scanning text than is necessary. Speed reading can make your life much easier.