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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 is to train your vision so that you are able to read pages on sight, rather than reading them back to yourself in your head, as so many of us do. In this sense we tend to hear books rather than read them, which is why the prospect of learning to sight read can appear to be too difficult. This is not the case; sight reading is simply a matter of getting yourself into the right habits.

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 practice retention of what you have read, try reading a page using one of these methods, then make notes of what information you've gleaned from the page. Don't refer back to the page during this, the idea is to teach yourself to absorb information as you speed read. Keep it up, eventually this will become second nature to you. Given all of the time this will save you in the long run, it's well worth the time spent developing the skill.

Speed reading can help significantly to lighten the load when it comes to study and exam preparation. If you take the time to practice these steps, you will find yourself breezing through books, course required readings, contracts and other important study without missing any vital information. Let speed reading make your life easier.