Read in a quiet, calm environment to help you avoid being distracted. Adults and children can have their reading speed affected by the environment in which they are reading. If you want to improve your reading speed, try reading earlier in the day. This ensures that you feel invigorated and that you aren't thinking about the events of the day, as the day has not yet progressed yet. Sit up at a desk or table when you read and angle the book at approximately 45 degrees. These techniques will help you to avoid eye strain which will relax your mind and to stay alert while you read, allowing you to read and absorb your material more quickly.
Skim a non-fiction text for its main ideas before you approach the material. Look over the table of contents and the first and last paragraphs of each chapter before you begin, so that you have an idea of what the text is trying to tell you before you even begin. You can then approach the text with the concept that what you're reading is teaching you an idea with which you are already familiar.
Approach nonfiction and textbooks as if your goal is to extract the overall idea without getting bogged down in the details, but do not use this technique for texts such as poetry, legal contracts or math. If you skim these, you're likely to miss reading details that are important to the whole piece. While speed reading and skimming are useful techniques, if you're not comprehending and understanding what you're reading, then you are wasting your time. If you're flexible, meaning that you can read some texts quickly and others more deliberately, then your reading speed overall will increase.
Enroll in a speed-reading class. These classes teach you how to read efficiently while still absorbing the necessary details and information. These effective classes are often short, some lasting only a few hours.