Instead of reading a text word by word, concentrate on reading a block of words at a time. You will be able to read faster the more words you can read in one block. Hold the text further from your eyes to fit more words into the blocks of text that you can read and understand at one time. Reading one word at a time slows you down significantly while reading blocks of words helps you understand more, faster.
Avoid reading to yourself out loud or moving your lips when you read. You slow yourself down significantly when you do so. Reading should be a mostly seamless process in which you think in ideas, not individual words.
Read chapter titles and subheadings; bold, italicized, highlighted or otherwise emphasized words; breakout boxes of vocabulary or summarizing points; and charts and graphs in more academic texts. Read the first sentence of every other paragraph. Read the entire first and last paragraphs. You will have a good idea what the text is in the 30 to 60 seconds it takes to complete this process before you read it for details and comprehension. This makes the reading for comprehension phase much quicker than if you tried to understand the whole text without previewing it.
Cup your dominant hand slightly, keeping your fingers together. Use your hand to underline the line you are reading. Move your hand quickly from left to right to guide your reading. Another idea is to bounce your cupped hand two times under each line you read. You can also use your dominant hand to draw your eyes down the page. Put your fingers together and place them under the line you are currently reading. Your eyes will not be in the exact spot as your hand, but as you move your hand slowly down the page, you will be reading faster than if you did not use your hand to guide your eyes. Finally, use an index card or folded piece of paper about the length of a line of text to push your eyes down the page. Put the card or paper above the line you are reading, and move it down the page at a steady pace. This helps prevent your reading the same passage repeatedly.