I bought a book on the Evelyn Wood speed reading technique some 10-15 years ago. The gist of it is that you learn to take in several lines of text on a page at a time. The movement of the finger waving down the page is to help your eyes sweep down the page (or something like that). The thing that keeps us from reading fast is our tendency to "say" each word in our head as we read it. The thing is, we don't have to mentally say the word to know what it is, therefore when you learn to take in several lines of text at a time and you don't have to say each word, your brain instantly recognizes all the words and thus you can fly through the reading material. The not saying the words was a hard thing to let go of when I was doing the exercises.
I was able to increase my reading speed by 20-30% or something like that. But one of the other keys to speed reading (according to Evelyn Wood) is that you put yourself in a situation suitable to concentration - no music or TV, no comfy chair, etc. You sit upright at a desk or table. Unfortunately, that is not the way I like to read, and therefore I gave up on it. The testomonies in the book liken speed reading to watching a movie in the way in which the words fly through your brain. They claim you get high comprehension in addition to the speed. The limitation of speed reading is that it is not really suitable for techical material that you have to think about to understand. You still have to ponder the mathematical/scientific formulas and such that those kinds of texts present, and therefore speed reading doesn't buy you much in those cases.
That at least is my limited experience in the realm of speed reading. I hope it helps.
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