Teaching a child the fundamentals of reading involves helping them learn the sounds each of the letters make and then joining those sounds together to form words. Its amazing watching and listening to a child as they string sounds together and make a word. They are thrilled and excited at their accomplishment and for the parent or teacher guiding them, its a wonderful moment.
Children use this skill to learn new words as they begin to grow. Over time they are able to recognize words and instead of sounding the letters out individually they recall the entire word from memory. As the child grows and reads more and more they are able to read at a faster rate because they recognize many of the words.
One of the principles of speed reading is very much the same. The speed reader picks out the words in the text that they are reading that are essentially keywords. They are the words that stand out and hook the reader. By focusing on these words they are able to get a good grasp of the information and can do that without reading the material word for word. Having the ability to do this would obviously speed up anyones reading time substantially.
Another approach...