"I tried a speed reading course and read 'War and Peace' in three hours. It's about Russia." Woody Allen's joke strikes a chord with many who doubt the effectiveness of speed reading techniques. These techniques usually involve moving your finger smoothly and quickly along lines of text and training your eyes to follow, so preventing your eyes going back over words you have already read, which is what we normally do. There have been reports of readers achieving incredible speeds using these techniques, but such achievements are of limited benefit to many readers, particularly students, who have to gain a deep understanding of what they read.