Does being read to improve reading speed? So my girlfriend is not what you would call a fast reader. She understands completely what she reads, but she reads rather slowly. I'm trying to be a good boyfriend and help her out with this, but the only two things I can think of that would help are getting her to read a lot and maybe being read to. I know in my personal experience that being read to helped to improve my reading speed but I may just be an outlier.
I guess what I'm trying to say is this: "is being read to actually something that improves reading speed?" and "other than the aforementioned methods, are there other ways to improve reading speed?"
There is no scientific proof that being read at an adult age enhances reading speed.

However, slow readers read faster when the format of a document is enhanced. Is your partner more responsive to a specific background color, a particular contrast or a particular font? Such visu-attentional factors play a fundamental role in our ability to read. 

You may want to investigate the letter spacing effect for example. It has been shown that children with dyslexia read faster and with less errors when a paragraph is less crowded. Here are two paragraphs written with the exact same font (spacing between lines and spacing between letters are wider in the second paragraph, with an extra space between words). 

Here is the image:







There is also a ton of other possibilities that can be tested using a word processor such as Microsoft Word (spacing is sometimes called kerning), or activating the Accessibility option in Mac's preferences. What you have to keep in mind is that, once you find a combination that feels OK, reading a lot makes you read faster.

REF: Zorzi et al. (PNAS, 2012). Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia.
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/28/11455.short