Many techniques exist (or have yet to be invented) which allow you to familiarize yourself with the Tarot. The exercies here have been designed to provide useful practice with your deck, along with a deeper understanding of the Tarot (and quite possibly yourself).
After you've selected your deck, take your time to flip through and get to know the images. Admire the artwork -- Enjoy the deck!
When you know the images pretty well, choose cards at random and analyse the images, writting down on a seperate piece of paper, what the images "say" to you. After each card, "check" your answer to see how close you come to the book. The major basis here is the Feeling the card gives you. I would suggest doing this before reading over every meaning in the deck's manual. That path will develop a dependency on the book, hindering your growth and connection with your Inner Self. Areas of the image that may cause the feeling and reveal the meaning include, but are not limited to: facial expression, posture, quality of clothing, astrological symbols, ect. The idea is to assess the mood within the card and from there draw the interpretation.
Soon you will find yourself familiar with most of the cards in your deck, and you will know how to draw the meaning from the ones you don't remeber clearly. The idea is not to lock yourself to one meaning, but understand the general range of each card within its given sphere of influence.
The next step, now that you have an understanding of individual cards, is to begin to piece together their relationships with eachother. Take yourself through your own rendition of the Fool's Journey. Pair together cards of the same suit, and pick out different aspects of the same sphere that show themselves. (Record your thoughts and findings on paper.) Pair together same numbers of different suits, do you notice a pattern? Any similarities in the personality archetypes?
Preforming a single card daily reading is another helpful way to improve your interpretation accuracy. Shuffle the deck, take the top card, analyse it and set it aside for the day. Throughout the day, keep an eye out for the energies represented by the card. Often you will note the same card (and more often the same suit) will turn up. These will embody the energies that are regularly in motion during your everday life.
Similarly, perform standard spreads for questions of big upcomming events, asking a specific question -- what can I do to improve my chances of getting that promotion? How will I do on my exam? Always write down the spreads (abbreviations are completely acceptable) and, at the least, your general impression. This will allow you to look back and assess how accurate your read was. Write down any readings done for friends as well if you are able to ask them how events proceeded and how accurate the felt you were. Often (especially with begginers) the read is a little off, it's fine! Lay out the cards again (from your records) and see if you can find the spot that you misinterpreted. Once you've found it, redo the reading from that point, tracing the events that you now know of, to the end. (More often than not, you will find the cards accurate and it was a misinterpretation on your part -- no biggie, we aren't trying to save the world.)
Open reads for yourself should be left for special days such as birthdays or anniversaries. Frequent open reads tend to deplete their extraordinary nature, making the inner learning non-existent. The open reads will provide a lesson on yourself as well as a the trends of the energy around you. When doing frequent open readings, you don't give yourself enough time to contemplate and recognize the energies in upcomming events, nor the chance to learn whatever lesson the cards portrayed.
Meditation centered on a specific image, and the energies that surround them, provides insight into the cards as well as yourself. It helps greatly to picture the persons in motion. How do you see them behaving? What impression does their stance and facial expression tell you about their personalities? How do you see them moving around the scene? What are they doing? How do they act towards eachother? Agian, the idea is to Feel the nature of the people and the mood of the cards. The greater the feeling, the greater the understanding. I say you will learn about yourself because by visualizing the people in motion, you will recognize similarities between yourself and how you see them act. Similarities which you may not have noticed previously.
Dreamtime can also be used as a medium to contemplate the cards. Place the card at the head of the bed, or on a bedside endtable along with a notebook and pen. Focus your thoughts on the image. Relax and meditate on the card, allowing yourself to drift off to sleep. When you awake, quickly record your dreams and the ideas surrounding them before the memory fades.
Are these the only good techniques? Absolutely Not! Any way you can come up with to get a better feeling for the cards, and a deeper connection to your Inner Self, is a good way.