Well, even though the photoreading course did not go as I expected (I found myself not doing the course, and it took me a few weeks to complete it!), I have had some success even though I haven't, I feel, gotten to that 'conscious competence' stage of Photoreading.
Otherwise, I have had some great success. Before an english exam, I photoread all the required text books (several times) and did a bit of scanning and dipping and mind mapping. This was a particularly difficult test since you needed to apply a literary theory to a book that we had previously studied. Anyway, on the phone to my friend the night before, many, many ideas started flowing into my mind -- so much so that on the day of the test I just wrote the things that I discussed (activated?). While I did not feel that anything that I wrote was good -- I thought after the test "oh no, I stuffed that up again...I didn't explain anything at all..etc." -- I received high marks (88% and 90%) for the two essays, which is equivalent to an A (and subsequently an A in the course).
There are other instances that I used for photoreading: I employed the syntopic reading strategy to many different types of essays; some dealing with philosophy, others english literature, and even a 'creative' one for sociology. I received A's for all of them, including a 100% for two of them. I even shocked myself with the good marks. I found that after photoreading some texts, I started writing in the same 'style' as the authors I had photoread. This only became more apparent as I re-read some of my essays AFTER I had handed them in (and each essay seems to betray a distinct style of its own).
This year, I am going to integrate PRing into my life. I bought the course last year, got a bit discouraged with the 'blip' page and activation, but decided to use it for the essays since it seemed the easiest way out. I'm glad I did, and just now wonder how much time and effort others need to put in to accomplish the same (or less) results. Also, remember that in the earlier part of the year, I was getting some B's, even a C in similar subjects. I had started using photoreading a little bit at the end of the first semester, but I don't think I got really working yet.
That's all. Back to those tapes.
Ken
