One factor most people seem to be overlooking is the fact that when *Learning* from a book we well never truely just read the book or section of it once. Anyone who has ever used a text book for class work needed to reread it repeated gain maximum comprehension. We read, make notes reread, spend a whole heap of time trying to find the important bits for our notes, go back over stuff that was not clear etc. Remind yourself how much time it really took you to get enough out of the book to be able to say you understood it for school?
While it's great looking at numbers to see how fast you are racing through the book once to gain understanding of the text. How about looking at how *often* you needed to go through to get the same level of comprehension and add that time to your numbers. Then compare.
It's brilliant to say I can speed read the book at 800 wpm however the student who can say 'I photoread and mindmapped the book in 2 hours' has gained a lot more. Because they have summarised the book they now *own* the information they made a mental picture of the information that the book contains. In 2 seconds before a test on the subject they can refer back to their notes and information and know it again.
Note this the student did this in 2 hours.
The student who sat down and speed read the book in 1.5 hours has nothing to refer back to and will most probably find themselves having to reread the text of if they do take notes or mind maps still go back over the material and perhaps even resort to another speed read of the book. How much time do they actually spend with the book... can anyone really do a complete mindmap in 30 minutes from memory after having speed through in one sitting?
It's not much use speed reading a book 6 weeks prior to a test on it as most memory research will attest you will have forgotten 80% of it anyway unless you did something with it to make it memorable.
Speed isn't the only thing that counts... it's the usefulness of the information that you gain from the book.
For novels, for pleasure...zip away, go for your fastest speed.
For learning, be realistic... if it would have taken you 8 hours using your regular reading method to gain a 30% comprehension of the text and your want to improve your comprehension to 60% you need to realisticly spend 2 to 3 hours *just learning*. You need to put the whole system together and as much as you hate it, use mindmapping or quality note taking techniques.
If your comprehension is wasn't that great (eg 30%) before you started using the system you need to spend more time on activation... yes it might *seem* to take you just as long as it did in regular reading... but you now spending the time *improving* your comprehension right and improving your grades... that was the goal afterall?
Do you want to go back to regular reading and continue to use that method and add to that the time it would take you to improve your comprehension? No, that's why you went looking for a method to read faster... so that you have a bit more time to learn and strengthen your weak areas.
One of the reasons most students turn to photoreading is because they are not doing too well in getting the information out of their text books... They realise that they need to be able to take it in faster in order to have more time to learn... well you are taking it in faster but you don't want to take the time to learn anymore.
If you want to improve your comprehension you have to activate more often... don't kid yourself into thinking 2 or 3 passes are enough if you used to have problems with the material before you learnt to photoread... its more likely to require 5 to 8 to get an improvement over your former levels...
You used to spend 6-8 hours with the material and realised you needed to spend more time with it to get comprehension out of it but didn't really have the time... you felt like you needed 10-15 hours and now you are spending only 3 and complaining that your comprehension hasn't improved. If you knew you should be spending 15 hours with the material in order to get the level of comprehension out of it that you really desired (eg 75% comprehension). Wouldn't it be realistic to be spending 5 hours using the PR system to get that gain? Ok it might not look like much of a saving in time ... you used to spend 6 hours with the books to get a 50% comprehension from them. The fact is in this instant you saved 10 hours though.
You learnt to photoread so that you have the time to put a bit more into it so that perhaps you could improve your scores. If you are using the method as taught you got more time... alright you might be adding a few extra passes over a seasoned photoreader but you still would have had to spend more time with the material before you learnt to photoread.
If your comprehesion skills were lousey before you learnt to photoread, initally you'll need to spend more time activating... training your mind to look for the important information, you practice showing your inner mind what you want you conscious mind to know and you do this by drawing those 'annoying' 'ugly' 'blotchy' mindmaps, adding to them with each 20-30minute activation session.
Alex
Once you done that a few time you'll find your comprehension has improved.
