quote:
Originally posted by Adam16:
I've had the Photoreading Personal Learning Course for about 4 years. I've never had success with it, and I've developed some questions.

In the course, there's an exercise where you basically superread a two page short story in 45 seconds. I honestly don't understand how this is different than speed reading. Because I've read a book about speed reading that encourages using peripheral vision to pick up words, besides relaxation, how is this different? [quote]

It's a practice exercise that just demonstrates the difference the slight change in focus can make in your abilty to obtain information from a book.

[quote]What is the point of the tangerine technique? Why above and behind the head? It seems as if it would distract me more than anything.


The Tangerine Technique has been found to help you have a fixed point of attention. Useful when you are distracted. The difference you notice when you are doing the exercise along with the course may not be very big or noticable. Paul asks you about those subtle shifts that you may have notice.

Reason why you may not notice it as being effective is you already have a fixed point of attention. Developed non-consciously and you are at that moment using it in the course.

A good time to try it is when you are normally disctracted by what is going on around you, lids yelling, TV or Music too loud for your liking, phones ringing and conversations carried on that don't include you but are too close. These things create distractions and have the same effect as creating dyslexia. That's when you call on the tangerine technique.

We encourage you to practice it consciously so when you find yourself in situations like that you will do it automatically and never even notice the distractions in the first place.

quote:
I've followed all of the steps and have had no working of activation. Pretty much, I have to read the text,

Check your purpose and activation questions.

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and I still don't get much from it because the information isn't arising to the conscious mind, it's just entering the conscious mind as I read through. Do you think it's possible that I should maybe work with the feelings I get a lot more? Because when it comes to that, I'm a pretty heartless read, it's all information bound. That's probably why I don't read novels, because the lack of practical information doesn't interest me.


Anyway it comes to your conscious mind is the right way for you. If the text brings it up then that's right. The question is are you expecting a specific feeling?


quote:
Also, it leads me to believe that I'm doing the Photoreading step incorrectly. About trigger words. It seems like the examples Paul Sheele was giving, was simply verbs, and I didn't understand how the individual words carry the meaning.

Trigger words are any meaningful words. Usually verbs and nouns. Vision Focus, rhythmic, can opener, text hungry, are all pssible and valid words from the PhotoReading boook. Valid simply because they were in the book and are words that mean something. What exactly I'll learn with activation.

quote:
The other day, I Photoread the Photoreading book to see what I'm doing wrong, and of course I tried activating the material, and no matter what, it felt like I was limited to the information was only coming into my conscious mind. Because I didn't get any feelings, or impressions to look here or there, it just felt like the way I read normally.

Try it the other way around. Check the PhotoReading book for what you are doing right and continue from there.

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Also, if I have a bunch of questions, what happens if all of the questions are answered. How can I be sure that all of the information I Photoread will be brought to conscious awareness?

That's why it's important to know your purpose. What do you need to know from the book and why?

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This is important because often I'm reading textbooks, because I'm still in highschool, and it's possible that information may be skipped if just the questions are answered and that's all there is to it. Because I have answered the questions before, but it was only because I had to seek and discover the text for myself by reading through, or looking for the bold headings.

Textbooks are many books in one. Treat each chapter as a book alone. Mind map for studying that is a useful and important tool.

One piece of study that many people are not aware of. There is a decline in memory of what you have studied. The next day you will have forgotten as much as 40% of what you learned from the book. By the end of the week you'll probably only remember 20%. Making it seem like you learned noting at all.

To prevent the loss you need to do reviews and the easiest thing to review is a mind map. Review of them takes 3 minutes and you will retain most of what you learned.

quote:
I've worked with the dictionary thing, and I haven't had much success with it at all. Are there any suggestions anyone can give, or answers to my questions that may help? Thanks,
~Adam

My suggestion is the dictionary "thing" is just a game and we have better things to do than play games. Instead learn to PhotoRead first on stuff that isn't school work related or school textbooks. 2 or 3 books on subjects that interest you personally for the sake of enjoyment and use the 5 day test model for activating them. When you've done that you will understand the model better for your studies.

Further questions?

Alex

[This message has been edited by Alex K. Viefhaus (edited January 11, 2005).]