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I have a question.. How do you form questions for things like college text? I mean things that you need a general idea of. I think that is why PR is not working so well for me..Maybe my questions are too vague? I also have a problem of reading too much into the text. Well I have finals this week and start summer classes soon, so I need help.
Thanks...
Confused Student

I went through many of these Discussion Forum topics one by one.

What I learned is that you should not start with school stuff right away.

Start PRing with light weight books. Something non-fiction - because non-fiction has Table of Contents and Chapters with headings etc.

Something like books on 'George Washington - American hero'. Or, something on topics you already know quite a bit.

Then do this for 10 books. Each should be of no more than 200 pages.

The activation should be done the next day for each book.

Then gradually move up to more difficult topics, but still not technical books.

Later, after a few weeks go on to your technical books.

This technique is what is explained in my Home Reading PR course.

I too am a novice and have finished my 3rd book. I think I am making progress.

I might be wrong about this. Maybe a more experience PR guy / gal can tell better.

Aron

Dustysags,

If you've gone to the trouble of finding trigger words, ask questions centered around those trigger words.

For instance, when PRing a book on organization skills, two of my trigger words were: organization, list making (OK, sometimes I pick phrases).

The probing questions I came up from those were:
1. How do I organize my workspace?
2. How do I succeed with lists?

Other probing questions I came up with were:
3. How do I prioritize my day?
4. How do I focus and avoid distraction?
5. How do I successfully plan goals that I can live with and accomplish consistently?

Not all questions were driven by the trigger words. Some were also based on headings I noticed while previewing. Use anything that generates a question within you. Anything that gets your curiosity going. Admittedly, that is a little tougher with text books, but you can still do it. Think of ways you could apply this material to your life. Perhaps you could prime the pump by starting out with satirical questions about the material.

For college "stuff" a general idea is NOT enough to do good in the class However, if you want a "general" idea then you can use that to start forming your purpose. Even though you want the general idea, there are usually subsections/subheadings to the topic. State your purpose with those subheadings. It is not imparative that you etch the purpose in stone; however, when you establish your purpose, you should feel inside a sense of direction.

Just for the record, i started the photoreading course with my quantumn mechanic text book.......don't let yourself fall into the belief that if you don't read an easy 200 word book with lots of subheadings, you never learn the system.

[This message has been edited by Elmo9 (edited May 06, 2001).]

You're right, Elmo. As a rule of thumb, your first set of Mind Probe questions will give you the structure of your entire book during your first 30-minute Activation session.

Since one of the keys to Previewing is to grab the key words from most if not all of the chapter titles, your first set of Mind Probing questions will be centered around what each chapter is about, indirectly giving you the first layer of comprehension of your entire book. (remember, your Mind Probe questions are created from your trigger words from Preview)

Then, following Activation sessions will bring you increasingly more detail. Make sure to phrase your Mind Probing questions to bring you to the specifics you want. Continue Mind Mapping trigger words from relevant text.

Also, consider the element of action you need to take to learn/integrate the new information. Review your purpose/outcome statement from Prepare step.

And, if your book is heavily detailed, treat each chapter as a book of its own. Plan to have multiple 30-minute activation sessions on each chapter of a heavily detailed book. Create a Mind Map for each chapter. BUT, make sure to begin first with several Mind Probing questions before SuperReading/Skittering & Dipping, geared towards getting you a layer or 2 of commprehension with each pass.

After a couple activations, you will get a sense of when to shift into Rapid Reading for all the exhaustive detail you want.

I hope this helps. It has been working really well for me!

[This message has been edited by Dana Hanson (edited May 07, 2001).]

Thanks...that did actually help.. I just do one chapter at a time..untill I get that chapter then move on. Every once in a while I'll just glance over the entire thing. To keep me wondering.Although I am still having the problem of over reading. I mean I end up wanting to read it ALL!!! Any suggestions on that problem?
Thanks again
Dusty
P.S. How do you become a "Higher" member?

Give yourself a time constraint. Plan to manually activate for 20-25 minutes, and leave 5 minutes or so on the end for mind mapping. And, pace yourself to get through your material from beginning to end within that 20-25 minutes.

The higher the level of comprehension you want, the more time you spend activating.

I'll check with Pete about "higher member" status. I'm sure it will include something like, once you've PhotoRed and activated several hundred books you graduate up, or something.

Man! This is such a great thread!

Sorry if this has been asked before, but I am curious about the commercial I have seen a few times, where Pete scrolls down a huge amount of text on his laptop and then answers questions.

I am sure this answer involves some statement like "Pete has been doing it for so long and is so good at it that he is really superman and can do it all" but my question is....

How does Pete do all the steps simultanously? Did he preview the text beforehand? Did he instantaneously activate?

Thanks!

Christian.

I did not preview the text. What you saw is what I did.

After I PhotoRead the text he asked me questions. I described the images that came to my mind.

I did not know any about the story after PhotoReading. Had he continued asking questions, I probably would have been able to piece the story together based on the images I would have described.

Pete talked about receiving images about the story ... what do he mean about images ... what images? do you mean receiving pictures or text from the books?

Thanks John.