After I photoread, I rapid read, not slow read. I do this because I usually read fiction or novels for my English classes, and unless I'm pressed for time, I'll also do it for my really dense Philosophy classes. I rapid read the english because it helps me when I have to make arguments based on the writing style, not just "what happened".
Actually my activation technique is a combination of skittering, rapid reading, and dipping.
I actually found that my former speedreading courses gave me an advantage, since my subvocalization was already pretty low, and photoreading definately lowered it a lot more (I barely do it at all, now).
The problem I've gotten recently, though, is that because I've taken such a long break away from it, while I'm activating I'm too conscious of, "Did I go faster or slower than this?" or "This is way too fast..." and I get sidetracked from the material. It's quieting down now, though, so hopefully by the time I get back, I'll be all set.
If I didn't PR it first, my activation session would be horrible...and as a side note, this is a rough estimate of comprehension levels, in my opinion, based on "how it feels to me":
1 - PRing by itself.
2 - Skimming.
3 - Speedreading
4 - PRing and one activation session.
5 - Regular reading.
6 - PRing and more than one activation session.
7 - Regular reading the material more than one time.
Now, if you want to know the material better, provided you have forever, Regular reading it as many times as you would activate it is better. Of course, this takes a very very long time. In far less time, I'll know it as well as if you had read it once by activating more than once. So, for a book that would take 10 hours to read, I would have PR'd, rapid read, then superread and dipped twice, and I would have done it in probably three or four hours. That's not too bad, plus I'm getting faster.
-Ramon http://razor.ramon.com ("If you read slower than 50wpm, this book will EXPLODE!!!" -Speed....reader (as shown on "The Critic"))
