Forums IMPORTANT: PLEASE READ PhotoReading, Memory Optimizer * * * PR Test Results * * *

-How do you expect to increase your speed if you won't take time to slow down and improve how you are doing the basic steps?-

I did in college, slow down and learn the steps and Maps are fine for memorizing things but if speed and knowing what you read is what you want, MM's destroy the speed. The stopwatch doesn't lie.

-Did you include the outcome you want to have by acquiring the knowledge in those books?-

I think you have to. Ultimate goal, what is my reason for even reading this? What am I going to do with this? Different wording for the same think I think.

-Consider how real learning is not based upon a words-per-minute requirement.-

Is it also not based on test scores?

Am I the biggest pain in the *** you've ever had here?

Yes you are. Really though, you're giving PR a chance and I think that's cool.

'I took a speedreading course where we read War And Peace. It's about Russia' - Woody Allen

Seems Mark's testing the PR course to find out if it's worth the advertising. So many things are not these days. I wouldn't call it being a pain in the ass...more like you're kicking the tires It's nice to see you're not an apple polisher and are not afraid to say the system isn't working for you the way you hoped it would. It may cause headaches for Dana but someone has to ask the tough questions. I applaud you for putting the PR system to the test and being totally honest.

I don't sell the system so I have no problem with this thread. I'm glad someone is giving PR a real world test. And let's be real; your testing methods are perfectly in line with the methods used by IQ and SAT tests and the like, and work relaed reading material is uniformly BORING and often unnecessarily complicated so your tests are very real world applicable.

Some questions and comments I have regarding your reading/tests:
Chemistry p 144-147 (No test, just timing)
Personally I think a strong purpose, preview, and rapidread would have made more sense for a 3 page timing exercise. But to each his own.
I also would stress the importance of relaxation even on such short info. Relaxation is often overlooked on short material but it's necessary to get the full benefit of PR. Without relaxation and proper breathing, you don't get into the ALS.

Characteristics and Relationships of Life- Biology, Page 120-142 (Aprox 6500 words)

Did you do a postview? When you activated, did you superread/dip, or did you skitter? Did you mindmap this? Finally, did you rapidread afterwards? This is complex material and the constant passes at different speeds seems to me to be prudent and strategic for proper understanding.

Law and Legal System (14 Pages)
You previewed, pr'ed, and activated this chapter. What was your purpose? Did you prepare fully? Did you close with a sense of mastery, and did you postview? Did you mindmap this? Finally, did you rapidread afterwards? Again, this material is rather detailed and complex and demands the multiple passes PR outlines.

Intro to Electronics, 25 pages
Did you establish a purpose for doing this material? How did you go about preparing the material? Did you preview or pr as well as activate? Even though you were like, 'huh?' do you feel that you closed with a sense of mastery? Did your pr affirmations help at all? Did you postview? Did you activate with or without mindmaps? And did you rapidread at the end to tie this altogether?

Anatomy and Physiology (12 pages, 3900 words)
Did you establish a specific purpose for this material in and of itself, besides your testing of the PR system? Did you prepare properly using the tangerine technique? Did you preview, postview, or both? What type of activation did you do and how did you find it? Any mindmaps? And did you rapidread afterwards?

I'd also like to say...if you really want to see what PR can do for you, why not try other types of reading material? Literature isn't confined to textbooks alone. To me, a good cross section for testing out the PR system would be:

:: A Dictionary of Difficult Words (steps to take: purpose, prepare, pr, activate via the dictionary game)

:: The Sunday edition of any well written newspaper, and a magazine of your choice (steps to take: purpose, pr, postview, activate)

:: A novel of your choice (steps to take: purpose, preview, pr, rapidread)

:: Aristotle's logic textbook (steps to take: purpose, prepare, preview, pr, and postview the first run; purpose and multiple activations with mindmaps, and rapidreading the second run)

:: A webpage such as the one dedicated to Nietszche's or Beethoven's biographies (steps to take: purpose, preview, rapidread)

:: An online novel, for instance Ulysses by James Joyce (steps to take: purpose, preview, rapidread)

: A nonfiction book of your choice (steps to take: purpose, prepare, preview, pr, postview first pass; activation with mapping and rapidreading on second pass)

This way, you'll have tested out many different types of material instead of just textbooks and you'll get a feel for what you feel the PR system is best at and where you might want to go to speedreading instead. Who's to say you can't use both PR and speedreading? It doesn't necessarily have to be one or the other. I say use what works best for your needs.

To answer all your questions- I used all steps but mind mapping. It's too time consuming and if it's necessary for total activation, then right there's my problem but all through the book and course it was never said that MM was mandatory. I understand that if a question dealt with something that had to be memorized or understood that it would be just luck if I got it right. Jan was 2 years that I've been Photoreading so this isn't the first testing I've done of it.

I've planned on testing it on novels soon and I've already thrown out the short speedreading tests because as everyone said here, it's not a suitable test. I have no intention on disproving PR and I don't want to because I have no choice but to make this work because there literally is no other choice out there.

I am glad to see that someone has put results like this up. I have been PRing for about a year and I have been PRing 5 books a day 5 days a week for about 6 months of it and I haven't experienced any spontaneous activation and my comprehension results from when my girlfriend writes t/f tests for me have resulted in an avg. score of 42% correct, not to great in my opinion. I got those results using all of the steps of the program except for the final speedreading step. Throughout the past 6 months I have tried adjusting things such as my purpose, my mantra during PRing, and I have tried various mind probing questions but I havent seen any real improvement. I have tested my comprehension at different points and I dont get the level of comprehension I need until I speed read all of the book which if my understanding is correct shouldn't really be necessary unless you desire a comprehension rate of 80% or better. Well if anyone has some advice to offer I would really appreciate it.

I understand. Look at it this way: for the level of material you've read, wouldn't some form of notetaking make sense? Chemistry, Law, Electronics, Anatomy & Physiology are no walk in the park to study, and in order to remember anything of depth, wouldn't some form of notetaking be necessary? Put another way, would you take a university course in any of these subjects without taking any notes, regardless of your reading method? I know I wouldn't, PR or no PR. Asking you to learn a complex subject without proper study and prep time is just plain unfair (even though it happens in the business world quite often).

I don't know how Dana or Paul feel about your posts but I personally think that what you did and your resulting posts are important. Maybe there are others who haven't found the results of PR to their liking either but who feel too timid to voice their opinions. Nobody wants to be seen as a troublemaker

You may have highlighted some areas of PR that need to be fine tuned. Remember that mind science is still in its infancy...there's much research left to be done before it's perfected.

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.

Memorizing facts has always been easy for me. In the thread below, "Throwing in the Towel" you'll read about me missing key information that was outside the scope of my purpose and questions because I didn't know about the thing in the first place so I couldn't ask questions about it. It's been my experience that the questions I ask and purposes I have limit my reading to those things when what's in the book may be much more broad. I'm not asking for photographic recall of anything, I'm just asking for recognition of things. If I PR a whole book and only 2 things interest me enough to go back and study read them, great, but I at least want to see that it was there in the first place. Photoreading has burned me on many reading assignments over the past 2 (almost 2.5) years and what I hear over and over is "make clearer purposes and mind probes, make a new branch on your mind map during each activation pass, etc etc" which is great and certainly better than the support that other accelerated reading programs provide (none at all) but if I continue to not ask the right questions to get the information, and I'm not a moron (that's still open to debate though), is it possible that other people are also not asking the right questions and are putting down these books thinking that they've read them but instead what they've done is just (through the law of attraction, previous knowledge attracting more of itself, especially in books about topics you "like") gotten more of what they already know and are now feeling good about "reading a book" really fast? The reason I say that is because that's what I've noticed in myself. I'm not just making this up to be a troublemaker but on the other side of the coin, do other people have "my" problem but are not saying anything about it because they've already said "it works" and they don't want to be a "turncoat" or a non yes man?

I would be happy with recognition that something is in the text, I would like to have the memory of having noticed it and I would like to not miss important information. If a new concept is in the text and I miss it, I am not happy. If I have to resort eventually to moving my eyes over all of the text in order to complete this then in reality, what am I doing? When I read about arthritis and all my questions were geared toward dietary and lifestyle choices effecting it, I only stopped and dipped on things related to those ideas. I think I limited myself to that information and I think that's my problem. My limitation toward what I was thinking spilled over into a limitation in the purposes and questions I was asking and lead to gaining limited knowledge.

I seems as if I'm reading to "learn what's in the book" that's not right. What's right is spelling out a few things you want and reading to get those things and then put the book down. If my mind is supposed to guide me to these things and fill in the wholes to complete the picture of understanding, fine, but I always miss the one thing I always need to know. That thing is always new and I don't know how to make my purposes and mind probes so I'll actually stop and dip on exactly what I need to know, because I don't know about it in order to ask a question about it.

While I superread and dip I actually think up more questions I want answered but if I stop myself and back up a page or two, there is the answer. Sometimes if I just pick up a book and start reading and asking "where is this train of thought going?" "What is important to me here?" and keep asking those 2 things as I just read, I can blow by tons of junk and be done pretty quick.

Maybe I need a crash course in Purposes and Mind Probes. If one question can get me everything I need, then what is the question? If my questions are too vague, I dip on everything, so there's 2 sides here. Maybe questions need a book all to themselves.

Mark,
Now you have it

quote:

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Purposes and Mind Probes

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In Wenger's book, he said that Einstein said that if he only had 1 hour left to live, he'd spend 55 minutes thinking up the question and that once you got the question worded accurately-----it would only take 5 minutes to answer it.

If a person has strong intent and clear purpose---and clearly worded purpose, the answers are found quickly.

I PhR a book from an author i was not familiar w/ front >> back. I then said i wanted to find the main characters, the plot and the most dramatic point in the book.

I then started PhRing back >>> front (upside down) and i stopped 4 times and had it all. I did not need to even turn pages. I had actually stopped on the exact pages.

No speed reading could ever compare w/ this. It took me all of 15 minutes.

Mark,
This may seem simple-minded but on the very last tape on the B side at the very end Paul has the listener do a visualization. I used it up until i started doing Silva stuff. It's a nice little technique w/ great results.

You just program yourself to ask mind probing questions. It wouldn't hurt to write down your questions and also to be on the look out for hearing and seeing great questions from others. You know the exercise of determining to look for the color blue during the day? Whenever i do that, i'm amazed at how many blues i see. I have also done off-the-wall colors and seen them, much to my amazement. WELL, you can do that w/ questions too.

I've been very busy lately and have the book Frogs to Princes. I've only PhR it and programmed questions. I've spent about 10 minutes on it so far & am getting clearer. I've marked about 10 places w/ dry highlighter. When i do sit down to activate it, it'll only take 20 minutes, but i'll MM it so that i have it for reference. So, what i'm getting at is that i've only done questions & PhR. I haven't even done super read & dip.