gdr2004

Has anyone heard of photo reading? Since I'll be entering college in the fall, I've been looking for a way to enhane my reading abilities. Naturally, I went to the local library and picked up a few books.

One, was a book called "Reading Smart" by Princeton Review, which helped me read at about 300-500wpm.

The second book, is called "Rapid Reading made E-Z", which is written by the co-founder of PhotoReading, Paul R. Scheele. Upon reviewing (I'm only about 1/3 of the way done through the book), I've learned that there are five steps involved in Photo Reading.

1. Prepare (get relaxed and read to read with a clear goal in mind)
2. Preview (skim and look for key words and words in bold, etc. etc.)
3. PhotoRead (get into a photo-reading stance and flip through the page at a steady rate)
4. Activate (restimulate the brain and probe the mind with questions and exploration of the subject)
5. Rapid Read (skim through again)

I had seen PhotoReading on informercials, claiming that you could gain speeds of upto 25,000 wpm! However, it just seems like it wouldn't be a possibility, and yet- some of the stuff they talk about makes a lot of sense, such as the brain being able to take in a lot of information then you would think. PhotoReading, is basically flipping through the book a page per second, without focusing on the words itself, but looking at the whole book. Still, my skepticial side says that the entire process seems to be just speed-reading a whole bunch.

So- what are your opinions on PhotoReading? The official program including the CDs and a dictionary plus a whole bunch of other things will cost ya 250 bucks, so it doesn't seem like it'd be worth it. Do you really believe that there is a way to absorb information using a method other than line by line analysis?

Some links -

http://www.learningstrategies.com/Ph...ding/Home.html <---- home page

http://www.photoreading.org/ <--- information

http://www.beyondhuman.com/photoreadingPLC.htm <--- Review of PhotoReading

http://www.learningstrategies.com/fo...ading&number=8 <---- Official forum

http://www.subdyn.com/photored.html <-----anti-PhotoReading

losthellhound

25,000 words per minute!!

I really dont think that 99.9 percent of the population could do that. Im sure there are some savants out there who could, but they would have to take time after flipping that quickly to go through the pages they remembered. The way that photographic memory works doesnt mean they understand everything, but they would remember what words were on the page. It would take time to assimilate that information into anything meaningfull

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tropple

I think it would make reading too expensive ;-)

It'd be like hurrying through sex.

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Meier_Link

I had an english teacher that gave us a quick synopsis of speed reading. Not 25,000 words by any means but still probably faster than you are reading now.

It involves keeping your eyes still rather than following the line with them. Focus at the middle of the line you are reading to read it. Given practice she said it was much quicker.

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MSD

I do that, it gets me up above 1000wpm, not bad for quick skims through textbooks when a professor asks a question that I can't answer. For real reading, I prefer to be able to digest information and think about it rather than look over it as fast as possible.

TheKak

I read about 600 wpm, never really tried to read any faster because I really have no need to. Never heard of photo reading though, I just speed read.

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