Speedlearning 100 trains you in three levels of reading-difficulty:
a) Basic: used for novels and ‘light’-material like Reader’s Digest.
b) Semi-Tuff stuff: used for non-fiction, and many technical-articles.
c) Tuff-Stuff: used for textbooks, journals and any dense material.
There are three styles and ‘speeds’ for reading:
a) Skimming – to get an ‘overview’ of material and decide its relevancy for you.
b) Scanning – to read for more details and to remember the ‘key’ points.
c) Screening – to read carefully to answer ‘exam’-questions.
Why should you care about analyzing ‘how’ you read?
a) Fact: The slower you read – (because your 3rd grade teacher said it improves recall), the lower (up to 40%), is your ‘comprehension’ of details. Speedlearning 100 helps you improve your comprehension and long-term memory by 15%.
b) Fact: 50% of all the “information” you learned becomes obsolete within five (5) years. (Professor Carl R. Rogers, Columbia University)
c) Fact: Information-overload causes us anxiety “stress”. Internet –“ 2” is coming - (within 24 months), and will double the pool of information.
Speedlearning Principles
by H. Bernard Wechsler
PRINCIPLE #1: THE EYE FOLLOWS A MOVING OBJECT
We have an instinct, a reflex that is the basis of your RASTERMASTER's
laser technology. Call it "peripheral vision", the ability to see beyond
our central pathway of sight. Basketball players use it, and it saved
our cave-dwelling ancestors' from hungry lions, dinosaurs and their human
enemies.
PRINCIPLE #2: OPTIC CHIASMA
Remember back to your old biology teacher, who told you our eyes pick
up the environment UP SIDE DOWN, like the reflex camera. The information
is transferred by our OPTIC NERVES where our nervous system does a crossover,
CHIASMA, an "X", and turns the input RIGHT SIDE UP. So? We use a strategy
called BOUSTROPHEDON, (it's in the dictionary), which means reading ALTERNATIVELY,
left-to-right, and then right-to-left. Kids call it reading "backwards",
but our brain turns it around so that we are actually reading left-to-right.
PRINCIPLE #3: PERSISTENCE OF VISION
Whatever we see on our retina remains for half-a-second, AFTER it is removed.
So what? It is the basis for the success of movies and television, and
can be used to promote long-term memory and focused concentration.
PRINCIPLE #4: TRANSPARENCY OF LANGUAGE
You've been doing this since first-grade. We don't read "letters" or "syllables"
or even "words". Our brain pierces the veil of squiggles of ink, and decodes
and converts the information to IDEAS. The opposite of "transparent" is
"opaque", shaded, and unclear. The author's ideas speak to us, literally
and transparently.
PRINCIPLE #5: NEO-NEURAL PLASTICITY
In 1999 scientists at Princeton University Medical School discovered that
our brain is capable of STRUCTURAL and FUNCTIONAL change through repetition.
In their case, they were reversing the dysfunctions of stroke, in ours,
we are integrating new strategies into information processing skills.
PRINCIPLE #6: MACH 1
The Speed-of-Sound is between 662 to 770 miles per hour. The average university
graduate reads BASIC material at 250 words per minute, with a comprehension
of about 70%. It drops like a rock when we get to SEMI-TOUGH and TOUGH-STUFF.
PROFOUND POINT: There is no learning, no reading, and no information processing,
without hearing the words silently in your mind, (sub-vox). So, how fast
can we absorb information? The speed-of-sound!