Customer Reviews

Evelyn Wood Reading Dynamics

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I read slowly, and because I have stacks of books that I intended to read "someday" I decided to look into speed reading. I did some research to try and figure out what would be best, and chose the Evelyn Wood program because of my familiarity with the name.

First off let me say that I purchased the VHS tapes, not the DVD. I am writing this review under the DVD section because that's where I think it will be of most use to people. I did some research before purchasing and discovered the VHS tapes contain the same content as the DVD but can be had for much less. The VHS tapes I received did not come with a workbook, but you can purchase that from the Fred Pryor website for a few bucks which I did.

The video consists of a classroom lecture broken into three parts. Part one (about 45 minutes) advises using your hand as a guide while reading. Part two (about 55 minutes) is about scanning a document before reading it to improve memory and comprehension. Part three (about 25 minutes) is review and advises you to keep practicing. That's basically all there is to it; the instructor gives examples and exercises but there are no "secrets" or breakthrough techniques, and some of the concepts that intrigued me (like eliminating "subvocalization") are glossed over so quickly that I wondered why they bothered presenting them in the first place.

I did some research on the history of Evelyn Wood and learned that the original courses were 21 hours of classroom instruction over a period of three weeks. This video is about 2 hours. So what you have is basically an introduction to speed reading--not a full course. Although the information is good (just using my hand as a guild while reading helped increase my speed instantly), in my opinion the price they are asking for the DVD is unreasonable for what you are getting.

This program works great. Quadrupled my reading speed and more than doubled my comprehension. I have family member who didn't finish the program (laziness) and they still doubled their reading speed.

If you're a slow reader, reading makes you tired, or just has a heavy work load this program works very well.