Most Helpful Customer Reviews
546 of 553 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
It worked, but did I need the book?, November 18, 2004
This review is from: Power Reading : The Best, Fastest, Easiest, Most Effective Course on Speedreading and Comprehension Ever Developed! (Paperback)
First of all, this book did help me read faster. I have always been a fairly slow reader but now I am able to control my speed more easily. However, everything I learned from this book could have been summed up in two instructions:
1. Always use your finger or the end of a pen to guide your eyes by pointing it under the words you are reading. (This really helps to make you conscious of the speed at which you are reading, which is surprisingly important.)
2. Every day, read something you chose for 10 minutes at your normal speed and mark where you started and finished. Then try reading that exact same passage in 5 minutes. (This will help you get used to reading faster than you would normally be comfortable with.)
That's it! That's all you need to know. If you buy this book, you will get those two VERY useful pieces of instruction along with 192 pages of poorly written fluff and common knowledge.
An example of fluff: all of Chapter 8 is devoted to telling the reader that he/she can use a pen or a pencil to guide his/her reading instead of his/her finger. Instead of spending one sentence telling the reader this, HE USES AN ENTIRE CHAPTER. How could he fill up an entire chapter about this? Good question. He uses sentences like these to fill up this useless chapter: "I prefer to use a ballpoint pen or a mechanical pencil with the tip retracted. You don't want to mark up your book needlessly or carelessly: they're much too valuable." Despite it being obvious that you don't want to draw on your book when you're using your pen to guide your eyes along the text, he feels the need to reiterate three paragraphs later: "Remember, don't mark up the material, because it can make later reading difficult for you or someone else."
[...]Take heart, though, I suggest you save your time and money by following the two steps above. It turns out those two steps are all you need to have "The Best Course on Speadreading and Comprehension Improvement Ever Developed!"
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64 of 67 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This is a great course!, January 16, 2002
By A Customer
This review is from: Power Reading : The Best, Fastest, Easiest, Most Effective Course on Speedreading and Comprehension Ever Developed! (Paperback)
This is a great course in a book - I wish I had taken it while in school. My reading and studying would have gone much faster and better. It was so easy, it only took a few weeks, and now I'm reading more than twice as fast with better comprehension in pleasure and technical material. It was important to me that the author covered the entire field of reading from increasing comprehension to speedreading, from history to perception, and from fiction and religious reading to technical reading and study and test-taking methods. This information allowed me to see not only why I was reading the way I was, but gave me the motivation to improve my reading speed and more important, my comprehension. Also, Rick the author, tells you about the techniques used in many other methods, and how and why over the years he evolved and uses the natural, simple approach he does. He starts you with comprehension first, and then gradually increases your speed. I really like Rick's approach, which is having me practice in my own materials and then encouraging me to go out and learn more about reading and speedreading. Plus, Rick cites many other authors and books and he gave me all the resources - he made it very easy since he included a full bibliography and index. This course is very complete! I highly recommend this book, Power Reading, to everyone if you want to speedread and remember more.
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141 of 155 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I enthusiastically recommend Power Reading, March 22, 2002
This review is from: Power Reading : The Best, Fastest, Easiest, Most Effective Course on Speedreading and Comprehension Ever Developed! (Paperback)
I am extremely pleased with the results I got from this reading course. When I began the course, my goals were in terms of 1) Comprehension: to maintain or slightly improve the level of my comprehension, 2) Speed: to double my speed while maintaining the level of my comprehension, 3) Other: to be able to comprehend a vast variety of technical or arcane materials. During the mid-course exam, I was reading 125% faster. As I finished the course, I felt comfortable not only with the absolute increase but also with the now excellent level of my comprehension. The most striking thing about this course, I think, is the recognition that one can read - or one can read more effectively. I could compare it to brushing your teeth: everyone does it, somewhat at least, but some people know how to clean their teeth more effectively than others. This reading course has given me both the understanding of the mechanisms as well as the tools (the use of the regulator, for example) to determine at which level of speed and comprehension I chose to read. Power Reading is well organized, easy to read. Having been in the educational business for quite some time, it amazes me how little emphasis educators put on a basic skill such as reading. But this will change, of course, since I will implement Power Reading in my teaching. I will not rely on elementary school teachers to improve students' reading skills, or hope that some Freshmen English instructor picks up the slack. This semester, I teach a course on "Women in Antiquity" in which each student has to read and review one scholarly book. Before the end of this semester, I will have incorporated Power Reading in my teaching so that my students become power readers who have a choice at which speed or comprehension level they read. I enthusiastically recommend Power Reading to any teacher or student.
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