113 of 117 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A total waste of time and money, January 18, 2004
Before reading this review I will give you some idea of my background so you can judge my review on the basis of my experience. I am a multilingual language teacher and writer with a keen interest in accelerated learning techniques, and have been such for several years. I first became interested in Superlearning several years ago as a possible method for increaing both my own language learning rate, which is considerable, and that of my students. Superleaning looked like something really new and innovative, and, having read the original Superlearning book, I decided to buy several Superlearning products from their website, including the audio course, special learning cassettes and a language course produced by the authors and based on the exact procedures laid out in their books. I wanted to be sure I was doing it properly. I also wish to point out that the products are not cheap by any means, well, not in price anyway. In terms of quality of the materials, recording and presentatiom, I have never encountered anything so cheap and shoddy!
Five years later, and after even more extensive research and experimentation with the system, both personally and in my classes, I can only say that almost all of this system is a sham. It doesn't work. I used a language course produce by them, and found no benefit whatsoever in it. The only benefit I got was to use the course, which I would also like to point out is nothing more than 3 tapes and a very thin and cheaply produced pamphlet of words and phrases and, on occasion the recording did not match the transcript, was to use the tapes without the highly distracting breathing exercises and do it the old-fashioned way. I made my own tapes too, as per the instructiosn in the course, which was a vastly time-consuming process, and had the same lack of result as the "professionally" produced languages tapes by the authors themselves!
There is no doubt that proper relaxation, relaxed breathing, positive suggestions and classical music can have varying degrees of benefit on the students, but the method you will find in ALL the books and programmes produced by Superlearning leaves a great deal to be desired!
I was interested by another reviewer's reference to a researcher from Monash univerity and her work into Lozanov and Superlearning. As I don't think a text link is allowed ina review, you might like to do a web search for "The personal website of Uschi Felix" at Monash University for a lot more information about Superleaning and the validity of some of the claims made before you are tempted to part with your hard earned and get a disappointment.
Having tried to contact Superlearning with questions and complaints, I can only attribute the lack of service and, indeed, acknowledgement I encountered to the fact that they must get a lot of commenst from some very dissatisfied people! I urge you not to buy into this scam. You are being taken for a ride.
To those reviewers who are getting so excited by the promises in the Superlearning products, all I can say is try it and see. Remember - I was just like you a few years ago!
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84 of 88 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
A 528 page advertisement!, September 15, 2001
First, if 0 stars were an option, that would be the rating. This book has about 4 pages of good information, the rest is just either advertisements for other related systems or stories about how the system has worked around the globe with "miraculous" results. The first part of the book, I guess is supposed to be dedicated to the theory of the system and the second part is the practical application/explanation portion. But really the whole thing is just a poorly disguised testimonial by the "con-artist authors" as to how great the system is.
I'll save you a little money with a summary.....1. Do a relaxation exercise 2. Put on some 60 bpm classical music 3. read information for 4 secs while breathing in 4. take in no information for 4 secs while breathing out 5. Repeat this cycle over and over until completed.
I honestly can't say enough bad things about this book. Even in the "application" section, where they are supposed to actually teach you how to use the system, all they do is tell you stories about how the system is a worldwide phemomenon. A total waste of paper/trees, sadly I bought it :-(
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29 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A lot of names, some techniques, July 5, 2002
A lot of sensational ideas contained in this book, not necesarily true. I found this book... almost two years ago... It seemed very exciting to read. . . After reading through the whole thing, I found that it wasn't very helpful except as a reference to other books. Way too many references are given, way too many people mentioned. The last section, part three was maybe the best section. It gives guided visualization and the basic autogenic traing. This can be found on the internet though,(autogenic traing); guided visualization, I noticed, after reading a few other self-help books, are a part of all(or most) self-help books. The reason I give this three stars, and not two is for all the references to books that I would like to buy to read further, and the interesting mind-enhancing machines recommended. This reason is also why I gave it only three and not four, the resources where exhausting, the examples of all the people using these methods became very boring. Story after story after story, but not much on how to or why, except in a later section in the book.
If you have this book, and are thinking about buying SuperMemory by the same authors, don't do it! Almost all the information is a copy. They are almost the same book except for a couple of small sections (maybe a couple of pages), about "water babies" and a very small section at the back (a few pages) refering to a couple of memory tricks, or mnemonics, that can be found anywhere. . . and better ones at that.
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