Leturer's Story
From Newsletter 15...
Dr George Chryssides is a Senior Lecturer in Religious
Studies at the University of Wolverhampton who
has had remarkable resultswith PhotoReading.
When I first went to university as a fresher,
students met their Advisor of Studies
at the beginning of the summer before their term
started.
He was a formidable man in a three-piece suit,
and inspired confidence that what he said must
be right. Having ascertained that one of my subjects
was to be economics, he advised me to read a large
600-page tome over the summer. After the meeting
I worked out how many pages I needed to read every
day, to discover the depressing truth that 40
pages a day would be needed to get through it
all.
I struggled: not only did this amount of reading
demand a huge time investment, which quite spoilt
my summer, but frankly the book was incomprehensible,
and I failed my economics exam a year later! Fortunately,
I found alternative subjects that were more my
bent, but I was still a slow reader, and until
I discovered Photo-Reading, a substantial book
could take a week or more to complete. I once
tried speed-reading, but found myself getting
obsessed with rapidity at the expense of comprehension.
the fact that PhotoReading offered a different
approach, with ambitious claims, and with a money-back
guarantee meant that I couldnt lose! It
had to be worth a try. I chose a period when work
was somewhat more flexible than usual the weeks
between semesters when there were no students
to teach, and when there was more opportunity
to get ahead and develop new skills. I invested
half an hour daily, listening to the CDs and
doing the exercises faithfully. the results were
surprising: to test out my degree of achievement,
I PhotoRead a new book on the Dead Sea Scrolls.
It took me an hour and a half, and my wife asked
me quite detailed questions about it to check
my level of comprehension. She was quite surprised
that I could answer them all correctly.
Teaching in a university, there is a great deal
to read in order to keep up with ones subject,
not to mention student essays and administrative
paperwork. However, PhotoReading has spin-offs
too for student learning. I suggest to my students
that they define their aims, formulate questions,
identify key words and acquire an overview of
topics before commencing reading or even before
listening to a lecturer. It does wonders for the
learning process.
When I have told friends about PhotoReading they
sometimes say, you dont read books properly
then?. Not at all, I reply. If ones notion
of reading books is listening to each word sequentially
in ones head, without necessarily understanding
it, then that is certainly not what I do. But
if proper reading is quick, effective reading
with good comprehension and recall, then that
is what PhotoReading achieves. the techniques
may be unconventional, but they certainly achieve
remarkable results.
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