Eighty percent of teachers are boring and unmotivating. Is it their job to be lively and pour the knowledge into your right-ear? There are three ways to learn information and skills: a) Trial and error. Use the feedback created by mistakes to teach yourself the optimal answers and strategies of success. b) Observation. Since ancient times the apprentice method has created masters of specialized knowledge and skills. Watch and ask questions, and finally, do the same. c) Lecture. An expert or certified specialist stands at the podium and expounds on his/her specialty. Most of us are experienced with (c), lecturing, also known as learning-by-instruction. There is another teaching strategy: learning by Initiation, which creates a partnership between the student and teacher. The operative word is Insight, not memory techniques and learning through repetition. Meaning Speed reading is a psychomotor skill; it is 50% mental, and the balance, permanently imprinting the specific physical skills and strategies. Intellectual understanding is just not enough. Any one can listen to a lecture and comprehend the four elements of Slow Reading: Regressions, Subvocalization, Hard Focus, and Porous Concentration. What is tougher is getting illumination - an Insight into reducing or eliminating third grade reading skills, and replacing them with Speed Reading techniques. When the instructor uses Initiation - it is the student who must create learning experiences when he/she discovers the knowledge or skills on their own. It requires 15 minutes of daily practice (for 21 days), in order to absorb a Virtual Reality of the process. Virtual Reality soon becomes your real world strategies. If there are no emotional and personal insights, there is no meaning. For some students Insight comes within the first week of skills practice, others require the entire three-weeks. Only ten percent need four weeks or more. Surfing The Internet Who taught you how to type on your word processor, surf-the-web, drive-a-car, and ride a bike? It was you - not your parents, a typing teacher, nor a driving-instructor. And you also taught yourself how to use the computer and all your knowledge. Others can give your intellectual understanding, but no one I know can drive a car because he/she read a good book about it. You can take a class in computers and learn the basics, but you need to make mistakes, get frustrated and angry, before you obtain the feedback to master the skill. There are one-hundred great books on speed reading, but research over fifty years indicates you must train yourself to be a speed reading; training your eyes to use your peripheral vision, following your Pacer, underlining what you read, and gaining an Insight into the skill of Soft-Focus. Skill and Drill On the first day you started to learn to drive a car, did you turn on the ignition, pull out, and comfortably drive down the street or highway to your destination? How about typing or using the computer? Did you hear the words of wisdom of the instructor, and bang - out of-the-box - become an expert typist and master of your computer? On the other hand - did you make a million mistakes, get so frustrated you wanted to shoot the instructor, but became pig-headed, persistent-and-determined, until you finally - just got it? Learning to ride a bike, become a master speed reader and learning a second language all require Grit - the will that cannot be denied. If you are not interactive with the learning process, accept your responsibility to - Get It - you may as well throw in the towel. But you did learn to ride a bike, drive a car, type, and surf the Internet. Somewhere in your brain (prefrontal cortex), is a skills program to learn new procedures. You access that brain structure whenever you choose to learn a new skill. It helps train you with permanent memory skills to steer a small boat, ski down a mountain, or go spelunking (cave exploration). New learning causes neural plasticity, structural and functional permanent changes to your brain. An Example Can you extend your index finger of your right hand and create an invisible infinity symbol (a figure eight lying on its back), up to four feet wide? Do it three times in a row, and reverse the procedure by doing with your left hand, another three-times. Why? You are exercising your right brain which has a low usage compared to your dominant left-brain. You remember that the right brain controls the left-side of your body and vice-versa. Second exercise: to accelerate you speed reading skills, take your index finger of your right hand and produce an air-version of downward figure Zs. Your eyes are opened, and you are using first your right hand and then your left, to make Zs in the air. This exercise is programming your mind through your Mirror Neurons to create permanent memories of this speed reading strategy. Third Exercise: close your eyes, and on the movie screen of your mind create a entire page of text. You are not going to read the sentences, you are going to make Zs moving left-to-right, and down the page. Each time you do the Zs exercise, you are creating speed reading long-term memories strategies. Fourth Exercise: Practice 15 minutes daily in your workbook doing Zs down the pages of text using your Raster-Master. Endwords When you have to work for your knowledge and skills, it has value because it is a subjective experience. Making mistakes and suffering frustration in order to learn creates an Emotional experience. Work and Emotions deliver long-term memories because it is personal, and not forced fed to you by an instructor. You are auto didactic, (self-taught), in every skill you own. If the knowledge is worth acquiring - you must be involved with being your own teacher. See ya, copyright 2006 H. Bernard Wechsler |
