For 35 Years, our niche has been “real instruction–real results.” Learning a new skill is better with a good coach who will watch what you are doing, show you the right way to do it, help you practice correctly (the subject of our next blog), change the examples given to fit your needs, encourage you when you are discouraged, and celebrate your successes. And that’s why we’ve always chosen this route.

Through the years, the main thing that has changed is that in today’s frazzled world, people are very impatient about how long it takes is to make change. A great quote I heard recently was “instant gratification takes too long.” Our courses went from 8 weeks (the length of time it takes for a new habit to take hold) to 5 weeks to fit into school terms, to weekend classes to accommodate busy people and those coming in from out-of-town. Now people say “a WHOLE weekend?” We’re mixing that up a bit for spring–evening classes in a shorter time span, a weekend class with the Sunday session starting in the afternoon for people who go to church on Sunday morning and things like that–making it easier to schedule for people who find changing a life time habit to be more effective with a good coach.

We’ve come to realize that there are some people who want to learn to read faster who are just never going to be able to come for an in-person class. Some people want to take an introductory seminar before allocating the resources and time for a full course. Some people live too far away for it to be practical to come to a short seminar. Some people just have crazy schedules.

So, we have launched a seminar that can be done on-line. It gives some of the basic strategies that speed readers use and our graduates’ favorite eye technique that increases reading speed by about 100 words per minute. It still takes an uninterrupted hour. It really does. People can go back to the site five times to get better and better or in case they get interrupted.

Learning to be a more efficient reader is essential for gathering the necessary information in this fast paced world. So just as it might be more efficient to have a personal trainer instead of a video, a ski instructor instead of a tape–watching a video or listening to a tape will improve a skill a lot more than never making the effort to improve. Our on-line seminar will make people faster than if they never tried to change.   And we want to help everyone with an interest read faster and understand more.