For the over 35 years I have taught speed reading I have been constantly asked about the same misconceptions about what I do and what our courses are all about.  I’ve decided to  do a series of posts about the subject–at least our approach to it.  I believe that by covering these myths, readers of this blog will also find some hints to free them from slow reading.  Please  post your questions on the subject to make sure we address them.

The old speed reading television commercials or current speed reading infomercials have created in people’s minds that speed reading is taking a book (you probably) don’t care about and flipping the pages as fast as you can and getting everything out of it.  Some people can do that, but that’s not we are all about.

Ten or fifteen years ago, several of my speed reading graduates in one of my networking groups suggested that we needed to call our classes something else, since what they learned was so much more than “speed reading.”  From that day on we started identifying our classes as “Speed Reading Plus™”–“plus” meaning speed plus comprehension, recall, and retention.  At a networking event this past December, we were talking to some more graduates who said they liked the section of our course for mastering and organizing detailed reading the best.  They were surprised that we covered that!  Now at their urging we are calling some of our courses Speed Reading Plus™ Technical Reading and Writing”.

The more networking I do, the more I realize that these common myths, not only make people fearful or skeptical about my life’s work, they also cause them to be slow, bored readers.  So the next blog will be the fear of “Having to Read Everything the Same Way.”