Dear Friend,

SuperReading for Success is a highly respected reading course created over 14 years ago by Ron Cole for people who want to

• Improve their ability to read, focus, and remember information from whatever they are reading;
  .
• Be able to regain and maintain their concentration whilst reading;
  .
• Be confident that whatever they have to read, they have the best available tools to complete any reading challenge;
  .
• Feel absolutely confident that when they have a truckload of things to read, they will be able to get through everything in the shortest time possible;
  .
• Get through boring and badly written material quickly, yet still manage to take-in everything that they need from their reading; and
  .
• Move to the top of their class, spending half their usual time studying.

Some people’s industries are so competitive and fast-paced that they need information almost daily because things can change very quickly.

They must be up to date otherwise they will lose millions of pounds, and they cannot trust anyone else to know what they need.

For this reason, in my opinion, this book is be a must read for all people who

• Operate in highly competitive environments and want to advance ahead of their field,
  .
• Want to develop world-class expertise quickly, and
  .
• Want to become limitless; achieve self-mastery; or develop their multiple intelligences.

Although SuperReading for Success was always unlikely to be better than all of the best reading courses combined, I give it a strong 8 out of 10 (8/10) for its novel approach, and main focus on helping the reader to practice and develop advanced reading skills.
.

THE READING PROBLEM

Working as a life coach in the mid 1990s, Ron Cole discovered that many of his clients were losing most of their time each week in two ways: reading and attending unstructured meetings.

In terms of reading, Cole’s clients typically were

• Spending 3 hours reading a document that they could have read more effectively in an hour, and consequently they were losing hundreds of hours of reading time per year.
  .
• Using reading skills developed in the 19th Century (1800), which were unsuitable, to address the reading demands that they faced in the year 2000.
  .
• Not equipped to deal with today’s ever changing world, which requires us to learn and re-learn continuously.
  .
• Not equipped to deal with emails quickly and effortlessly, which alone is causing many people today to be drowning in information.

Therefore, to provide his clients with a solution, Cole looked to discover an effective way to resolve their reading problem.
.

SPEED READING

We are told that initially Cole investigated Speed Reading.

Speed Reading is a method of reading faster than normal, especially by using techniques of skimming and controlling one’s eye movements when reading a the text.

Cole found, however, that traditional Speed Reading placed too much emphasis on the reader’s speed of reading first, and then his or her comprehension of what was being read second.

The result is that speed readers would

(a) Frequently miss out words and sometimes whole sections of what they were reading,

(b) Not be able to get everything that they needed to discover from their reading material, and

(c) Miss important points whilst reading.

This lead Cole to concluded that the traditional Speed Reading course was not appropriate for many of his clients, especially those who could not afford to miss any vital information when reading business or legal documents.
.

AUDIO

Not entirely satisfied with Speed Reading, Cole considered the approach of transferring his clients’ written material to audiotape – but, experimenting with the process, he found that

(a) Focusing on what is being said on the audio tape sometimes proved difficult,

(b) Going back over parts of the audio that were missed was troublesome and took longer than reading, and

(c) It was difficult to make a note or revisit the things that the client wanted to remember.
.

SUPERREADING

Continuing to look for an adequate solution for his clients, Cole started exploring and testing various reading techniques.

And the ones that prove successful went on to form the foundation of his SuperReading for Success course.

Significantly, readers will find that the SuperReading course is heavily related to Speed Reading, but a major difference is that SuperReading skills and techniques encourage the reader to focus on his or her comprehension first – to read and understand every word from the outset whilst learning how to read faster and faster over time.

Listed below are the core SuperReading for Success techniques:

Hand Pacing: Using your forefinger, move it underneath each word that you are reading in a smooth fluid motion. This will stop your mind from wondering off, causing you to read the same sentence again and again. It will also allow you to read as fast as you can whilst understanding everything that you have read.

The Flip Turn: When reading, as you approach the bottom of a page, in advance, you must prepare to turn it rapidly. Like an Olympic swimmer who pushes off the wall of a swimming pool to accelerate quickly in order to save time, you must do the same when flipping over the page. Ultimately, by flipping every page fast, you will prevent yourself from wasting valuable seconds. These seconds will add up, reducing your overall reading time significantly.

Key Sentence Previewing: You must read the first sentence of each paragraph only, previewing the first 5 to 10 pages of your written material. Previewing is similar to watching a movie trailer. It will reveal what the text/movie is about before you actually read/watch it. When reading, previewing provides you with a lot of valuable information about what you are reading, allowing you to read later with greater speed and comprehension.

Eye-Hop: The Eye-Hop exercise has been designed to help you go from reading one word at a time to groups of words at once. Starting the exercise with reading two words, with practise, you may eventually read three and four, to possibly five and six or more, words at a glance. Eye-Hop exercises require 40 minutes of practise per day and will take four to eight weeks to master, but in the long-term it is highly likely to save you a tremendous amount of reading time.

Parroting: Parroting is all about testing yourself after reading a few sentences to find out how much you remember. There are three ways to parrot: (1) parroting by writing, (2) parroting by telling, and (3) parroting by pretending. When parroting, some people start off by remembering two or three points only, but your ability to recall will eventually increase with practice. As a result, parroting will have the affect of boosting your comprehension and memory.

Reviewing: Reviewing is another word for targeted reading. Cole recommends that you use it after you have previewed and parroted the text only to (1) fill in any gaps, (2) answer any unanswered questions, or (3) discover any missing information.

Embodying: Embodying involves you putting the information that you obtain from your text into your long-term memory. For example, Cole recommends using Spaced Repetition, which means simply (1) going over and over the information (repetition) you want to remember; (2) waiting for minutes, hours or days depending on what you are trying to recall; and (3) doing some repetitions again.
.

WHAT I FOUND IMPRESSIVE?

Personal Development & Reading

What is extremely powerful about the SuperReading course is that Cole teaches the following personal development subjects along side the skills and techniques required to become a brilliant reader:

• Psychology of Learning
• Learning Styles (VAK)
• Goal-Setting
• Visualisation and Affirmation Techniques
• Learning and Memory Techniques
• Focusing the Mind Techniques

The reason that this is crucial is because these important subjects have a dominating influence on our ability to read more effectively and efficiently.

In fact, I would argue that these subjects have a determining affect upon how much all of us can accomplish and achieve in our lives.
.
.
The Mind

As a person with an extremely strong interest in the theory of multiple intelligences, I was impressed with Cole’s simplified explanation concerning reading, and the two sides of the brain.

He started by stating that in the 1960s, experiments showed that the two sides of the brain were responsible for different functions:

• Left-brain is mostly verbal, logical, numerical, and serial
  .
• Right-brain is pictorial, spatial, holistic, creative, non-linear, musical, arty, intuitive and emotional

We are then told that the world’s most notable geniuses, such as Albert Einstein and Leonardo da Vinci, serve as excellent examples of what happens when right-brain inspiration is combined with left-brain logic.

By using their whole minds, these geniuses thought in ways that other people found difficult or next to impossible.

Similarly, Cole argues that by reading using both sides of the brain readers will be provided with a richer and more profound reading experience.

However, most people tend to use one side or the other of the brain, even though the ideal is to have a balance or synergy between the two sides.

This is the reason why Cole instructs us to preview a text by flipping through every page repeatedly, encouraging us to utilise the pictorial – the right side of our brains as a part of the reading process.
.
.
Eye-Hop

I would recommend that readers use Cole’s Eye-Hopping exercises as a less aggressive and excellent way to develop their reading speed – even though, I confess that I learnt how to read 4 to 5 words at a glance using Tony Buzan’s book on Speed Reading.

Following Buzan’s speed reading exercises, I progressed from what he called a single line sweep (taking in one line of text at a time) to triple line sweep, which involved a tremendous amount of hard work.

However, if I had to learn to read fast all over again, preferably, I would choose to develop my reading ability using the Eye-Hopping exercises, because it appears to be a more effective and exact method of learning how to read several words at a glance.
.

WHAT I DID NOT LIKE ABOUT SUPERREADING?

God is in the Detail!

SuperReading for Success is an extremely practical guidebook written in an conversational style, which makes it very easy to read and imagine that the writer was talking to you in person.

However, in comparison to ‘How to Read a Book’ written by Mortimer Adler, SuperReading for Success lacked serious depth. There was simply no detailed discussion of

• the nature and complexity of reading as an activity,
  .
  
• the existence of different reading levels, or
  .
  
• the essential qualities of becoming a demanding reader.*

“God is in the detail” is another way of saying that sometimes it is good for things to be detailed.  In recent times this phrase has evolved into the saying “The Devil is in the detail” which I suspect may be related to lawyers who hide unfavourable terms and conditions within legal contracts.

*For a detailed book review of ‘How to Read a Book’ please click on blog post: tommyoffe.com/learn-how-to-read-as-well-as-possible/
.
.
Where is the Free-Noting Technique?

Impressively, I found that the SuperReading techniques of parroting and embodying were powerful, yet simple, tools for aiding memory retention and recall.

However, I was extremely surprised that this book made no mention of the very straightforward and effective technique of Free-Noting. Free-Noting is an easy and uncomplicated technique to use whilst reading in order to engage our long-term memory. For this reason, I have read over 300 books using the Free-Noting technique.**

**For a explanation of the importance of Free-Noting, please click on blog post: tommyoffe.com/a-strategic-way-to-choose-and-read-books.

.

Right-Brain Reading & Photoreading

In spite of Cole’s excellent explanation of the importance of combining the right and left-brain when reading, I felt that most, if not all, of the activities on this course caused me to feel a little tense and stressed.

The reason is that over the years, I have become accustomed to feeling calm and in a meditative state when carrying out a right-brain reading technique called Photoreading.***

Qualitatively, my experience suggests that Photoreading may contain a more effective technique than SuperReading in order to synthesize the use of the left and right-brain.

***For further information about Photoreading, please click on blog post: tommyoffe.com/how-to-read-100’s-of-books-easily

.

CONCLUSION

We are told that SupeReading for Success course will benefit almost everyone, as long as they have a reading age of a 9 years old.

As a result engineers, doctors, managers, university students, students at all levels, teachers, professors, mum, dads, grandparents have benefited from the course – regardless of whether they were slow readers, pleasure readers, business readers, dyslexics, avid readers or people who hate reading…

So…

What are you waiting for?

Purchase the book today.