Sandra, the sixth-grader.
An extremely conscientious girl, twelve-year-
old Sandra found she was spending most of her evenings on schoolwork.
She was always studying, preparing reports, and reading books assigned
to her. Furthermore, she was losing far too much sleep as she tried to
keep up with her workload. “We had little or no family time together,”
her mother recalled.
But then, Sandra learned and began to
apply to her work the same
principles you’ll find in this book. Just a few weeks later, her life and the
life of her family had completely changed. Instead of reading an average
250–300 words per minute, she had “taken off” and was soaring at more
than 1,500 words per minute—with increased comprehension.
Sandra’s mother reported shortly afterward, “We
have more family
time available now. Her schoolwork is completed in a relatively short
period, and she also has time to spend on pleasure reading. And
amazingly, Sandra now goes to bed at a reasonable hour!”
Timothy, the eighth-grader.
Like
many fourteen-year-olds, Timothy
was sure he knew more about how to do his schoolwork than his parents
did. So for weeks, he resisted trying the learning and reading methods
that we advocate at our Britannica Learning Centers.
But there was another powerful factor operating with Timothy: peer
pressure. He wanted to do well in school and in fact, he
had
been doing
quite well. But he was also beginning to pay a price. Even though some
of his classmates seemed to breeze through their work, he found he had
to spend hours reading the required
books and doing the other
homework assignments.
It appeared that Tim might have to cut out some of his extra activities,
such as one of his sports teams, in order to keep up with his studies. The
whole experience was becoming so discouraging that he was getting
frustrated and was losing his motivation to excel at school.
So finally Tim decided to go along with his parents’ suggestion to try
the Wood-Britannica approach, which was being offered at a center near
his school. Like many others who
had followed the same route, Tim
immediately began to reap the benefits of faster reading and learning.
His most significant early payoff from the course came when he was
given a major reading and writing assignment at his school. His class
was told to read a book that was more than three hundred pages long
and then to write an essay and prepare for a test on the book.
Furthermore, this requirement was imposed
in addition to his regular
homework, and it had to be completed within two weeks.
Quite an assignment for many eighth-graders—but Tim came through
in fine style. Using his new speed-reading and note-taking skills, he
finished the book in only two evenings.
As a result, he had plenty of
time to work on the essay, which he completed at the end of the first
week. After that, he faced a relatively relaxed few days studying for the
test.
His grades? An A on the essay, and an A on the exam. Not only that,
Tim had found that during those two weeks he still had plenty of time
available for his extracurricular activities.
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