The Art of Accelerated Learning: Proven Scientific Strategies for Speed Reading, Faster Learning and Unlocking Your Full Potential: Teaching Today, #4

Introduction

School days are the best days of your life said every parent as every child rolled their eyes! Who on Earth would believe that having your head stuck in textbooks is better than going to work and getting paid? I was never the brightest and my head was probably stuck in those books for longer than others. While it was a little late to help my school days, accelerated learning has certainly made my adult learning experiences more productive.

Accelerated learning sounds like an unattainable dream come true. Imagine walking around, looking at information, and just soaking everything up like a sponge. If knowledge is power, I should be the king of the world. The concept of accelerated learning reminds me of a cartoon I watched when I was a teenager, where the main character tried to learn French by listening to a recording of the language while sleeping. However, that night, the recording got stuck on a certain phrase, and when he woke up, that was all he could say. Luckily for him, that phrase was the correct answer to every question he was asked that day, including the question of the meaning of life, so he became incredibly famous and successful. That kind of surrealistic success only exists in imaginative cartoons, but we try to realise it for ourselves as far as our minds are rationally able to.

This image below reminds me of the centuries-old story of ol’ Sisyphus, the mythical king of Corinth, and the punishment he received for being a deceitful and egotistical idiot. For all eternity, he was given the punishment of pushing a massive boulder up a sizable hill and watching it roll down just before it reached the top. After experiencing this agonizing frustration, he had to roll it up again, and again, and again. Please keep in mind that this is me hyperbolising and enjoying it immensely, but that’s how I felt when I had to study in school. That is also why I procrastinated every single time and tried to cram in as much information as I could the morning before a big test. Why is it that when you need to study, absorb, retain, and comprehend, it suddenly becomes so hard?

There was, of course, also the living, breathing stereotype, which happened to be embodied in one of my friends, of a person who would spend hours and hours memorising schoolwork. She would then come to school the next day telling everyone that she did not study even one single word and that she was going to fail. Ironically, both of our studying methods yielded similar results in the end. Ultimately, I think that both these methods—the ultra-time-consuming memorization technique and the inability to concentrate, thus leading to procrastination technique—are two of the deeply flawed methods that accelerated learning aims to improve upon, if not eradicate completely.

The concept of accelerated learning was originally developed for the classroom to provide a space for students, who have different ways of conceiving ideas and processing information, to get a chance at grasping concepts in their own unique way. However, this concept has expanded and developed into methods and practices that can also be used by adult individuals and self-learners to improve any part of their lives or lifestyles. It is also based on the ideas that intelligence is a more diverse concept than once believed and that learning techniques should be adapted to provide a broader support system for more efficient learning outcomes.

I consider myself to be in a cool position, because I am both an educator and a learner. My first three books, Teaching Yourself to Teach, Teaching Online and Creating Courses Online have all been from the point of view of the educator. I am also an avid reader, but often find I spend more time reading lesson plans than I do my favourite book. So, this book is going to be aimed at learners, whether you enjoy reading the latest research, taking short courses, or you are studying for a new career.

Interest in accelerated learning has been speedily growing in the educational sector, and there is now a demand for this learning method, specifically for short-term courses that require extensive study and retention abilities within a short period. The method of accelerated learning has also caught the eye of higher education. The successful implementation of accelerated learning in short courses and other curricula is intended to allow institutions to present courses in a compressed format, which will save them time and money. However, this implementation process is currently incomplete, as more research needs to be conducted.

Speed reading is a product of accelerated learning that has been a focal point of research and discussion. The idea of speed reading is that an individual should be able to drastically increase their reading speed by using specific techniques and mental discipline. This also brings the concept of reading versus the retention of information into focus, as it is natural to wonder if information that is read at an increased speed is as effectively retained in the mind as when an individual is reading at a slower speed. I mean, the whole point of speed reading must be that the reader grasps some of the information, right? That’s going to be part of the detailed discussion in this book.

This book follows a specific formula, which starts with the discussion of accelerated learning. This is to create a canvas with a background that you can use to understand all the aspects of speed reading. Later in the book, you will also learn how you can integrate basic accelerated learning techniques to enhance speed reading and to create a peaceful space where the mind can be conditioned for improved speed reading. The final part of the book takes a turn that focuses on brain health and how, from a lifestyle perspective, you can help your brain become a super-brain with minimal effort. When you reach the end, you should feel ready to speed read an encyclopedia, and you’ll even have all the tools and information to do so!

WARNING: Re-reading this book may result in spontaneous speed reading.

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Accelerated Learning: What You Need to Know

Accelerated learning has been around for quite a while, though it still seems to be relatively unknown and seen as a niche subject by most people who are not part of the academic or educational sphere. This learning type or method is born from the idea that traditional learning styles are not as effective as they should be. It is also known as biologically accelerated learning, and its aim is to use in-depth knowledge of how the human mind functions to improve and customise the learning process for faster and more efficient results.

The original focus in the study of accelerated learning was on teenagers and young adults,