Phoenix Theory Speed-building Tips 10

QUICK TIP

Would you like to add some variety to your practice material? Do you need longer dictation takes so you can develop more endurance?

With sufficient writing speed, writing TV programs can be informative and enjoyable and also expose you to current events, with related terminology and the names of people, places, and things involved.

Do you have a CD encyclopedia with audio? Interesting, sometimes challenging writing on a broad spectrum of subject matter and vocabulary.

Your local library has books on audio tapes on a variety of subjects and undoubtedly including some of your favorite authors of fiction. Great fun to write, exposure to different speaking voices, different styles of speech, interesting vocabulary. And if you have a variable speed tape player, you have the added advantage of being able to adjust the speed!

And remember, you don’t make significant breakthroughs in speed if you’re not focused on what you’re doing or if you’re writing with an, "I’ll just get down what I can write comfortably" attitude. Whatever you write and whenever you’re writing, concentrate solely on hearing and writing EVERY word. "Stretch" just as hard as you possibly can to write EVERY word. Write as though you’re writing an actual job and you know the attorney is going to ask you to read every word back. Write as though you’re making the official record of some proceeding to which you’re a party and the accuracy and completeness of the record could have an impact on YOUR life.

Select a one-minute segment from one of your practice tapes, get permission from your teacher to record a warm-up session, find a newspaper or magazine article and dictate it yourself, or con a friend or family member into dictating one-minute takes for you on a variety of material. And it doesn’t have to be counted or EXACTLY one minute.

First write the take at a comfortable speed where you can stroke it with total (or near total) accuracy. Read it back against the audio and circle EVERY fingering error or shadow. Write it again at the same speed, read it back, write it again, read it back—until you can write the entire one-minute take with near-perfect notes (no more than two or three stroking errors).

Now, using your variable speed tape player, increase the speed slightly, write it again, check your notes. If you’re still writing with the necessary accuracy, increase the speed slightly and write it again. If fingering errors start to creep in, stay at that speed until you again have the accuracy under control; then start increasing the speed again.

Continue this process until you’ve pushed the speed on this short take JUST AS HIGH AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN!

You’re accomplishing several things: You’re training yourself to hear and process information faster; you’re training your fingers to respond and to move faster; the repetition is reinforcing the muscle memory for all the fingering positions and fingering progressions involved, so you’re learning to write the individual words and even sequences of words more automatically and faster; and you’re reinforcing your stroking ACCURACY for all the words and word sequences in the take. And you’re PROVING to yourself, "Hey, I really CAN write faster!"

In fact, you may be amazed at just how fast you can write these short "speed push/accuracy" takes. At the school I formerly owned, these "speed push" takes were a regular assignment which the students treated as a challenge and a contest—with themselves and with their classmates. Students would practice these takes as part of their homework assignment; then the teacher would dictate them for readback in class. In my high-speed classes, I’d continue increasing the dictation speeds as long as even one student in the class could keep on writing the speeds, and it wasn’t unusual to have to dictate at 260, 280, even 300 wpm. And the students enjoyed competing to see if THEY could be the fastest on any particular segment or on any particular day.

If it’s important to you to know the exact speeds at which you’re writing, count the number of words in the take; time yourself with the sweep hand on your watch or clock. Divide the number of seconds into the total number of words to see how many words you wrote per second; then multiply by 60 to find out how many words you wrote per minute.

It would be ideal if you could include three of these "speed push/accuracy" exercises in your weekly practice. If time doesn’t allow for three, even one will add to your progress in building speed and reinforcing your stroking accuracy.