BUILDING SPEED #4
| QUICK TIP Do you frequently get strokes for little words confused—like stroking "it" for "the" and vice versa, or "this" for "that," "have" for "had," etc.? This is HESITATION; it’s slowing you down. Don’t sit there and wait for the problem to just "resolve itself"; do something about it! Pick one word you’re having trouble with: let’s start with "the." Grab a magazine or newspaper article, the novel you’re reading, a list of words, anything. Now write the article or list and stroke "the" in front of EVERY word. Write it again and insert "the" after every word. For example, I have a joke sitting here. One sentence is, "The elves were complaining about not getting paid for the overtime they had while making the toys." To practice "the," I would write: the elves the were the complaining the about the not the getting the paid the for the overtime," etc. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t make sense in context. All you’re doing is programming and reinforcing the "muscle memory" for stroking "the" to the point that when you see, hear, or think "the," your fingers just AUTOMATICALLY go to the right key(s). Use the same material or pick some different material and do exactly the same thing for each of the other words you’ve been confusing. You’ll be amazed at how quickly the intense repetition will create very solid muscle memory, eliminating these stroking problems and this hesitation—and that translates into more writing SPEED. If you want to "kill two birds with one stone," use your list of brief forms, your list of "problem words," vocabulary lists from your medical or legal classes, etc., for this practice material! |
It’s a very common and very natural mistake for students to feel you should stroke each word just as soon as it leaves the speaker’s mouth. You’re afraid that if you don’t, you’ll get too far behind and not be able to catch up, or you won’t remember what was said next. And you certainly don’t want your teacher or your classmates to think you "can’t keep up."
The experienced writer, the "smart" writer, writes FAR ENOUGH BEHIND THE SPEAKER so that words are understood in context before they’re stroked.
If you glance down through your paper notes and you see instance after instance where a false start has been asterisked out and re-stroked, it’s a pretty safe bet that you’re trying to "stay right on top of the speaker." For example, you heard—and wrote—"They went there," before you hear "own separate ways," and then you realize you stroked "there" instead of "their" and you have to hit the asterisk and make a correction. Or you’re writing and you realize you’ve already written the first word or two of what could have been a one-stroke phrase—and you hesitate while you decide whether to just keep writing it out or asterisk it out and rewrite it using your phrase. Or you just plain mishear a word that you would have understood perfectly if you’d just had the benefit of context. You miss stroking a piece of critical punctuation that can change the whole meaning of what was said—because you didn’t yet understand the context.
Regardless of whether you take time to asterisk out and make the correction or whether you just continue writing and hope you can catch and correct the error during readback or transcription, you’ve been distracted by realizing you made an error, you’ve hesitated at least momentarily while deciding what to do about it, your concentration has been interrupted, you’ve been distracted from hearing the ongoing dictation and may have missed a few words, your stroking rhythm has been interrupted—all of which detract from your SPEED.
ALWAYS write far enough behind the speaker so that you understand the words in context before you actually stroke them. This will probably seem awkward and a little intimidating at first—until you recognize that your brain IS a multi-tasking computer and that you ABSOLUTELY CAN be writing one thing and listening to, understanding, and retaining something else at the same time—and can do it very accurately and comfortably. With enough practice, you can also make a grocery list or plan the menu for your dinner party at the same time. (That’s not recommended—but it is doable.<gg>>)
And again, the key is PRACTICE. When working on this area of skill development in class, the instructor starts dictating—but students are not allowed to start stroking until the instructor gives a hand signal. You can practice on this on your own just as well. Start out very conservatively by only writing three or four words behind the speaker. When the dictation starts, wait until the first three or four words are spoken BEFORE you start stroking, and try to always stay at least that distance behind the speaker. As soon as you’re comfortable with that, let five or six words pass before you start stroking each take. And keep building from there.
What’s the maximum number of words you should try to be able to "trail"? As a practice exercise, I’d keep pushing it as far as I could—because it’s an excellent way to increase your RETENTION, and good retention can sometimes be a life saver. When you’re "on the job," you’ll find yourself adjusting the distance you "trail" depending upon the particular speaker and how easy he/she is to understand. If the speaker has an accent, a speech impediment, mumbles, or is just plain difficult to hear or understand, you’ll almost automatically start writing a little further behind because your comprehension will be a little slower.
And let’s put it in a perspective that may make this technique of "trailing" seem a little less intimidating. If someone is speaking at 180 wpm, that’s an average of three words per second. So if you’re "trailing" by ten words, that’s only about three seconds. That’s not so intimidating, is it?
Learning to "write behind the speaker" is one of the most valuable lessons you can learn. You’ll eliminate a lot of hesitation and distraction while you "recognize" an error and decide what to do about it, you’ll write fewer strokes because you won’t be stroking the asterisk and stroking corrections, you’ll be able to retain better concentration, you’ll write a cleaner, more accurate, more readable record. And your SPEED will be higher.
And as you build your ability to "retain" what was said, you’ll gradually realize that there’s no need to panic just because you’ve fallen behind. In the real world, people don’t speak at a nice, steady pace. They usually talk in spurts and pauses—but that doesn’t mean you have to write in spurts and pauses, which can be pretty hard in your nervous system. If you have good powers of retention, you can saunter along at a comfortable pace, knowing that you can remember and write everything that was said and still be ready for their next burst of speech.
Trust me, the person who tries to write every word the minute it leaves the speaker’s mouth works a heck of a lot harder than the person who trails behind the speaker—they work harder while they’re writing, and they work harder when they have to clean all those false starts out of the transcript.
On everything you write from now on, either in class or at home, ALWAYS write behind the speaker. And when practicing at home, keep gradually increasing the number of words you’re trailing so you keep improving your retention.