Ages ago I asked about study buddies. I'm thinking bloggish. Things we've noticed or had troubles with that we can't share with non-shorthand people, and would bore those who have more experience. I am often online between 10 and 2 on school days, Toronto time zone (EST), but I don't hang out in chat rooms or white boards just in case.
My end goal is 85 wpm from dictation with minimal errors. This seems typical for a one year course, and would allow me to use a Cepstral voice without adding pauses to the text file. I did 45wpm for known material, the manual is 12 chapters, so if I add 5wpm per chapter I'll reach the goal.
Another goal is to read the shorthand notes I make in my todo list. (Took me 5 minutes to decipher "study b-u-d-e-s on m-s-n group". I kept thinking m-s-n was a brief form!)
I do not want to go right to the Practice exercises in each chapter, so I work through Graded Readings, Fundamental Drills and the 5000 Words for each chapter before I do the dictation. I got a lot done on the holidays, and have stalled.
The first two chapters, I wrote out the entire Fundamental Drills in the left column, then copied it into the right column. Very time-consuming, but it did make me aware of my bad penmanship. I will do something shorter for Chapter 3 and see how it goes.
When I talk about wpm, it's very approximate. See the thread on Computer Dictation for details.
My goals for the next two weeks are:
- Write the "Reading and Dictation Practice" and "Writing Practice" from Chapter 2, Unit 4-6, from dictation at approx 45wpm with 95% accuracy. I tried it once already and missed about one word in 10, so I rewrote it slowly and am now ready to retry the dictation.
- Copy half the Chapter 3 exercises in Fundamental Drills and read what I've written. (I've already read them a few times.) Hopefully it will be good enough that I won't have to do more.
- Write the "Practices" from the manual from dictation at approx 50 wpm, 95% accuracy. (First I have to figure out what delay that would be.)
Labels: anythinggoes