QUESTION:   I just finished theory. I'm looking for some assistance in improving
my speed and reiterating theory. (I need to get my speed up to about 120wpm).

If you could recommend a specific drill, it would be greatly appreciated.  The sooner I get my speed up the sooner I get to go back to school (so very soon hopefully).

Thank you very very much in advance.

ANSWER:    You need to reinforce your strokes and outlines before they fade from your memory.   You should be doing a great variety of types of drills. 

Go through your Theory book page by page.  Put a paper clip on any page that needs practice.  Spend one minute a day on each page.  Practice them every single day.

Finger drills are very helpful for dexterity and reaction time.

Little words drills are great to improve your reaction time. 

Slow drills on hard Literary will teach you how to write those big words. 

QUESTION:   Why am I getting so discouraged?  I can't even pass my 80's!

ANSWER:  Hey, don't get discouraged.  Calm down.  Write clearly. 

Don't force your strokes.  Allow yourself time to write.  Don't try to write fast.  Write with rhythm.  Move smoothly from one outline to the next.

Your hands will write at their top speed without you "urging" them to go faster.  That means that some strokes will be slower than others.

If you force your hands to write faster than they can, the only possible result is that your writing will break down.

So ignore the speed of your strokes.  It is fine as it is.

Instead work on the space between each stroke.  It is hesitation that saps your speed. 

1)  You must write clearly at all times and at all speeds.

2)  If you write clearly, then work on keeping the hands moving at all times.  Ignore the speed, but ensure that you keep the hands moving.

3)  If you write clearly and if you can keep your hands moving smoothly at all times, then work on the number of words that you carry.

4)  If you write clearly, and if you keep your hands moving smoothly at all time, and if you reduce the number of words that you carry, then work on your graduation speech.

   Some of you will be on Spring Break soon.  This is the perfect time to recuperate.  I  believe that most court reporters are hard-working, driven individualists.  There are very few that need advice about how to stay busy.  If you are a steno student, you can probably talk for a half hour straight about all the things that you want to do if you ever get the time.  We keep hectic schedules.  Court reporters go the extra mile, but only when they cannot go two extra miles.
    
   That's commendable.  But step over here and let me talk to you world-beaters for a moment.  You can overdo it if you don't watch out.  We need you to be fresh and energetic at school.   Proper rest is critical to your top performance. 

  Here are two analogies straight from the sports world.

   Golfers do not go to every tournament.  They take off now and then.  It is true that they may miss a payday here and there, but they look at the big picture.  If they are refreshed, they are more likely to play their finest golf. 

   Baseball players do not play every game.  By July, they start to get tired.  Crafty managers give their players a game off here and there before they become lethargic.  They get days off during the season even when they are not hurt. 

   Some of these guys earn $10 million a year.  They get that money for their performance.  They need to be at their best.  A guy who gets 6 hits out of 20 earns about twice the amount of the guys who only get 5 hits out of 20.  They can't afford to just go through the motions.

   Quality beats quantity every time.  It doesn't matter if they are kicking the ball, throwing it, running with it, hitting it, catching it, pitching it, rolling it or whatever they do with it.  They want the top performance.  And they get that by resting occasionally.

   Now for you doubters who say that stenography is not comparable to sports, let me expand a little. 

   Musicians burn out on the road.  All they do is travel and play music, and they break down. 

   Race car drivers do nothing but sit in a car and turn left about a gazillion times per race.  They need to do that with a high degree of skill.  And they need rest.

   In chess, a championship match consists of two guys who sit in comfortable chairs and occasionally move little pieces of ivory.  The matches leave the players drained of energy and spirit.  If they would immediately play another match, they would not perform at the same level.  They need a rest.

   Truck drivers sit in a big vehicle, push pedals, and turn wheels.  By national law, they can only push those pedals and turn those wheels for a certain amount of time.  Even our own dear government recognizes the importance of quality over quantity. 

     I often draw correlations between stenography and other professions and skills.  They teach motor skills.  We teach motor skills.  They teach a certain way.  We teach -- well, let's see.

     Right now, it is spring training for baseball.  Pitchers are working on pitching; batters on batting, fielders on fielding; runners on running.  Every team does it.

     What kind of practice do they do before a real game?  Very little.  Practice may occur at other times of the day, but before the game, they aren't practicing.  They are warming up.  Easy ground balls, easy throws, easy pitches. 

    There is a time for practice and a time for warm up.  They figure that they are about to play a game with whatever skills they came to the park with.  If they want to have the best chance to win, they will use those skills to their best advantage.  And finally, they figure that the best way to do that is to warm up, limber up, psyche up.   Easy ground balls, easy throws, easy pitches. 

     When I went to school, every teacher believed that the best way to prepare students for a test was to feed them fast dictation before the test.  No easy ground balls; no easy throws; no easy pitches.

     Unlike sports, which gives their players easy warm up, all of my teachers drilled me beyond my abilities on test day.  This was especially true in the last five minutes of drill.  It was felt that the test would sound slow, if the drill immediately preceding it was fast.

     That was true.  It did sound slow.  But I was a quivering mass of unclarity and hesitation by the time of the test.  I could no longer perform at the top of my top abilities.

     So it really didn't help me.  I passed my 200s by ignoring the final dictation before the test.  When everybody else was writing at 220 and 240, I was warming up by slowly writing such stock sentences as "Now is the time for ...." and "The quick brown fox jumped ...."

     Today was test day.  The students received slow material at a controlled rate.  These students are at the end of Theory and are competing for 60 and 80 wpm tests.  Their drill was as low as 40 wpm and as high as 80 wpm. 

    Tomorrow is not test day.  Every drill will push the students for one reason or another.  The slow drills will require writing unusual words or thick words.  The fast drill will be extremely fast.  The regular drill will require that the student know common briefs and phrases or know how to write out the words.  The drill will reach as high as 120 on normal dictation.  Easy dictation will be much higher. 

    Today was game day.  I warmed them up. 

    Tomorrow is for practice. 

Lots of people have trouble with those timesaving strokes known as "Briefs and Phrases."    They are great when they work, but horrible when they don't.  As you go up in speed, you must make choices about them.  If you hesitate for one second at 225, you have let four words go by.  If you write out almost any Q&A phrase, you end up writing very simple words that are no trouble. 

Ultimately, the hesitation is worse than writing out the phrase.  Keep that straight.  Writing out the phrase is always a correct choice.  Hesitating on the phrase is always incorrect.  If you use the brief or phrase, it must be without hesitation.

Briefs and phrases are great to know, even better to know how to use.  But they will never be part of your base speed.  They are for emergencies.  They help you get out of trouble. 

Briefs and phrases are little bonuses to ease your burden.  But you can't depend on them.  They do not consistently appear. 

One section has a lot of briefs and phrases.  So you do well.  The next section has very few.  So you do not so good. 

It is nice that you performed so well on the first section, but you won't be passing many tests until you can do the second section. 

     Step Three asked you to do a slow easy drill and drop the last word in every sentence.

   Step Four wants you to do the same drill, but now you should drop the hardest word in each sentence.  Now you must choose.  Which word slows you down the most or is the hardest to stroke?   Find that word.  Drop it.  Move on to the next word.

   Remember to keep your drill very slow.  You are learning to drop.  Learn to knock out all hesitation associated with the drop.  Keep it smooth. 

   This drill is probably very irritating to some of you.  Calm down.  You don't have to write at breakneck speed to succeed.  Rhythm, control, clarity -- those are the keys. 

   No fair skipping some of the steps.  If you haven't put in the time, you won't progress as well. 

   If you have any trouble with this drill, you should repeat earlier steps. 

   
   

   "Pulling" the dictation out of your notes refers to the skill necessary to read sloppy notes.  It is a useful skill for emergency situations.

   But if you are faced with this situation,  the critical question is not whether you can read the notes.  The question is: why did you write so sloppy?

   Your road to improvement lies in writing clearer.  That is the skill that you need.  

   And the "pulling" of the dictation?  Save that for the emergency situations. 

   You should not have more than one "emergency" situation per minute.  You should be able to read your notes very quickly and accurately.  If you constantly stumble on readback, then you are not writing well enough.

   Keep your standards high.  You are training for one of the most respected jobs in the world.  It is assumed that all stenographers are competent and professional.  That is a reputation that we can be proud of.

   I don't know who coined the term, but short, quick Questions and Answers turn Testimony into that special drill known as Popcorn.
   You are either on top of the dictation or you are dropping.  There is no middle ground.  Popcorn Testimony is unforgiving. 
   This makes it the perfect drill to teach Literary.  On the average Literary drill, you can learn bad habits.  These habits could be the reason why you are not passing Literary.   Popcorn drill will not allow such habits. 
   Sometimes, the very best drill for Literary is Popcorn Testimony.

   By the way, you can tell whether you need Popcorn Testimony by asking yourself this question:  Do you hate Popcorn Testimony?  If you do, then you really need to practice it. 

   This is our Age of Enlightenment.  The speed-first methods of writing are falling into disfavor.  It will take time.  Ten years ago, a teacher who believed in clarity and rhythm was a maverick.  Today, the roles are being switched.  The mainstream authors, save one misguided exception, all agree.  Speed is not the answer. 

   Some of your teachers get as irritated as I do over the "new" theories of writing as fast as possible on material that is beyond your abilities.  We heard it all before.  It's not new.  It didn't work for us.  It won't work for you. 

   Speed isn't the answer.  Even the guys who preach speed don't really believe it anymore.  They have gotten tired of the rest of us asking them about clarity and control.  Nowadays, they always end their lectures by saying "And of course, you must have clarity and control the whole time." 

   Heck, if I have clarity and control, I don't need speed.  I need directions to the next class because I just passed my tests.

   I go farther than most teachers.  I don't teach speed at all.  I teach how to handle hesitation, big words, little words, clarity, carrying, strategy, dropping, names, numbers, phrases, briefs, etc.  In my class, I don't want you to be writing at top speed.  I want you to write slower than that so that you can achieve top performance.  Speed demons always crash and burn.  I want someone who can make it to the end of the race.
   
      If you are almost ready to pass a test and you think you need a little more speed, you probably:
         have trouble with little words
         have trouble with the s, d, g, endings.
         readback in class pretty well
         don't surge fast and slow very much, but when you do, you have trouble stopping
         have trouble regaining accuracy after you "fracture" your writing on a hard drill      
         have little trouble on speed drills
         have trouble with Testimony

   That last one isn't fair.  It's too easy.  All people who have trouble with Testimony blame it on speed.  It's a normal reaction, but it isn't correct.  Testimony if chock full of all of those simple words that you practiced in Theory.  You can write those words faster than any others.  The answer isn't speed.

   Conversely, those who hate Literary are quite frank and open that the problem is not speed.  It's all of those big blankety-blank words.

   Here is the whole deal in a nut shell.  Your success does not depend on how fast you write.  You write fast enough as it is.  You don't need to practice that skill.  You are having trouble on the tests because on certain parts of the test you write extremely slow.  If you are close to passing a test, there are only a couple of those slow sections per test. 

   You can argue that you are not writing slow, but that the dictation is coming too fast.  Same difference.  The fact is that the teacher is spitting out the words and you're having trouble writing them.  Don't worry about where we place the blame.  Worry about how to change your writing so that you gain more points on those hard sections. 

All you have to do is figure out how to perform a little better on two or three sections of a test.  Sorry, no cool answers from me.  You have to figure that out for yourself.  What is it about a test that makes it so tough?  That's the question that leads to your answer.

   The hard parts on my tests involve words that begin with vowels, names, lists of any kind, the goofy right-hand endings, strings of little words.  Those are my "hard" sections on a test.  Each one is something that I don't do very well.  Each one is something that I should practice every day.  Each one involves not a lack of speed, but a lack of basic skills. 

   In other words, I will be "faster," when I have learned not to be so slow on those things. 

   What will make you "faster"?  Find out, then direct your practice at it.

   You can't write it fast until you can write it slow.  Don't let anybody tell you otherwise. 

Answers to many questions

   ANSWER NO. 1  No.  The drill is supposed to be really slow.  The problem is dropping, not stroking.  You have to allow yourself time to learn the technique.  Go slow.  Write clean.  Drop without hesitation.

   ANSWER NO. 2  Yes, that is all right.  You can use the technique now during regular drills or tests.  Just make sure that you continue to refine the technique by repeated practice at low speed with easy words.

   ANSWER NO. 3  If you get really bored, you can use regular drill.  Just make sure you refine the technique by repeated practice at low speed with easy words.

   ANSWER NO. 4  Easy words.  That's all I'll say while you take that tone of voice.

   ANSWER NO. 5  See that wasn't so hard.  Okay, I'll tell you why easy words are better than any others as far as this drill.  You are learning to judge the relative worth of the words that you stroke.  You should be thinking about how much work it takes you to earn each point on a test. 

   When you drop, you should drop the most difficult word.  Easy words help you learn that skill.  In this case, easy words are actually the hard ones.  It is hard to tell which one to choose.
   
Hard Sentence to choose the hard word:  Where was it when you saw it? Easy words make it hard to choose.  In the first sentence, I have to weigh my clarity and speed on words that are close to memorized.  I write all of the words relatively well, but if I had to choose, the word "when" gives me more trouble.

Easy Sentence to choose the hard word:  Mr. President, the stamped legislation before us requires our utmost attention.
Hard words make it easy to choose.  Instead of pure writing, we employ briefs, phrases, squeezes, with varying success.  Some strokes are just tough.  The hardest word for me is "stamped."  I hate all words with the MP ending.  "Utmost" is also tough.  It's the same number of strokes as "requires," but I don't like the ST ending of "utmost."  "Utmost" is actually a shorter word than "legislation" or "attention," but  they are both easy one-stroke words. 

So you learn on the easy words.  Then it is a dream to apply it to the big words on regular dictation.  
   ANSWER NO. 6   Ubiquitous?  Yes, that word is everywhere, isn't it.

   ANSWER NO. 8  It took you a lot of practice and a lot of class time to get to where you are.  Be patient.  It will not take you long to get on the right track.

   ANSWER NO. 9  No, I haven't seen Answer No. 7 either.  We called his house.  His mom said he was trying out for a job as an Exhibit No.