Several years ago, I conducted a seminar for students. Each student filled out an information card. On that card, they were asked whether they were lacking speed or control. Most people indicated that they were missing both. That wasn't the answer I was looking for. Let me try again. On your good days, do you write faster or clearer? On your bad days, what is missing: speed or clarity? Average clarity should allow you to correctly type up 95% of your strokes. Notice that I said "95% of your strokes." This is not the same as "95% of what is dictated." You are going to drop. Your stenography class will always be conducted at a speed that you have not achieved. As soon as you pass a few tests, they send you to the next class where, once again, you will be chasing the speed. You must be able to type up 95% of what you stroke. This is how you should test. This is how you should drill. And this is only average clarity. If you can only do 90%, you need clarity. You are not getting enough strokes correct. Forget any thoughts of speed until you have regained control. If you always do 98%, you may want to consider pouring on the speed. Absolute clarity is not needed in school. This is a learning situation. You need enough clarity to pass your test. Any more than that will impede your speed. I'm not forgetting that some schools insist on 98% for a passed test. That's fine. But that is a different standard. They are talking about 98% on a test. I am talking about drilling. Drills should be harder than tests. Drills teach you things that you haven't mastered. Maintain 95%, and you will be fine. Yes, everybody wants to be a realtimer, but you aren't going to graduate as one. Not if you are smart. It takes too long. Wouldn't you rather be an active reporter earning a hefty paycheck? Become that, and then practice your realtime. There is a good reason why only a small fraction of active reporters become realtime certified. It's hard. It is the top skill level of reporting. If you can maintain proper clarity, then you are ready to tackle speed building. When I give a speech, this is the point where every student perks up. They may have slept through everything else, but suddenly they are wide awake. This is the money question. Speed: How can I get it? And now you think that I am going to show you how to drill way above your goal speed. You want me to finally admit that the way you have been drilling every day and every hour is the correct way to drill if you do it correctly. Well, it's not the correct way to drill, and it will never be. There is no reputable method of continuously drilling above your goal speed. You simply are not ready for that speed. Don't do it. Yes, everybody needs to build speed, but constant drill above your abilities is detrimental. If you are writing with clarity, you are ready for proper speed building. Here is how to do that. First, how do you write? If your fingers write with rhythm, you are truly gifted. You don't need this chapter. You already are writing at the top of your present abilities. And here is more good news. People who write with rhythm have very few bad days. They always perform up to their abilities. If you don't write with rhythm, you have an untapped source of speed available to you. You can increase your speed almost instantly by following the exact pattern of this drill. Did you notice the words that were bolded? I want you to be sure that you do this correctly. Do this right, and you will correct your problem. Do it wrong, and you may increase your problem. To gain rhythm, you must practice a slow drill. Don't pick a goal-speed drill. Pick one that does not challenge you. If you do not have rhythm, you will not have it at any speed. Therefore, it can be corrected at a low speed. If you gain rhythm at any speed, even a very low speed, you will have rhythm at all speeds. This is a hard concept to understand, but it is vital to speed building. If you can write with rhythm at a low speed, you will be less likely to break down under the pressure of a speed drill. By the way, I have marked countless transcripts as dictation material. The hard material is used for drills. Gettable takes become tests. This means that you may have a hard time finding proper speed-building drills. A very good drill for these purposes would be the Little Words or Single Letter drills that are available on Court Reporting Help. These drills contain all of the basic strokes,. An added bonus is that since there are no sentences, there are no phrases. These are perfect for rhythm. Phrasing is for catching up to the speaker. When you are already caught up, a phrase will cause you to stop writing. This drill is to teach you to write without hesitation. Phrases aren't helpful for our present purposes. And yes, this rhythm drill is a speed drill. I know that the concepts may be hard because they have not been explained before. Let me try it this way. To master speed, one must learn to use speed. This is not the same performing with speed. If you gain rhythm at a low speed, you will immediately have rhythm at a high speed. There will not be a learning curve at all. It will instantly translate to the higher speed. Write with rhythm; you will have more speed because you will eliminate those moments when you write very slowly. Have your eyes opened yet? Does it make sense to you? Ninety percent of students need clarity or rhythm. There are only a few who really need speed. Some will pass two tests a week for several weeks straight when they master rhythm. Those people hesitate on the easiest of strokes. Those people never come close to fully catching up to the dictation. Those people usually write a perfect first page followed by major drops followed by absolute perfection followed by major drops. If you are the one that can always read back the challenge drills, and yet you drop just a little too much on the gettable tests, then rhythm is your answer. Guess what? You are already writing above your goal speed. That's why you can catch up. What must be corrected is the part where you fall behind. What you don't have is control of your speed. No rhythm. I have to reiterate the requirements for this drill. You must be writing with 95% clarity. You must have a drill that does not push you. You must have control of the situation. You need to do this to isolate the problem. If you picked the proper drill, you will be able to stay up with the dictation. Well, you will stay up with the dictation in your normal fashion. You will write fast and slow, surge forward, fall behind. People with extreme rhythm problems have trouble writing all of an easy drill. They are the ones who do just as well on a fast drill as they do on a slow one. They only pass tests on their good days. They often have bad days. The good news is that these people will write faster and better as soon as they learn the correct way to write slowly. Did that last line sound funny to you? It shouldn't. People with no rhythm depend on pure speed to make up for the amount of words they are forced to carry. They turn on the speed and catch up. Well, if they can catch up when they are loaded down with words, then they are demonstrating the fact that they have already mastered their goal speed. In fact, they are showing that they are faster than the goal speed. You have to be faster than the dictation material if you are going to catch up. This is what happens. You write too slow for one reason or another. You get far behind. You write like crazy and catch up. You write too slow for one reason or another. You get behind. You write like crazy and catch up. And on and on and on. Are you ready for another myth-shattering lesson. Rhythm does not mean writing everything at the same speed. We are not machines. Some strokes are harder. There are two acceptable reasons for writing a particular stroke slower than normal. The first reason is that it is a hard stroke. Some strokes are tough: flash, sanction, tact. Some are easy: far, sin, tat. The second reason for uneven rhythm is that you must think about the strokes that you have not fully incorporated into your mental dictionary. In other words, if you must think about the difference between jury, juror, injure and injury, then you will write those strokes slower or you will misstroke them. Please write them slowly and correctly. That is the only way to master the outline. The metronome has long been touted as a way to gain rhythm, but it is a poor tool for that purpose. We write individual strokes at different speeds. That is a fact. Rhythm, for reporters, means writing with control at a high average speed. Lack of rhythm means slowing down on easy sections or stopping on hard sections. A superior solution is to use The Drill Machine. If you haven't already downloaded it, do so now. It is perfect for this drill. If you wish to use a tape instead, that will work also. Drilling is drilling. Well, proper drilling is drilling. Improper drilling can be harmful. Imagine that you have just started a drill. If you are using the Little Words drill, then you can give yourself a set number of words that you will allow yourself to carry. Do not carry any more than that. Even if you feel like you can catch up, don't do it. Stop the drill when you get behind. Think about what happened. Why did you fall behind? Was it the strokes? Probably not, but if you feel it is, then you should visit your theory book. What else could have caused you to fall behind? Lack of attention? Maybe. This is usually a misdiagnosis. A student who really has lack of attention probably isn't attending school enough anyway. But if it isn't lack of attention, what is it? Well, what are you attentive to? What concerns you during a test or a drill? Nobody ever asked you that before, huh? To quote Jim Nabors in his role as Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise." You have attention. How could you get up every morning and drag your tired butt into school if you didn't care enough to have attention? What don't you have? What you don't have is focus. You aren't thinking about the proper things. We have to multitask to be reporters. We hear and remember what is said while we are stroking what has already been said. One stroke cannot take all of our focus. One outline cannot take all of our focus. It can only take a small portion. Suppose you are caught up, and the dictator has just spoken a hard word. By the time you stroke it, you may have dropped a word or two behind because you were thinking about how to stroke the hard word while you were stroking the words that came before it. Now you are farther behind, and you still have to stroke the hard word. By the time you are done stroking it, you may be another word or two behind. This happens to many students. It would be better to spend more time thinking about the strokes you are presently writing. When you hit the hard word, then you can figure it out. Remember that it is correct to write the hard strokes slower than the easy ones. "But, Barb, I'm writing one of the Little Words drills. There aren't any really hard strokes. Why am I falling behind on relatively easy material?" It is still lack of focus. What are you focusing on? What is important to you when you drill? What is important to you when you test? What is your game plan, your battle plan, your master plan? What is it? On a speed drill, it is to maximize the number of strokes per minute. The higher the number, the faster you are. On a speed drill, you often have to sacrifice some of your clarity. You have to accept less than perfect outlines because you are asking your brain to think at a new and higher speed. A drill on clarity will sacrifice speed at all costs. To gain clarity, you have to insist that the brain start sending down the proper signals instead of fuzzy signals. If you are bad at vowels, it is because you accept strokes that are "close enough." You never learned them correctly, and you still spend brain power wondering how to stroke them. Clarity drills must be done very slowly. Reading from hard copy makes a great clarity drill. Force your brain to remember the correct stroke. Forget about speed. Learn the strokes. Your plan for a test is special. There are rules that you break when you take a test. After all, your purpose is to move from one speed to another, and you want to do this as quickly as you can. On a test, close enough to be read is okay. On a test, dropping the hard words is okay. On a test, carrying more than normal may save a test, if you eventually catch up. This is not the way to drill. This is a horrible way to drill. This is the complete opposite of how you should drill. But on a test, sometimes we must break the rules to keep up. And then there are other drills that focus on specific types of material or strokes. But your success boils down to what you focus on. This chapter is about rhythm. What should you focus on if your problem is rhythm? On a rhythm or a control drill, your goal is the maximum number of readable strokes before you fall behind. You aren't going fast; so readable strokes shouldn't be a problem. The hard part is the falling behind. You sacrifice speed to gain control and rhythm. Once you gain control and rhythm, you can immediately drill at a higher speed. But what do you focus on to maintain rhythm? Your focus is the number of words you are carrying. That is all. Don't complicate this any more than you have to. If you maintain a comfortable margin between you and the speaker, you will have time to write the hard words at a slower speed. Suppose you normally carry four words. When you drill, one hard word may force you to carry a few more. That's all right. But to compensate you must say to yourself, "I am going to write the next series of strokes faster than normal. I am going to accept notes that are a little sloppier than normal. I am going to immediately catch up." Those who need rhythm can't do that. Not all the time. Not even on easy drills. That's why the easy drills are the best place to correct this. Those who need rhythm often carry an ungodly amount of words. They have no choice. If you carry X number of words on a goal-speed drill, you should carry less than X on a rhythm drill. After all, it is a slower, easier drill. Be honest with yourself about how many words you normally carry. You are looking to improve. Don't try to become perfect overnight. Don't set your goals unreasonably high. You can learn to carry a minimum of words. It is easy to do when you work on it. But start out with a realistic goal. In other words, if you always carry eight words with no trouble, then try to limit yourself to carrying no more than seven. Then six, then five, etc. Do not allow yourself to carry more than your maximum. It doesn't matter whether you catch up or not. The problem isn't whether or not you can catch up. The problem is that you allowed yourself to get that far behind. As soon as you reach your limit, you must stop. You don't need to repeat that section. What you need to do is gather your wits about you. Focus on maintaining the proper distance. And then start the drill again. When you can always maintain a tolerable number of words, then you can work on the specific characteristics of your writing. If you use the asterisk more than once a minute, you are sabotaging yourself. First you misstroke. Then you asterisk. Then you stroke again. All of a sudden, a one-stroke outline costs you three strokes. Wouldn't it be better to give two strokes worth of time to the stroke. In other words, slow down, write it correctly, and save time. If you are thinking about outlines of words that you use daily, then you need to review your theory book. Once your brain knows these strokes, it can provide them to you during a drill or test. However, unusual or seldom-used outlines will always cause you to slow down. Some outlines you must think about more than others. You want to keep those to a minimum, but you must accept them. Are there strokes that you simply cannot competently do? Once again, hit the theory book. It is a fact of life that the strokes that we should practice most are the strokes we hate to do. Too bad. I have no sympathy for those who say that they can't do numbers or prefixes or endings. Unless they practice them. If you know what your weakness is, you should attack that weakness until it is a strength. Still, even if you know your outlines and you can do the strokes, you may still have a lack of rhythm. If you fall behind on the ordinary strokes, you have the worst case scenario. The best thing for you to do is to slow down the drill even more. Since it is slower, you must insist on carrying fewer words. You may have to start by carrying five, but if you are using The Drill Machine and the Little Words drills, you should be able to get it to two or three words. But no matter how many words you set as your maximum, do not accept more. Stop when you reach that number. Don't wait to see if you catch up. Catching up is counterproductive. In fact, it masks the problem. Of course, you should be able to catch up when you are drilling at such a low speed. Who cares? Big deal. Your problem is that you end up carrying too much. Even at a low speed, you carry too much. Work on that. The heck with catching up. That is already one of your strengths. That's about all you have been working on since you started school. It will be very hard to get the brain retrained if you are one of those who carry for no good reason. It will be frustrating. If you use the Little Words or Single Letters drills, accept no drops. Lower the speed. These are not hard strokes. You should be able to carry your particular number of words with very little variation. If you drill on ordinary taped drills or hard copy, you must accept the fact that certain sections may be beyond you even at a low speed. If you drop because a section was difficult, disregard it. This isn't a drill on how to stroke hard outlines. This is a drill on rhythm. Look for the sections where you fall behind on easy words. It is always better to stop the drill before you actually fall behind. Why? Because by the time you fall behind you have already done something wrong. You need to stop doing that wrong thing. You need to change the pattern. If you struggle with two consecutive strokes that you normally fly over, maybe that is a sign that you are about to get behind. It will not harm you to stop a drill before you get behind. It will really help if you can stop a drill before you do whatever causes you to get behind. Some people say that they can feel when they are about to fall behind. They can sense the brain having a mini-breakdown. If you are one of these people, you are lucky. All you have to do is stop the drill as soon as you become aware of what is happening. Don't even wait to see if you fall behind. It doesn't matter if you fall behind this particular time. You need to retrain your brain to focus, and right now your brain is on overload. You need to change the pattern that it follows. Stop the drill. Give yourself a moment to get composed. Start the drill again. By the way, what are you thinking about when your brain goes into overload? For some it is an upcoming stroke. For others, it is a stroke that they have already made. For others, it is a loud noise in the hallway or a classmate's noisy machine. It is understandable, but wrong, to focus on a certain word before you begin stroking it. It is not acceptable to keep thinking about previous strokes. Once it has been stroked, let it go. You can't change it. It is unreasonable to believe that you will not hear irritating, disturbing, and interrupting noises. It is reasonable to be irritated, disturbed, and interrupted by these noises. It is unreasonable to focus on them to the extent that it costs you a test.
Always maintain 95% clarity of strokes that you make. The best speed drills are short and only a little faster than you. The best rhythm drills are slow. They train you to maintain a semi-constant speed. The actual speed of the drill is not a factor. Hard drills should be done slower. Nonetheless, they can and should be done as speed drills. Conversely, easy drills should be done above your normal push speed. Nonetheless, they can and should be done as a control or rhythm drills. The easiest way to gain speed is to gain rhythm. There are proper ways to take a test and proper ways to drill. They aren't necessarily the same thing. Don't accept crap.
| 
