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| Easy ErrorsDo you write "This" for "That"? Do you have the same mess of confusing symbols when you stroke "In," "From," "There," "This," or other easy briefs? Are your Q&A symbols stinkers? Do you want to know the answer? Are you sure? Really? First find someone with a strong right hand and a high threshold of pain. Stick that person in the chair next to you. Every time you mis-stroke one of these words that you should have perfected in Theory, get that person to give you a good whack on the back of your big ol' punkinhead. Maybe then you will learn. Seriously, the problem is that you are not paying any attention to these strokes because they are too easy. You did conquer them in Theory. You have mastered them. Not only that, now that you are in the higher speeds, you are writing tough dictation as well as anybody in your class. Well, jeepers, golly darn, what is a person to do? Pay close attention to this explanation. If enough of it can sneak past your speed-addicted mind, you can cure your problem overnight. When you thoroughly master a brief, a phrase, or a very common stroke, your brain puts that outline in a special place. Your brain doesn't need to think about how to write that stroke. It has it memorized. All it has to do is send out the signals, and poof, the stroke is done. Take this example as an example of an example. Many people write the phrase "Of the" as OFT. If you do that, then your brain will eventually put that stroke in the special place that it puts all of your deeply ingrained briefs. When you hear "Of the," your brain reaches into that bag of special briefs and pulls out the stroke. That is good. It saves an awful lot of thinking. It gives you more time to work on the harder strokes. Here is proof that you and your brain are really using that special bag of briefs. If you are in Theory, you will have little trouble answering the following questions. If you are in the high speeds, you will have to stop and think about the answers. What letters make up the left-hand G? What letter is represented by the right-hand letters PBLG? What letters are in the brief "Believe"? Theory people can answer these questions easier than high-speed people because their brains have not mastered these strokes. They still think of these letters and words as being made up of other letters. That is how they write. That is how they will write until they have mastered them. A theory student writes the word "Believe" by stroking PWHRAO*EF or something similar. They think in individual letters even when they stroke briefs. Upper-speed people have mastered these strokes. They think of these strokes as finger positions. The individual letters that make up the word "Believe" is not important to them. To the high-speed students, "Believe" is made up of a certain finger pattern. That is how it should be. You want that to happen. It helps to make you faster. So what good is knowing how your brain thinks if you still get the easy words wrong? You get the easy words wrong because you know deep down in your soul that you have mastered these words. Instead of giving even fleeting attention to these strokes, you are utterly ignoring them because you are concentrating solely on the harder strokes. Many people with this problem actually perform better on tests that do not contain any easy strokes. You will clean up these strokes when you begin to pay just a little, tiny itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny bit of attention to them. You won't go slower when you pay more attention to them. Your brain works at light speed compared to your hands. All you need to do is pay enough attention to these strokes so that your hands can form the correct pattern. Don't obsess about them. You have already conquered them. Just give your hands a fighting chance at receiving the signal that your brain should be sending them. You are supposed to think in this pattern: Hear the brief, pull the brief out of your special bag of briefs, send the brief to your fingers, forget about the brief, start working on the next stroke. This is what you are doing: Hear the brief, pull the brief out of your special bag of briefs, start to send the brief to your fingers, forget about the brief before it reaches your fingers, start working on the next stroke. I repeat: Your brain works much much faster than your fingers. Let your brain do its job. You will not lose finger speed. Stephen Shastay |
T shirts, hats, sweatshirts, etc., designed by students and reporters How to Grade a TestEasy ErrorsHarry S Truman and why you don't put a period after the middle initial. John F. Kennedy and why he is not a jelly doughnut. A harangue by Buzz Gadflie on those junky plastic paper trays.
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