Top 100 Words

(from Speed Teacher)

Stephen J. Shastay

            Without a doubt, you must be able to stroke, read, and transcribe the most frequently used words.  After all, by definition, the most frequently used words are the ones that will appear in your transcript the most.

              Testimony contains a larger amount of these small, common words than Literary or Jury Charge.  A person’s working vocabulary is composed of the words that are employed in everyday conversation.  We tend to speak with the words that are most familiar to us.  These words are small for the most part.

              Literary and Jury Charge may have a much greater number of large words.  Even so, they still contain a great amount of words from the Top 100. 

              If you write well enough to avoid big drops on your tests, then most likely, the bulk of your misstrokes or misreads come from words that are on this list.

              How should you drill on these words?  Any way you want, as long as you make progress toward mastering them.  Here are a few suggestions.

1. Drill from top to bottom.  Then bottom to top.  Then do every other word.  Then any other pattern you can think of.
2. Use the Top 25, to create several lists. 
3. Pick out the ones that give you the most trouble, and drill on them exclusively.
4. Create silly sentences that use the Top 100. 
5. Drill slow and go for a long time.  This will give you the endurance that you will need for the final minutes of your tests.
6. Drill slow and gradually increase the speed until just before you begin to write sloppy.  Stop before your writing breaks down.  Then start over slow and build the speed back up.
7. Drill as fast as you can for one minute with total clarity.
8. Drill for thirty seconds.  See if you can move smoothly (without any hesitation at all) from one word to the next for the entire thirty seconds.
9. Choose twenty words.  Drill on them slow until you have them perfected.  Stop.  Pretend that you are doing a test.  You must write them as fast as possible five times in a row with clarity. 

 The Top 100 Words is actually a list of 115 words.  Hey, they don't pay us for math.