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BuySteno.com Download and use the Speed Teacher for free for 21 days. Try it. You'll like it. | The Plateau Barb DeWitt, Anna Mae Tedley, Stephen Shastay
Chapter OneThe Plateau Ask any teacher of stenography if there is a point where students experience a sharp decline in their progress. The answer will be yes. It is one of the great truths of our profession. Most students, even those that appear to be naturals, suffer through a period of arrested or diminished development. The exact level is in dispute. Generally, educators point to an area between 100 and 160 wpm. Actually, the problem begins much earlier than that, but it does not manifest itself until that stage. At any rate, progress slows noticeably. Sometimes it flat stops. Worse, a regression of abilities may be just around the corner. This is the infamous “Plateau.” It’s not fun. When confronted by such a problem, the average person will fight back. Practice time increases. Efforts are redoubled. A small amount catch on and begin the upward climb. A larger group barely moves forward, but even so, every step is painfully slow. Too many of them remain lost. Over time, they begin to drop out. One by one, they withdraw. A certain amount of attrition is natural. It is the nature of the beast. No school will ever graduate 100 percent of their students. There will always be those who discover that stenography is not for them. Other students are forced to withdraw due to personal circumstances such as employment, family, or health. All schools must tolerate these types of withdrawals. What is galling is the amount of hard-working, talented students who leave. With CART, realtime, and captioning, our field is expanding. We need more graduates, and we need them yesterday. The first step is to remove the blinders. We need to take a fresh look at our teaching methods. Many standard practices in stenography school are insufficient, incomplete, or wrong. Our failure becomes clear when stenography is compared to virtually any other art or skill. They teach Theory every step of the way. We don’t. We entirely frontload our instruction. We will be on the right track when we get the Theory book open in every class. Not only do the other guys teach Theory, but also they teach how to perform that theory under actual situations or “game conditions.” We don’t do that either. This is where we really fall down on the job. It is the source of the Plateau. Contrast stenography with the similar skill of typing. We all know how typing courses are taught. The ultimate goal may be 65 or 75 words per minute, but that is not the focus. Many smaller goals have to be reached first. Perhaps the first goal is 25 words per minute with five or fewer errors. When that is reached, the student moves to the next higher level. Eventually, the required speed level is achieved and the student graduates from that course. In typing, it is always better to have fewer than the maximum number of errors -- even if it means a lower gross amount of words. Quality is valued over quantity. Any student who puts speed above clarity receives immediate feedback. In short, typing courses do not encourage students to write beyond their level. They learn to write at their level. It doesn’t help them to pour on the speed if their error count rises. Their “game conditions” demand quality typing at a controlled accurate pace for the length of the test. We don’t teach that way. We accept too many errors. We don’t require students to write under control. Granted, our “game conditions” are different than typing. For instance, we don’t need perfection in our strokes. We need readability. We must stroke and transcribe well enough to pass. Errors can be made as long as the stroke is accurately transcribed. But that doesn’t mean that we should accept any type of error. Some things are just plain wrong and should be corrected immediately. Another critical difference between steno and typing is the way that the tests are presented to the students. Typing students are counseled to write perfect strokes every time. That is correct and easily achievable. A typing student avoids errors by slowing down on the hard strokes. They don’t fall behind. Our “game conditions” require the student to get as much as possible when the dictation becomes too fast or difficult. If our students slow down for any reason, they fall behind on the dictation. That presents questions. Should the student slow down on a hard stroke? Should the hard stroke be dropped in order to keep up? Should a sloppy stroke be accepted? Should the student do nothing other than write the next word? The correct answer depends on the individual student. Every writing style has its own characteristics. One student may need to reduce the number of corrections made during a dictation. Another may need help with large words. A third may “freeze” during tests. The list goes on and on. The problems are not the same. The solutions are not the same. Identify your weaknesses. Work on them. Succeed. You are not doomed to suffer “The Plateau.” No one is. Copyright 2005 Court Reporting Help |
Harry 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. |
