Any successful steno transcription, practice or otherwise, starts with being able to understand what is said. If it's an in-person situation, that means sitting close enough to the speakers to hear and see them clearly. If it's a recording, important factors are the quality of the audio file itself and also to isolate what you're trying to transcribe from outside noise or distractions. This post contains affiliate links. Disclosure
One of the first investments I made as a new reporter -- after a writer and laptop -- was a pair of high-quality, noise-canceling Bose headphones. When it comes time to replace them, I want the newest wireless version here, but the QC 15s have been going strong with pretty much daily use since ~2011! The over-the-ear style is comfortable and great for tuning out noise right next to you and/or going on in the other room. In addition to amazing sound quality, I noticed with these I was able to hear things that I missed with regular earbuds, like when witnesses trailed off or said something under their breath. Bose has amazing quality products, customer service, and warranty department, so what are you waiting for?
I'm a big believer in finger drills. When court reporting students practice moving between tough fingering positions, it cuts down on hesitation, which ultimately translates into gained speed.
So for your practicing pleasure, here are a few drills focusing on tough left hand strokes. I recommend practicing one 4x4 group at a time, doing several repetitions, and then moving on to the next one. Try these at the end of your next practice session! You can also stroke these against a metronome (like this free online metronome) for maximum results.
While I'm on the subject of becoming a master of one's craft, I have to share a video of famed violinist Jascha Heifetz, who is precisely that -- a master of his craft. I stumbled upon this while researching how his name was spelled when it came up in a dictation. His first name, for the record, is pronounced YA/SHA, so that's how I wrote it. Thank goodness for Google!
Start at 3:48 if you want to see something truly amazing. Just watch how the hand on the neck moves. He would have made an awesome court reporter!
I think this video demonstrates just how important good muscle memory is to both a stenographer and a world-class violinist. Imagine just how many countless hours of repetition and practicing went into perfecting this piece! Because court reporters don't have the luxury of taking the exact same dictation every time on the job, there are slight differences in the way a violinist practices for a performance and how a court reporter or student practices for a test or deposition or CART job, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Muscle memory, as defined by Wikipedia "is a form of procedural memory that involves consolidating a specific motor task into memory through repetition. When a movement is repeated over time, a long term muscle memory is created for that task; eventually allowing it to be performed without conscious effort. This process decreases the need for attention and creates maximum efficiency within the motor and memory systems."
Muscle memory is so powerful that court reporting students must be conscious of their practice technique and be careful not to practice slop for too long. While musicians practice until they hit a sour note and then stop and do it over until they get it right, I still say the CR student should slop before drop in test taking situations. However, the bulk of a steno student's practice time still needs to be spent making good, clean strokes to build muscle memory for perfect outlines.
After you go through the super-fast blazing dictation once and "let your fingers fly," my teacher would say, go back over your notes or realtime transcript and practice just the words you messed up or hesitated on and those immediately before the trouble spots until they're automatic. Then use your VSP to slow it down and do it again, this time focusing on accuracy. Bump it up; slow it down, and write the take at at least three different speed levels. You've seen the P90X infomercials, right? This is classic muscle confusion, while still bringing it down to realtime speed to maintain accuracy and reinforce good muscle memory. A delicate balance, it is. Run, don't walk to your steno machines!
As promised in my previous post, here's some wisdom gained from an awesome book I read. Outliers by Malcom Gladwell explains how, with a certain amount of innate talent, preparation, and oftentimes extraordinary opportunities, the most successful people in their respective fields, such as Bill Gates and the Beatles, got to be that way. I believe we can apply these very same principles to the world of court reporting. I highly recommend reading this book when (and if) you get some downtime in between practice sessions. In Chapter 2, "The 10,000-Hour Rule," Gladwell refers to a study in which violin students were separated into three groups by their professors. Those three groups were labeled the "students with the potential to become world-class soloists," "those judged to be merely good," and then "students who were unlikely to ever play professionally." The following is an excerpt from this best-selling book:
All the violinists were then asked the same question: over the course of your entire career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practiced? Everyone from all three groups started playing at roughly the same age, around five years old. In those first few years, everyone practiced roughly the same amount, about two or three hours a week. But when the students were around the age of eight, real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up the best in their class began to practice more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight hours a week by age twelve, sixteen hours a week by age fourteen, and up and up until the age of twenty they were practicing -- that is purposefully and single-mindedly playing their instruments with the intent to get better -- well over thirty hours a week. In fact, by the age of twenty, the elite performers had each totaled ten thousand hours of practice. By contrast, the merely good students had totaled eight thousand hours, and the future music teachers had totaled just over four thousand hours.
Ericsson and his colleagues then compared amateur pianists with professional pianists. The same pattern emerged. The amateurs never practiced more than about three hours a week over the course of their childhood, and by the age of twenty, they had totaled two thousand hours of practice. The professionals, on the other hand, steadily increased their practice time every year, until by the age of twenty they, like the violinists, had reached ten thousand hours.
The striking thing about Ericsson's study that he and the colleagues couldn't find any "naturals," musicians who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. Nor could they find any "grinds," people who worked harder than everyone else, yet just didn't have what it takes to break the top ranks. Their research suggests that once a musician has enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. And what's more, the people at the very top don't work just harder or even much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.
Gladwell, Malcolm (2008). Outliers. Little, Brown and Company. pp. 38-39. ISBN 9780316017923
We, as court reporting students, have been given an extraordinary opportunity by just learning about this awesome profession, and perhaps by being enrolled in a quality school with teachers who care or knowing fellow students who support you in your quest. Now you may say, "Hey, but I didn't start court reporting when I was five years old. How will I ever get to reach the 10,000-hour mark before reaching retirement?" The answer is that the 10,000-hour mark represents the top of our profession, the NCRA speed contest champions, the realtime champs, the fastest and brightest of our field. We want to strive to be "world-class soloists," and to do that we must put our heads down and just put in the time and dedication. We can very well become certified, working court reporters long before that milestone, but just know it takes actual time and experience to get better on our machines. Just as a pilot has to have a minimum number of hours to become certified, we too need to put in our "required hours." Where are you on the road to 10,000?
After a week of being sick with the flu, I'm finally coming back to court reporting with a full head of steam. Seriously, who gets sick in the summer? Some days were worse than others, and my dad described it best when he said, "My head was so congested I thought I'd get brain damage." So eloquently put, Dad.
I missed a round and a half of speed tests but still managed to finish my practice most days. At the worst of it, I think I maybe put in 10 minutes of practice in between bottles of ginger ale. (Thanks, Reed's Extra Ginger Brew. I'm seriously going to buy stock in that company.) On the upside, though, I was able to catch up on some reading. Keep your eyes peeled for my next blog post where I will share with you some info I gleaned from those pages while contemplating whether or not I'd make it through the night. Okay, okay, enough drama already.
So this brings me to my burning questions: How do court reporters work while they're sick? And how does a student keep up in school when real illness comes around? The answer is, well, I really don't know -- maybe chicken noodle soup and NyQuil. I tried as hard as I could to stay up on the dictations, but it was futile. I actually got despondent and entertained the possibility that I was, in fact, getting worse at court reporting instead of better. Maybe it's just best to call in sick and or take the day (almost) off of work or practicing so you can get better faster and come back to it at 100%. Oh, and take your vitamins and eat well to hopefully prevent illness! That's all she wrote, folks.
Here are a few new steno briefs and phrases that I added recently.
civil liberties SLIBTS
credit card KRARD
due diligence DAOUJS
good faith GAO*FT
I am sure MAOIRB
I'm sure MAO*IRB
in reality NRAELT
not really NRA*EL
no longer NLORNG
rely R-L
shortage SHORJ
talk about TAUBT
think about THIBT
tumor TAOURM Walmart WARMT (Didn't that used to be hyphenated? Time to update my dictionary!)
Looking for some new audios or steno drills to listen to? Thankfully (or regrettably), my teacher for the summer session has loaded us up with more dictation than we can possibly master in the three hours of required practice per day, so I don't currently have that problem. But this post is for those people whose court reporting school is on break and are getting bored with the same old stuff. Here are some sources for free dictation in no particular order.
SpeedySteno - Click on "click to choose a lesson" or you won't see anything listed. I think you can even download these and feed them into your VSP (variable speed player). 120 to 160 wpm range.
Simply Steno - These audios are not completely free, but at least there's no money required. Just review any steno-related product or service on Steno Watchdog in exchange for using these. That's a steal, people.
explains how, with a certain amount of innate talent, preparation, and oftentimes extraordinary opportunities, the most successful people in their respective fields, such as Bill Gates and the Beatles, got to be that way. I believe we can apply these very same principles to the world of court reporting. I highly recommend reading this book when (and if) you get some downtime in between practice sessions.
