In order to improve your shorthand skill, it is crucial to recognise the significance of figuring out specifically where your problem areas are.

Until you learn to identify your sticking points, your efforts to improve will not be as impactful as they could be.

In any given dictation, there are usually only a relatively small number of "segments" that present a challenge.

It is, therefore, important during your revision work to choose and focus on those segments that may be tripping you up.

Let's use one sentence from the "Chamber of Commerce talks about changes to working patterns" as an example of how to practise more deliberately.

Now, this is an interesting sentence for a few reasons.

1. It's dictated at 100 WPM, so the speed might be a limiting factor at first.
2. There are nineteen words in this sentence (assumes workplace as one word), any number of which you might be coming across for the first time.
3. There are several outlines and/or groupings that might be initially tricky to take down (perhaps "infrastructure" or the grouping "This could be a").

In any case, the way to eliminate a sticking point is to break it down and focus on each one until you can take it down confidently and easily. For some of you, this may take five attempts. For others, it may take 60 tries before you get it down satisfactorily. So what? All that is known is that if you don't take the time to learn it, it is guaranteed you will see the majority of these words again, so why not learn them well now?

To this point, of the nineteen words here, fourteen (almost 80%) are in the NGSL TOP 1000 list!

NGSL 1k words: a, about, and, are, as, be, companies, conversations, could, having, result, serious, their, this

We've included an audio file for this one sentence that will allow you to practise this repeatedly if you wish.