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On completion of this training sequence,

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you will be able to discipline yourself

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to practice and improve skills
like setting up a schedule,

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measuring progress and analyzing results.

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This is the agenda of this video lecture.

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I will first look at setting a schedule.

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Then, I will talk about
measuring progress.

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Finally,
I will discuss how to analyze results.

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The first step to make a schedule
is to determine for yourself

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how much time you can and want to spend
on practising per week.

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I recommend you to practise
every day for a short time,

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let’s say 30 to 60 minutes,

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instead of once a week for a longer time.

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This will allow you
to less stressfully keep practising

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and automating your dictation skills.

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It is also advisable
if you can plan your training

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in a time that is most optimal for you.

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So maybe if you are more energetic
in the morning,

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or perhaps less moody in the afternoon
or more relaxed in the evening,

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go for that and be consistent.

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When you plan your practice,

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don’t get distracted

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and consider it as an important task,
not a hobby.

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Make sure others know
you have this time reserved to practice

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and should not be disturbed.

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Finally,
I recommend to find a quiet environment,

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so that you can fully concentrate
on your work.

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Use a timer to keep track of time.
so that you can fully concentrate
on your work.

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Use a timer to keep track of time.

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If you go for an hour,

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I recommend you pause during this hour
for 5 minutes,

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so as to stay always focused.

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You can also split your practice
into smaller parts.

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For example,

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during the first part you can train
your reading and dictation skills;

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during the second part you can train
the listening and dictation skills.

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Always be very critical of your work

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and keep track
of the exact time you practiced

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and the errors you made.

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Finally, keep track of the time it takes
to transcribe a page

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and the amount of time
you can dictate in a row.

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Besides training your dictation skills,

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take your time to improve
your language skills.

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Use a good book for your language
to train grammar and lexis.

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As we have said,

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it is important to measure
your progress daily.

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In particular,
you should measure speed and accuracy.

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Measuring your speed can be done
in a few ways.

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When copying a written text,

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you can dictate for a fixed time,
for example 10 or 15 minutes.

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After that time, you calculate
the number of characters dictated.

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If you are not using
specific software for this,

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you could for example paste the text
in Microsoft Word

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and count the number of characters there.

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After dictating the text,
you should also go through it

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and measure accuracy
by counting the number of errors you made.

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Be fair and critical to yourself about it.

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After counting the number of mistakes,

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you can calculate the percentage
of mistakes per characters dictated.

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You should always try to dictate
as less errors as possible,

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and not exceed 2%.

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If your error percentage is higher,

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then it is better
to dictate a bit more slowly next time,

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in order to reduce
the number of your errors.

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Alternatively,

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the TAKI software and the MARS software
provided by Intersteno for free

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can be used for practice.

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Another alternative is
the Velotype Contest software,

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which is also freely available
for practice.

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Use them for practicing
by reading a written text

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or by listening to a spoken text.

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You can find out more
in the exercises provided.

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Keep a diary of all the progress you made.

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When measuring accuracy and speed,
it is important to understand

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what type of text
you were able to respeak.

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Remember to keep track of your performance
after every training session

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by writing down
when and how long you practiced,

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what you practiced,
the difficulty of the text,

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the amount of text you produced,
the average speed,

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the number of errors
and the percentage of errors.

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That way you can clearly see
your progress evolving over time

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and know concretely
what you still have to improve.

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When you make a mistake in the dictation,

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of course you will get
an incorrect result.

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You will need to analyse
if it is just a one-time error,

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or if you make this mistake more often.

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Be very critical to yourself about this

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and write it down what you do wrong.

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The most common mistake is that a word,
the same word,

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is never correctly recognized.

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You pronounce it in different manners
and it still does not appear correctly.

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Other words appear instead.

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Alternatively, it may happen

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that the same word appears
instead of the one you want.

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Most of times
it is a homophone or a near-homophone,

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that is a word
whose pronunciation only slightly differs

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from the one you want to be recognized.

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Two other recurrent recognition errors
are words that are recognized as 2 words

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or words that are not recognized at all.

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In the next slide,
we will see how to deal with these cases.

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Reasons for the mistakes
that we have seen are many.

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Among the most common reasons,
we have a pronunciation error

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that may be due to you not exactly knowing
how to pronounce that specific word

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or that word being associated
to a different sound

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in the software vocabulary.

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Normally, the software adjusts
to your way of speaking by the time.

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If it does not, always check
the pronunciation of that word

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as a vowel sound may be the cause
and add the spoken form of the same word.

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Also, consider
that you may have made a pause

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while dictating that word

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in an attempt to be as clear as possible
to the computer.

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Remember
that the computer is not a person.

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If you split a word into syllables
while dictating,

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it will appear as two or more words.

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Another cause may be
that you are not enunciating correctly

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as a result of you speaking too quickly
or mumbling

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or using a downward tone of voice
in that part of the sentence

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or again a low volume of voice.

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Another case is related to that word
in the vocabulary.

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On top of adding
the written form of a word,

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remember that you can also add a word
to the vocabulary,

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change the way that word is written
in the vocabulary,

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train that word
or update the training of that word

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to increase the priority of that word
in the software vocabulary

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or even create a macro
for that specific word.

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Alternatively, you can also consider using
an easy synonym for that word.

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All in all, you may also consider
that some mistakes are so small

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that correcting them
takes a lot of useless time

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as the audience can easily understand
what that word means.

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Consequently, some mistakes
are more important than others.

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Prioritizing them
and considering not correcting all mistakes

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may help you produce
good quality subtitles.

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In this video lecture,
we have seen how to set up a schedule

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to train the most effective way possible.

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Then,
we have seen how to measure progress.

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Finally, we have provided some tips
on how to analyse results

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and how to correct
some of the most recurrent mistakes.