Anybody have any experience with a technique called directed practice?

When I was in school (South Coast College www.southcoastcollege.com) I used to do drills known as directed practice. Jean Gonzalez herself would adminster the class.  Does anybody else use that method to practice on the steno machine?  Basically it was a slowed down, intensive repetition which lead to greater accuracy.  I personally attribute this type of skill building as being the only reason I passed the CSR exam (finally!) in 1999.

Thoughts anyone?

Well, the way Jean did the directed practice was she took our homework packet (practice material for the week or Mantabe drills) and read to us sentenses in a pyramid form, every time starting with the beginning of the sentence and then adding on the rest of the sentence in sections.  It sounds kind of complicated, but it's really pretty simple.

I used this method when I was preparing for the CSR test, and I believe it really helped me pass the test, along with other practice methods. 

I took hard copies of some past CSR tests, read them on tape at about 170-180, and then practiced one page at a time, making sure I write every word accurately without dropping anything.  I was shocked to identify spots in the material (I had a hard copy next to me) that were just basic word combinations that were not flowing smoothly and were causing hesitation.  I circled them in the hard copy and then practiced them with the tape until I could write them perfectly.  (I would have never been able to identify those going 200 wpm every time I practiced past CSR tests, which I did also in addition to the pyramid method.)

Just to give an example, a question like, Have you ever seen him before? I would read on tape:

Q  Have you ever

Q  Have you ever seen

Q  Have you ever seen him

Q  Have you ever seen him before

I would actually say Q or A, if it's an answer, because sometimes hesitations can occur when switching between the last word and the sign change (and the sign change error is minus 5!)

If Q and A were long, I would add more than one word at a time.  When I finished reading a question, I would move on to an answer and then to the next question.  You can always rewind if you want to practice the previous Q and A more.

Also after I practiced a page and was confident I could write everything smoothly, I would rewind the tape to the beginning of that page (I used Sony tape player that has a meter you can reset to 000 to mark the beginning of the practice section), write the whole page, and then go back and read it from paper along with the tape (which I would rewind again). 

It may sound time-consuming, and it is, but for me the ultimate result of practicing was priceless:  the CSR license, finally :)

Any questions?  Comments?