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9A5BOB AD8HD ag6aq BG5CZU bigstones DavidFalcone EA4HUM Eeeeee Funap orenobokuno PU4UAI sh0 stdbtsr test UB0123 uz3awb ve2aar xiaowangzi YiyoCW

I've been learning morse using this great site for the past month, and as much as I'm enjoying the process of going through the lessons to build speed with all the characters, my final goal is to copy words and ultimately head copy.

As far as I could gather, there's a "dead band" of code speeds where the speed is too fast to copy each character, yet too slow to copy whole words. I've been trying to do word training at 10wpm, but for the longer words I either end up either trying to copy the word character by character as it is heard (which is probably not the way I want to go), or losing the middle of the word (as its sound does not fit in my memory). Also, words have a lot of forms, differing just by their suffixes.

Some time ago, when learning to use the Twiddler, a chording keyboard (e.g. one on which certain charaters are entered by pressing several keys at once), its layout had chords not only for letters, but also for the most commonly occurring english digrams and trigrams (combinations of two and three letters), such as "th", "the", "an", "in", "ain". Using those when typing could greatly increase input speed, sometimes by a factor of two or more.

So that set me thinking. The way kids usually learn to read is by syllables, which are shorter parts of words that function as building blocks of a sort. Why not do the same with morse, drill shorter character sequences that are parts of words as a sort of stepping stone to recognizing whole words as a sound?

I've done some research yesterday and compiled frequency tables of the most common di-/tri-/tetragrams as well as actual syllables (er, tion, al, can, con, ter, etc.), so generating the training text should not be a problem (I can publish the code if anyone's interested).

The only thing holding me back is the question, [b]is syllable training a good idea?[/i] Will it speed up my learning and give a better foundation for copying words (as well as being able to copy unfamiliar words as sequences of familiar syllables)? Is recognizing individual syllables by their sound a skill that will be useful later on, or is it something that will have to unlearned in order to speed up, like the dreaded "sound → dots and dashes → character" lookup table that code learners today must avoid by all means?

If it is a good idea, when should I start? Should I wait until I finish all the lessons, or start working on syllables as early as possible? If it's not, why?

Yup



As you improve, morse seems to slow down - so you can suddenly decode it . . . then it vanishes and you just hear words or meaning ( if you get enough practise )

Trying to go faster before you complete all 40 lessons will probably slow you down overall.

Head copy involves remembering each step - morse - letters - words - abbreviations - to finally produce comprehension of meaning.

This is probably somewhat different to what is likely happening in your head right now.



Eventually you will hear well known whole words as a single unit - but for newer or less frequent words and numbers, you need to read all the characters individually.


ANY practice is good - usually you can tell if you heard something correctly - but do this in ADDITION to your 40 lesson char training.

i.e. gimmicks to speed things up are generally counterproductive, because its all a process of learning by repetition
and you can't reduce the number of repeats required . . . but you can take longer over getting through it.


Time spent learning "tion" won't help with Y , V G 5 / Q 9 2 H 3 8 B ? 4 7 C 1 D 6 0 X and you need to get to lesson 40 before you give up.


If I was you I'd practice abbreviations as an alternative at this stage.

gm dr om = tnx fr qso = qth london = qth? = hw? = wx hr wet = ant eflw 5w qrp = 73 e e


Once you are morseing away, you will speed up through practice.

cb

Thanks for your post!

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting to drop the lessons, but rather to start the process of learning to recognize combinations of characters and/or words in parallel to them, so that I'd have some kind of feel for what comes next as well as experience recognizing longer sounds than just individual characters. Basically I'm asking if syllable drills are a good thing to do instead of (or in addition to) whole word training, while I'm unable yet to recognize whole words or even keep their whole sound in short-term memory in order to recognize it.

By abbreviations, do you mean the common shorthands and codes as in CQ, DE, SK, VY, ES, HI, the Q-codes, etc?

Yup - they tend to be past and gone quickly, even at slower speeds. There are lots of them . . .

http://www.radiotelegraphy.net/prosigns.htm

I include pro signs when I say abbreviations, at the risk of starting a religious war . .


I gave some examples . . . gm ga gd tend to be common

I write = for bt

Lots to keep you busy unless you are/were a SWL

cb

Yup - they tend to be past and gone quickly, even at slower speeds. There are lots of them . . .

http://www.radiotelegraphy.net/prosigns.htm

I include pro signs when I say abbreviations, at the risk of starting a religious war . .


I gave some examples . . . gm ga gd tend to be common

I write = for bt

Lots to keep you busy unless you are/were a SWL

cb

A compromise is use the common abbreviates and prosigns as Chris, said but add to that the common100 words (easily found online) BUT filter it so you only get the short words. Here's a sample I generated with "cwpt2". Of course in addition to the code groups! Some times I incorporate the code groups in with the word/abbrv for variety. Example below:

C5P3X DOES HE 3RA6K ADR WE ETC7X YL HOME ARY5L TRY N 0LZ7Q TMW SEZ /LO1U GN FM L922G
DO TIME V1ZWZ READ GUD G,U70 C CUL E6M=. TT OB J9V9S AT YOU 3GBSX WHY K 8D8/B RTTY
THE ,6QMQ BCI BIG ?H.?8 GM GND Y=TNE SELF IZO57 WDS SET VPGCF THAT OUT FH54/
R ANT 0Q44N ALSO FB A?W18 WAS JCWB= RST TO ITHTU CLG TX NB12S BUT BUG RRBUP RIG
SED .WDK, ENUF ACT AIM6A SSB CAN =,ONK RX STN .SVPJ HAD O4FD/ BTR CS YIYHD FWD
WB J3?F2 A WITH XK SNR GG

Its all trivial to generate with "cwpt2.exe" and you can limit it to the LCWO lesson # you're op o as well. Unfortunately, not many forum users have bothered to try it. But its there when you want/need it.

73
WA2NFN

cwpt2 is very powerful and you have put a lot of work and thought into it, but for most people it's simply too much of an effort to use a command line tool like that...

What if... I wrote some kind of wrapper for cwpt2.exe that allows selecting all the command line options from a website here on LCWO.net? Command line switches could be activated or deactivated by simple check boxes, options entered in text fields or selected from drop-down menus. And then just one more click and cwpt2 generates your training text that you can then play (and have it graded if you like). What do you think?

73
Fabian

[quote=wa2nfn]Its all trivial to generate with "cwpt2.exe" [...][/quote]

I'd be flattered to say the least. From the beginning I knew cmdline would be an issue but don't have any gui skills.

I think it would be great! And labels can be more descriptive than my attempts to be logical yet cryptic.

Anytime you have questions or need any level of beta testing LMK (I know you have many hotter prioriyies).

73
Bill

I think that judging from the wide range of temperaments, motivation, available time, aptitude and inclinations demonstrated in this forum that more available options to try is generally seen as more help being available.

Ease of use being a top help.

IMNSHO YMMV etc

cb