A good "shorthander" must have two skills- the ability to write rapidly as well as the ability to read what has been written. One action is not more important than the other for it has been said that unless the outlines are correctly written, the reading is not so much transcription as "extrapolation," while even the most perfect outlines, on the other hand, would be largely useless with a reader who simply "concludes."
So let's look at the following well-written Teeline from our latest mock examination "Secretary Welcomes Attendees At The Annual General Meeting Of Society."
The first two pages shown, along with just the highlighted portion on page three, add up to exactly 240 words.
Grab a stopwatch, or the timer on your phone, for the following exercise.
The exercise is simple: start the clock and begin reading. Although opinions vary, a good rule of thumb is one should have the ability to read printed shorthand at a minimum of 120 words per minute*.
Therefore, the goal for this exercise will be to complete this (up until the yellow highlight) in no more than two minutes time.
If you cannot do this at first, great! You have now discovered another tool you can now employ in your studies.
Try again. Keep track of your total time with each pass and you will see improvement.
To provide some additional context:
Read in 1 minute = 240 words per minute
Read in 1 1/2 minutes = 160 words per minute
Read in 2 minutes = 120 words per minute
Read in 2 1/2 minutes = 96 words per minute
*A goal of reading 100 WPM after one semester of instruction is a good goal while a reading rate of 200 WPM is achievable after two semesters of instruction.
Here is the longhand:
Good evening and thank you for coming on such a wet and windy evening to our Annual General Meeting of this society. You will see the Agenda shows that this is the forty ninth Annual General Meeting of the society, but in fact this year we celebrate our fiftieth anniversary. That is because last year we were unable to hold a meeting due to circumstances beyond our control. We will start this evening with a report from the Chair on the year’s activities and this will be followed by the Treasurer’s report. We will then have the election of the committee. On this subject I would like to take this opportunity to say that by the end of the year I hope to have sought the agreement of the committee that we increase our members from eight to twelve. There is a great deal of work to be done and many hands make light work. Arranging events is particularly time consuming and requires a high degree of organisation as well as taking a great deal of time. I must say it seems unfair to continue to put this responsibility on the shoulders of the same few people year after year. It may be that four people are co-opted members. We can then take advantage of the opportunity to call on them to help out with the most time consuming events and use their expertise regarding event organising. But before we...
