Suggestions

[Kristine Viola]

So I am fairly new student at Bryan University, and we are currently working on lesson 16-17 in the Sten Ed Realtime Theory book and are working on Sound alikes..  HELP there are so much does nayone have any tipps how to remember them? 

[Cale McCabe]

Kristine:

Hey there.  I'm Cale.

I, too, learned Sten Ed theory geared towards conflict-free dictionary. Sound-alikes can definitely be tricky. I remember that part of theory being a bit of a pain in the butt. But, there is a way to kind of "cut through" all the confusion.

The idea is that there are generally two words for every "sound-alike." The main word, or first word, is generally the MOST common or MOST used or MOST frequent word that will come up in your day-to-day writing. The second word - the one that sounds like the first word - is the word that is more special because you don't really hear it come up in your day-to-day writing, so these words usually have the * (asterisk) in them to make them special and kind of give you a red flag that it is the more rare word.

So, for instance, the words night and knight. As a court reporter, which word do you think will come up WAY more than the other? You're right - the word "night" is going to come up way more than a "knight" in shining armor. So, night is written normally on your machine. Then the word "knight" has an asterisk in it, because it's the more rare word. Let the asterisk make it stand out in your mind as a red flag that "Oh, this is the more rare one."

So if you look at all these sound-alikes that way, then it gets a lot easier to memorize each stroke. There's the common word, and then the uncommon word.  The uncommon word has the asterisk in it to make it stand out.

Does that all make sense?

Take care!

-Cale

www.passthecourtreportingexam.com