[CW] In your head

[Ken Brown]

Hi Neil,


> My mind wants to visualize the incoming
> stream of
> Morse as an illuminated LED-like ticker tape. 
That is your mistake. Best not to learn code from dot and dash picture 
lists. Good texts on learning code show only a few characters in dot and 
dash form as a visual example of the correct timing. The alphabet, 
letters and punctuation list of character sequences should be shown only 
in "di dah" form to force the learner to relate the sounds and not the 
visual representation of dots and dashes to each letter/numeral/ 
punctuation.
> If I only
> focus on the incoming
> letters, I can track fairly well. But to get meaning, I need
> to mentally track
> the composition of the ticker stream. Parse, somehow, the
> words. Then concatenate
> them into meaningful language. 
>   
By visualizing the dot and dashes, you must perform several stages of 
translation to get to the text, instead of a single sound to character 
association. The first stage is converting the sound to the ticker tape 
visualization. The second step is the ticker tape visualization to the 
lookup table. There might even be other counting dits and dahs steps in 
the lookup table process.  These unnecessary and indirect conversions 
limit most people to about 15 WPM. You have to abandon that multiple 
conversion process, and relearn the code as a direct association from 
the letter sound to the written (or typed) letter in order to break 
through the 15 WPM (or so) plateau. Eventually it will be multiple 
letter sounds directly associated with words or parts of words, and of 
course you don't really need to write it or type it to comprehend it.
> Is my ticker tape visualization a temporary way station on
> the way to just
> 'getting' chunks of code all at once? 
>   
If you have made the unfortunate mistake of learning the code that way, 
as many of us, myself included, have, then it is a temporary way 
station. Perhaps more of a siding than a station. You need to get on the 
train, instead of watching the train go by.
> The real problem with the ticker tape is that if I mentally
> scan it backwards
> to try to pick up word meaning, I've instantly lost focus on
> the incoming stream --
> and produce a gap. The gap of course worries me, so I loose
> the whole ballgame
> for a bit.
>   
Give up the ticker tape. It is what you need to do, to make the 
breakthrough to direct sound to letter recognition.

I'm sure you'll hear other opinions too.

DE N6KB