Now that the CBC exam is over and I'm not doing metered speed takes anymore, I'm back to practicing to the news. My usual rotation of ABC World News, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, and local Q13 Fox News. I think it's a good variety. Before the exam, I would write half an hour of a show, basically just "doing my best" in terms of watching the screen, accuracy, and completeness. Then I'd go back over it, record an accuracy score, and move on to 30 minutes of a different show the next day.
The strategy I've been trying out since the exam comes from the NJ Captions manual. I've been writing only the first 10 minutes of a show several times, focusing on a different aspect each time, like writing numbers. That's the easy part. I've found that the hard part is pushing myself in all the other areas. I tend to want to just slack off on everything else, since the manual says I should focus on the one specific area to the exclusion of all others. I don't think that's a great idea, though.
Even when I'm focusing on speed, I try to keep it under control a little bit. I let myself write whatever feels natural and I don't go back to correct anything, but I don't write utter slop just to get a stroke down for every word, either. I think it's important to keep at least some focus on every aspect. Especially when it comes to fingerspelling.
I could focus exclusively on the fingerspelling, and not worry about writing what was said after that word. That would be following the instructions literally. But what good does that do me? It's not fingerspelling I really need to work on, it's fingerspelling while retaining and writing what's said after that word.
It's a tough balance. I really can't decide if I should focus on each area exclusively, or just focus "more than usual" on it. If I really focus on only one aspect per take, and throw everything else to the wind, will my overall skill improve, or will I just lose all the "focus on all the balls in the air" skill that I've been focusing on building up for the past few months?
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