Subj : Yet another morse proggie
To   : Deuce
From : Angus McLeod
Date : Tue Aug 23 2005 04:43 pm

  Re: Yet another morse proggie
  By: Deuce to Angus McLeod on Tue Aug 23 2005 12:28:00

 >  > My instructor (Sam) would teach us a group of letters, then drill us on
 >  > them by sending individual letters and wait for a response.  Then he woul
 >  > start using letters from letter groups we'd learned earlier.  Then he
 >  > would move on to short groups using all the letters but emphasizing the
 >  > new set.  Then we would do words made up from the letters learned so far.
 > 
 > And do you feel that that worked better than first an overall learning of th
 > complete set, then learning groups?

Absolutely.  The first night, we learned EISH5 and practised that for a 
while before doing TMO0.  After that, we were copying 5-letter groups, 
words and even simple sentences using those letters.  THIS IS HIS SHIT.
SHE SEE IT.  HE SIT SO SHE HIT HIM.  And so forth.  When we got good 
enough at those letters, he then added AUV4 and the quality of the text 
improved.  And so on for each batch of similar characters.

 > Again, speaking for a lack of experience it makes more sense to me to 
 > learn the alphabet before being given words to read...

Yes, but that isn't what your program is doing.  It tries to teach me only 
TWO characterss for five solid minutes.  Then one new character each five 
minutes for the nest two hours.  Isn't that right?  Two characters isn't 
enough to focus on for five entire minutes.  You have three or four new 
characters to learn, and you concentrate on them, then you have something 
to work your brain on.  And by learning similar characters together you 
are focussing on distinguishing an S from an H so you tune your ear.

 > but then it would harp on letters you're having problems with.
 > 
 > Actually, I'm thinking now...
 > i) Learn entire code set

But how?  You can't expect someone to memorize the entire charset in one 
go.  You need to break it up into smaller groups.  When you achieve some 
measure of success, you move on to the next group.  When you measure 
success with the new group, you start adding characters from the previous 
group.  

 > ii) Get drilled using REAL words

But this can be achieved before the entire charset has been mastered.  
Once you have 8-10 characters, you can start drilling with simple words 
that can be constructed from those characters only.

 > iii) Drilling on random groups

5-letter and 5-figure groups should come last.


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