| Subject: Re: Speech Recognition Software and Paper Writing |
Author:
Keith
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Date Posted: 00:43:58 11/15/10 Mon
In reply to:
Jeff
's message, "Speech Recognition Software and Paper Writing" on 09:37:34 04/09/10 Fri
The only speech recognition program I had ever used was Dragon Naturally Speaking. It seems to be the most popular brand. I can’t say how it compares with other brands or if there is another brand. If there is, I don’t believe I had run across it, or if I had, I just don’t recall doing so.
The problem with my experiences and speech recognition programs is that it can take a good while to train it to recognize your voice correctly. On top of that you have to manually type in words that are specific to your degree and are not normally in any dictionary. Once you type those words into the programs dictionary, it seems to recognize the words fairly well, though I had not used the program much in that particular way.
Usually once I had gotten everything all set up to were it was working smoothly, after so many busy weeks training the program to pick up everything I said it would at times seem to take about a month to get to this point. Usually at this point my computer would crash losing all my hard work, or break down and I would have to buy a new computer, and again start from scratch.
I can’t say 100% for sure but a way around that may be to set up the program on an external hard drive. They seem to be quite inexpensive at the time, and all the other programs I save on my external hard drive seem to be in tact even after my computer crashes or breaks down completely. I have not had a chance to put this into practice and see if it actually would work that was as it does in theory but it sounds sound.
I will share a few things I had learned about writing papers that has helped me a lot. For years I was writing my papers with the though that collage is a place of thinkers, and that the teachers would appreciate if I put a lot of thought, energy, work and time into my papers. If the professor said to write a paper that is at least a page long, and no more than two pages, I would always write the two pages, usually ending up being a page and half.
Over the years this was not working out well for me. I struggled to get good grades on all of my papers. When I started college I first worked on earning my Associate in English. My thought was it will help me later in school with writing papers, and reading and learning material. WRONG! Much of this was me over compensating for my fears of all the other ways my disability may demonstrate it self. Trying to make a better grad for the hard work, and trying to show the teacher how much thought I put into the assignment, and understand the subject at a much more advance level than my educational level.
The first clue to how to do better was through watching my friends. They were also starting college when I did, and seemed to also struggle. It was not until they would wait until the last minute, avoidance, to write their paper. Many times say 12-3 am the morning before the paper was due. We started to realize they were making better grades when doing so. From there I got the idea to try an experiment with my friends. I would tell them for the teachers that would accept the papers early make suggestions and allow the student to take the paper back if they wished so to make the suggested improvements to try this. Instead of waiting until the last minute, they should pick a much earlier time to write the paper, but to still only allow themselves only a short time period, much like when they were forced to write quickly under the time crunch. I suggested to limit them self from start to the final product one or two hours. Again like when they were writing at the last minute and only had that much time before the final call to turn in their past papers. To our surprise, it worked. They were still able to make A’s were before they were making D’s and C’s. On top of that, the teacher would make a few simple basic suggestions which my friends could take home and spend 20 minutes tops on and have the paper completed to turn in the next day.
It taught us that we were all over thinking our papers. For my friends this took a great load off their shoulders and they learned they could just knock out a paper in a hour or two and turn it in, knowing they will get an A.
Over time, I also realized much of the time I was getting penalized by the English teachers for fallowing the direction. The direction was to write about my thought and opinions on whichever subject. Then the teacher would disagree about my opinions and make off on my paper. This was extremely confusing to me, because I did what I was told. So, I started to learn the assignment was not to write about my opinions on the subject but on the teacher’s opinions. Basically telling them what they wanted to hear. At first I did not know what they wanted to hear, so I would go to the library to see what people wrote in the same degree field about the subject, and wrote what they thought. Thinking they have the same degree as the teacher and were most likely to think the same way as the teacher was taught to think.
More time goes by and I learned how to cater to my teachers even more. I started to realize that the teachers did not want to have to stop and think about what you are saying. They are busy people who want to treat your page like a speed bump, and with as little though necessary. If I write an in dept paper, it will force the teacher to have to think. If a force the teacher to have to think, then it will slow them down in how quick they can finish grading my paper and move to the next. If I slow down their reading, it will also make them feel that their tempo, flow from one students paper to the next which would then reflect poorly in my grades. I start to learn to only write the bare minimum number of pages the teacher required. I would dumb my paper down to eliminate any free thought. I would tell my English teachers what they wanted to hear, and keep my thoughts extremely simple. It took all the pressure off of me to think much about the subject. I could knock out my pages in 20-30 minutes tops. In doing so, I was always receiving an A. The first semester I did this I want from a D or struggling C student to an A+ student. This was the first time I ever made not just an A+ on an English paper, but also for the whole course. If at any time I realized the teacher’s opinion was different than mind, I would change the paper to fit her opinions.
This was true even when I was writing a paper for which I had my Bachelors of Science in, on a subject I loved very much. I was addressing common miss conceptions about certain things. When the teacher proof read the paper, something she required all the students to do, before working on the final paper, she automatically stated many of the misconceptions she knew were to be a fact and true. So, in stead of making the paper about teaching something most people were unaware of, I changed it to agree with whatever she thought was to be true and aced the page. This page was to weigh very heavily on our final grade and I did not want to risk making the teacher think too much about the subject or to disagree with any aspect that I was addressing.
Remember teachers don’t want to have to spend all day grading if they don’t have to. They would much rather finish their grading as quickly as possible. This may be truer at the secondary educational level. And, even more so at the University level were many teachers are there more to be published than to car about their classes. In many cases the classes can be as much as 500 students per a class.
I think you will find this to be true for you as well. You can try the same experiment as I did with my friend were you can turn in a paper early so not to risk anything on your grad, only to have the teacher read it and to let you make the suggested corrections.
As far as typing, the most valuable lesson I learned was from an old girlfriend. She taught me to stop trying to stop and correct every single spelling and grammar mistake when typing. This only serves to slow me down in the speed at which I can type as well as my train of thought. Just type everything out in one shot without stopping to make any corrections. Once I am done putting everything to paper, the computer spell and grammar check and make all the correction in less than a minute. This is much quicker than the time I was spending each time stopping and going all through the page. What would normally take me hours, days and weeks to do; I now do in 15-30 minutes.
I hope I had helped and good luck.
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