CRI Dictation & Practice Material Development 1 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: What is the primary purpose of using literary dictation materials in early court reporting training?
- To introduce legal terminology immediately
- To help students build speed with familiar vocabulary (Correct answer)
- To simulate courtroom proceedings
- To teach realtime captioning skills
Correct answer: To help students build speed with familiar vocabulary
Literary passages use familiar everyday vocabulary, allowing beginning students to focus on speed and accuracy without the added challenge of unfamiliar legal or technical terms.
Question 2: Which dictation speed range is typically recommended for beginning court reporting students during their first weeks of training?
- 60–80 words per minute (Correct answer)
- 100–120 words per minute
- 140–160 words per minute
- 180–200 words per minute
Correct answer: 60–80 words per minute
Beginning students start at 60–80 WPM so they can develop proper technique and stroke accuracy before advancing to higher speeds.
Question 3: When developing a court reporting curriculum, which type of dictation content should typically be introduced first?
- Complex multi-speaker depositions
- Medical terminology-heavy passages
- Simple literary or news-style passages (Correct answer)
- Verbatim jury trial transcripts
Correct answer: Simple literary or news-style passages
Simple literary or news-style passages contain familiar vocabulary and sentence structure, making them the best starting point before students tackle specialized legal or medical content.
Question 4: What is the recommended approach for advancing a student to the next dictation speed tier?
- Increase speed by 20 WPM every week on a fixed schedule
- Move to the next speed only after the student consistently achieves 95% accuracy (Correct answer)
- Follow a strict calendar-based progression regardless of accuracy
- Allow students to self-select when they feel ready to advance
Correct answer: Move to the next speed only after the student consistently achieves 95% accuracy
Consistent 95% accuracy at a given speed is the standard benchmark that demonstrates a student has mastered that level before safely advancing.
Question 5: Which of the following is a best practice when creating new dictation passages for court reporting instruction?
- Use only verbatim public court transcripts without modification
- Avoid all proper nouns to minimize student confusion
- Balance familiar and new vocabulary to challenge without overwhelming students (Correct answer)
- Focus exclusively on Q&A format from the very first week
Correct answer: Balance familiar and new vocabulary to challenge without overwhelming students
Effective dictation materials scaffold learning by mixing known vocabulary with new challenges, keeping students engaged without causing frustration.
Question 6: What accuracy percentage is the standard threshold for a student to pass an NCRA skills speed test?
- 85%
- 90%
- 95% (Correct answer)
- 100%
Correct answer: 95%
NCRA RPR and other skills tests require 95% accuracy, and court reporting instructors align classroom speed tests to this same professional benchmark.
Question 7: When selecting dictation passages for CRI-level instruction, which factor is MOST important in gauging appropriate difficulty?
- Length of the passage in words
- Syllabic intensity and vocabulary complexity (Correct answer)
- Publication date of the source material
- Number of proper nouns contained in the passage
Correct answer: Syllabic intensity and vocabulary complexity
Syllabic intensity — the average number of syllables per word — directly affects how many steno strokes a passage requires, making it the key metric for calibrating difficulty.
CRI Dictation & Practice Material Development 1
What is the primary purpose of using literary dictation materials in early court reporting training?