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SHORTHAND
Shorthand is arguably the toughest element of the NCTJ Diploma - but the hard work is all worth it in the end.
We don’t expect our students to know any shorthand before they start the course, and it is probably a good thing if they don’t. We like a nice blank canvas to work with.
You’d be learning Teeline at News Associates - the most accessible and popular form of shorthand practised by journalists in this day and age.
But don’t be fooled. In many ways it is like learning a new language in 20 weeks - it can seem like a real slog and we expect you to put in plenty of work at home.
By and large it takes six long, hard weeks to learn the theory - the Teeline alphabet, deciding which letters you need, special forms of words and how and when to join words together. After that we’ll really crank up the speed building.
We don’t want to ruin the surprise but we have plenty of tricks up our sleeve to ensure our trainees enjoy learning what can at first seem a daunting subject.
We’ve got competitions that will see you pitted against your fellow students, with plenty of prizes to be won - and if you play your cards right we might even turn on the TV or crack open a CD of some classic tunes for you to practise along to.
Our teachers have decades of experience to ensure you achieve the best possible speeds - and this formula has been paying dividends, with some groundbreaking results.
On our last course, more than 70% of candidates at our London centre passed with the magic 100 words per minute, head and shoulders above the national average.
You’ll be very hard pressed to find anywhere to hold a candle to that - and we are doing everything we can to ensure that figure continues to rise.
Add to that a staggering six passes at 110wpm on the last course and the fact that Jo Carter collected the NCTJ’s national shorthand prize for a flawless pass at 120wpm and you can see why we’re so proud of our results.