Words and Phrases to watch out for to help when transcribing- Improving your listening skill .

Transcribing voice mails or any recorded message isn't all that easy to understand as it's not a live conversation . When you are in a live conversation , it's a lot more easier to understand as you will have the opportunity to see the speaker's gestures , facial expressions , and even ask questions for the speaker to clarify certains aspects of the conversation for you to understand better . This is not the case in a recorded conversation where you only have the voice of the speaker and speech itself to interpret the message and transcribe .

When transcribing , some words or phrases sound similar when pronouncing it or when saying them. so you may write or type a totally different sentence from what the person actually said (but really sounds just like what they said). To really avoid making this mistake when transcribing , you should always try to put yourself into the the situation under which the phone call was made and understand it first and deduce the exact spoken words and phrases in an audio recording or a voice mail .

Listen or watch out for words or noises in the speech such as "aah", "umm", "mm " in between the conversation of voice mail message . Most phone calls or recorded live messages are apparently not planned . A caller may make such speech noises as "aaah" , "ummm" etc in their statements as they think of what to say or as they try to gather their thoughts or put together words to send their message across. These could be really disrupt the attention and focus of transcribers a lot when transcribing . They may cloud your thoughts and confuse the transcriber especially when they are said very close to certain words and phrases in the voice mail message - making the transcriber consider it as part of the message . You should be able to recognize such speech noises from the actual words and phrases to transcribe more

accurately .

Also watch out bad english and wrong grammar usage when transcribing. it could confuse you from transcribing more accurately . You may not here or understand certain phrases and words not because you are not a good transcriber but because a particular word was mispronounced or the speaker may have used wrong grammar . This means you should highly proficient in the language that you are transcribing in order to recognize them and know what the speaker actually wanted to say .

Also watch out for these two phrases used by callers to help you best judge the situation :

1. " I'm returning your call "

2. "I was following with you on "

When caller uses the first statement in the message , it means the caller had already been called by the person he or she is currently calling but didn't reach this current caller or might have left a voice mail for the current caller who now has a chance to call back . When the second statement is used , it shows that the caller had had a previous interaction with the person he or she is currently calling either through a previous phone call or letter and hadn't receive any reply back yet .

The truth is most professional writers are not able to hear every single word and phrase in an audio at the first hearing . The have to sometime listen over and over in order to get the words and phrases . Since the message is recorded , you always have the advantage to also replay the message as much as you want to till you are able to make out the inaudible words and phrases . However , you must be working with time as well . Learn to submit your finished project in time to your clients .

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