so ive been at this morse code thing for about 3 months now and im stuck somewhere around 10-11wpm on a good day. started with the Koch method using LCWO and it worked great getting me from zero up to around 5-6wpm but now it feels like im just hitting a wall. i can copy most characters fine when theyre sent slow but the moment i try to bump up the speed i just freeze up and fall behind and then i panic and miss the next 4 characters trying to catch up on the ones i already missed lol.

my goal is 20wpm by the end of the year which seemed really reasonable when i set it but now im not so sure. been doing about 20-30 minutes a day which i thought was enough. is there some trick to pushing through this plateau or is it just... more time? my elmer says i should try head copy instead of writing everything down but honestly that sounds terrifying right now.

how long did it take you guys to get from around where i am to solid 20wpm copy? just curious if my expectations are realistic or if im being way too optimistic

the wall you're hitting around 10-12wpm is pretty much universal, almost everyone goes through it. what happens is below that speed your brain is still sounding out dit-dah patterns consciously, and to break through you have to get to where you hear the whole character as one sound, like how you hear a word without thinking about individual letters. it clicks eventually but you cant really force it.

head copy is actually the key, your elmer is right even if it sounds scary. start small, just try to copy one word in your head before writing it. then two words. you dont have to copy everything, just practice trusting yourself to let a character go if you miss it and keep moving. the missing and moving on thing is honestly the biggest skill in high speed copy, nobody gets every single character.

took me about 8 months to get comfortable at 20wpm but i wasnt practicing every day. your pace sounds good. also try listening to actual QSOs on the air even if you can barely copy them, something about real morse with real people sending it just differently than computer generated stuff and it helps your ear adjust

oh man i just went through this exact thing like 6 weeks ago. what helped me a lot was the Morse Code Ninja videos on youtube, he has these word lists sorted by frequency and i drilled the most common 100 words over and over until i could just recognize them as chunks instead of spelling them out. made a huge difference for actual QSO copy.

also slightly unrelated but i found that practicing right before bed helped me retain stuff better, read something about how sleep consolidates that kind of motor/audio memory. could be placebo but who knows it seemed to work for me. im up to about 15wpm now and feeling way less stuck than i was at your stage so hang in there