so ive been at this for about 8 months now and im kind of stuck. started learning morse back in the spring, got to 5wpm pretty quick using the Koch method on the LCWO website, but now im somewhere around 10-12wpm and it feels like i hit a wall. i can copy okay if its slow and clean but anything faster and my brain just falls apart trying to sound out the letters instead of just hearing them as whole words.

my practice routine right now is about 20 minutes a day with LCWO and sometimes i tune around 40 meters and just try to copy callsigns. i know i should probably just be doing more of that but honestly most of what i hear is way too fast and i get discouraged pretty quick. someone at our club said the plateau between 10 and 15wpm is the worst part and that i just have to push through it but didnt really explain how. any of you go through this? what actually helped you break through it?

oh man yeah that 10-15 plateau is real and it's brutal. what finally worked for me was stopping the character-by-character copying and forcing myself to listen for whole words. what i mean is i set LCWO to send at like 18wpm character speed but with big gaps between characters (Farnsworth timing) so my brain had to learn the sound of each letter at speed even if the overall pace felt slow. the idea is you never give yourself time to count dits and dahs, you just have to recognize the sound pattern or you miss it. took maybe 3-4 weeks of that before things started clicking.

also honestly just copying W1AW practice broadcasts helped me a lot. they go through multiple speeds and you can follow along with the printed text afterward. something about knowing the actual words ahead of time lets you check yourself and figure out where you're losing it. dont give up, 20wpm is definitely doable it just takes a while longer than people expect.

im kind of in the same boat so watching this thread. i've been using the Morse Trainer app on my phone and it's fine but i feel like i need more variety. gonna try the Farnsworth thing you mentioned, never really understood what that setting was for until just now lol