so ive been at this for a few months now and i feel like im completely stuck at around 5wpm. i can copy most characters fine when they come in slow but the second someone bumps it up even a little i just fall apart and start writing dashes and dots instead of letters which totally defeats the purpose

i've been using the koch method app on my phone and doing maybe 20-30 minutes a day but honestly i wonder if im doing something wrong because i dont feel like ive moved at all in like 6 weeks. my goal is to get to 20wpm eventually, i know thats a ways off but even getting to 10 would feel like progress at this point. anyone been through this and have advice that actually worked for them?

yeah this is super common and honestly 6 weeks isnt that long even though it feels like forever when youre in the middle of it. the thing that made the biggest difference for me was just forcing myself to listen at a higher speed even when i couldnt copy it. like set your character speed up to 15 or even 20wpm but keep the farnsworth spacing wide so there's plenty of time between characters. your brain starts learning to hear the letters as sounds instead of counting dits and dahs and thats really the whole game right there

also 20-30 minutes a day is fine but consistency matters more than duration i think. i made way more progress doing 15 minutes every single day than when i tried to do hour long sessions a few times a week. just keep at it, the plateau usually breaks when you least expect it

lcwo.net if you havent tried it already. i was in the exact same spot last year and switching to that site helped a lot, plus theres a whole community of people tracking their progress which kept me motivated. also honestly just getting on the air even when you feel like youre not ready -- there's a slow net on 40m that runs weeknights and everyone there is super patient. copying real QSOs is different from copying practice files in a way thats hard to explain but it really does help