I believe what many novices fail to realize, copying 5-wpm code is far
more difficult to read than is 30-wpm code.

As your experience with CW increases, you'll suddenly realize that one
day you no longer hear the individual dots and dashes, but recognize
the code stream as characters and numbers immediately. I suppose it's
recognition of the morse rythm as individual characters.

For example, you never hear 'a' as discrete dots and dashes, but as a
composite sound, not dit-dah. For some strange reason, the ARRL code
practices transmissions fail to emphasize this very important part in
developing code skill, whereas Navy radio operator training courses do.

The W1AW code practice transmissions would benefit greatly if they
transmitted all morse characters at a 20-wpm rate and adjusted the
spacing between characters to a much lower rate, just as the Navy does.

On the other hand, it is difficult for an experienced CW operator to
identify the characters of code transmitted at a uniform 5 or 10 wpm
rate, because the individual dots and dashes are being tranmitted at
such a slow rate that you cannot identify the unique sound of any
individual character.

And no, I wasn't in the Navy but as a child was taught code by an older
railway signalman using the traditional telegraph clicker. After that,
the transition to listening to audio tone sequence or morse code was a
piece of cake.

I've been told that at even higher rates you learn to hear words, not
individual characters, but I'm not yet that good.

Hope this helps. Harry C.