Syncing your Substr view...
I tried to boil down the points made by a teacher of 'teeline' shorthand, the system british journalists master.
source: https://www.letsloveteelinetogether.com/llttplus
The teacher focuses on the 70/30 prepared/unprepared dictation rule, but that would not add up with reading, so i slightly adjusted the measures :-).
Some additional tipps
When having learned the dictation material and you know the passage - you can measure your progress by just measuring the time you need to write it through without dictation. That way you will know whether you can try the dictated version (if you reach the time you should be under to reach the wpm chosen).
Practice dictation is best, when the material is not too much slowed down (TTS via computer easely done, humans do it too, but its better not to space out the dictation word by word either, rather dictate in phrases), but the same part of a sentence is repeated twice, or trice (no fiddling with the audio device during dictation, prepare text ahead of time (to be read by TTS) instead and let your memory work during the 'exam').
example: You have to prepare you have to prepare the text in advance the text in advance.