The present invention involves an enhanced method for operating a speech recognition system in which sequential vocabularies are loaded for comparison to the input speech. Form each sequential vocabulary a subset of candidate vocabulary elements are selected for matching, the probability match scores of each of the selected candidate vocabulary elements is weighted by a weighting factor that is dependant on the particular vocabulary from which the vocabulary elements are selected. As each set of candidate vocabulary elements is selected from the next sequential vocabulary, the selected set is combined with the set of previously selected and weighted vocabulary elements, which is then further weighted according to the weighting criteria of the then active vocabulary. At the end of the sequential vocabulary selection grouping process, the final, sequentially weighted match scores for the candidate vocabulary elements are arranged and an appropriate match to the input speech is presented.