“My typing is fine.”
I hear this quite a lot from children and teenagers.
And, to be fair, I can understand why they think that. They use a keyboard all the time. They type messages, search online, do homework, play games and use laptops at school. They know where the keys are and they can get words onto the screen.
So yes, they can use a keyboard.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean they can type efficiently.
This is something I see regularly when I carry out typing assessments. A child may achieve what looks like a perfectly reasonable typing speed, but when I actually watch how they are typing, I see something quite different.
They may be looking down at the keyboard, using only two or three fingers and constantly moving their eyes between the keyboard and the screen.
And that’s where the difference between being able to type and being able to touch type becomes important.
A typing speed doesn’t tell me everything
Words per minute, or WPM, is useful. Of course it is. It gives us a measurable typing speed and it can help us track progress.
But I would never assess a child’s typing ability by looking at their WPM alone.
I want to see how they produce that speed.
Are they watching the screen or the keyboard?
How many fingers are they using?
Are their hands moving all over the keyboard?
Are they making lots of mistakes and correcting them?
Can they find the keys automatically or do they have to think about where individual letters are?
These things tell me far more about a child’s typing than one number on a typing test.
A child can become surprisingly quick at typing with two or three fingers, particularly if they use a keyboard a lot. That can create the impression that their typing is absolutely fine.
The difficulty becomes more obvious when we ask them to do something more demanding.
Typing a Google search isn’t the same as writing an essay
This is an important distinction.
Typing a short message to a friend or putting a few words into Google doesn’t require the same level of concentration as writing a paragraph, answering an exam question or getting ideas down for a piece of homework.
When we’re writing, our brains are already doing a lot.
We’re thinking about what we want to say, planning sentences, remembering ideas, choosing vocabulary and thinking about spelling and punctuation.
If a child also has to think:
“Where’s the R?”
or look down and search the keyboard for a question mark, that’s another task their brain has to deal with.
With touch typing, finding the letters gradually becomes automatic. The fingers learn where the keys are and the child no longer needs to consciously search for them.
That’s ultimately what we’re trying to achieve.
Watch their eyes, not just their fingers
One of the easiest things a parent can do is simply watch their child type.
Where are they looking?
A child who has developed good touch typing skills should be able to keep their eyes predominantly on the screen rather than repeatedly looking down to find keys.
This matters because every time their eyes move away from the screen, they lose their place.
They then have to find the key, press it, look back at the screen and work out where they were.
For a couple of words, that may not matter very much.
Over a paragraph, an essay or an exam, it can make typing much more effortful than it needs to be.
This can matter even more for children with additional learning needs
A large proportion of the children we teach at Type IT! have additional learning needs.
Some have dyslexia, dyspraxia or ADHD. Others may have difficulties with handwriting, processing or working memory.
These are often the children who are given a laptop at school because handwriting is slow, tiring or getting in the way of their written work.
And a laptop can be enormously helpful.
But there’s an important step that can sometimes be missed.
Giving a child a laptop doesn’t automatically give them the skills to use it efficiently.
If they’re still hunting around the keyboard for letters, typing with a couple of fingers and continually looking down, we’ve replaced one method of getting their ideas onto paper with another method that may still require a lot of conscious effort.
That’s why I think learning to use the keyboard properly is so important.
The aim isn’t simply to make a child type faster. It’s to make typing easier and more automatic so that they can concentrate on what they want to say rather than where the keys are.
Try this at home
If you’re wondering how well your child can actually type, don’t worry too much about their WPM to begin with.
Instead, sit beside them while they type something.
Ideally, don’t just ask them to copy a paragraph. Ask them to write a few sentences of their own. It could be about something they did at the weekend, their favourite sport or what they would like for dinner.
Then just watch.
Do they keep looking down?
Are they using most of their fingers or mainly their index fingers?
Do they appear to know where the keys are automatically?
Do they lose their train of thought while searching for a letter?
Are they constantly switching their attention between the keyboard and the screen?
You may find that this tells you much more than a typing-speed test.
So, is their typing really “fine”?
Sometimes the answer genuinely is yes.
But I’ve also assessed plenty of children who were convinced that their typing was fine because they could type reasonably quickly.
Once we looked beyond the WPM score, however, there was much more going on.
For me, good typing isn’t just about speed. I want a child to be able to use the keyboard comfortably, accurately and with as little conscious thought as possible.
Because ultimately, the keyboard shouldn’t be the thing they’re thinking about.
It should simply be the tool they use to get their thoughts onto the screen.
At Type IT!, we teach children and teenagers to touch type, including many children with dyslexia, dyspraxia, ADHD and other additional learning needs. If you’re not sure whether your child’s current typing technique is helping or hindering them, a typing assessment can be a useful starting point.