What is Touch Typing?
Touch Typing Is A Gift For Life
At the moment you are probably using two or more fingers to hunt and peck the keys. You may also be quite slow or making lots of errors.
Touch typing is the ability to be able to type using all of the fingers without looking at the keyboard or cognitively thinking about what your fingers are doing.
It’s an automatic process, a bit like riding a bike. When someone learns how to touch type, they are teaching a part of the brain associated with muscle memory.
Once the finger movements are learnt through repetition, the brain remembers it and as long as it used often enough, it will never be forgotten.
Our course is structured to allow you to build up your muscle memory each week so that all of the keys start to become automatic. We start off focusing on accuracy so that by the end of the course you are both FAST and ACCURATE!
In fact not only will you be able to type without looking, you will be able to multi-task – you will even be able to talk and type at the same time!
Touch Typing allows you to multi task – type fast, accurately & think at the same time!
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is touch typing?
At the moment you are probably using two or more fingers to hunt and peck the keys. You may also be quite slow or making lots of errors.
Touch typing is the ability to be able to type using all of the fingers without looking at the keyboard or thinking about what your fingers are doing.
It’s an automatic process, a bit like riding a bike. When someone learns how to touch type, they are teaching a part of the brain associated with muscle memory.
Once the finger movements are learnt through repetition, the brain remembers it and as long as it used often enough, it will never be forgotten. The benefits of learning the skill are life changing; better accuracy, a higher speed, improvements in spelling, less visual stress, less physical stress on the hands and a decreased cognitive load on the conscious brain as the unconscious brain is in control of the process, allowing the conscious mind to be free to think.
What are the benefits of learning to touch type?
- Saves lots of time – being able to type at the speed of thought, drastically cuts down on the amount of time it takes someone to do even the most simple tasks. If you can type twice as fast, just think how many days you will save working each year!
- Type more accurately – reduces the number of typing errors.
- Improves productivity – get more work done!
- Get thoughts and ideas down on paper more easily. Helping children with a specific learning difference such as dyslexia.
- Helps with thinking – as you don’t have to concentrate on what your fingers are doing.
- Improves concentration and focus – Your mind is free to concentrate on what you are typing rather than on what your fingers are doing! The focus can then be on the content and the quality of your work rather than the keyboard.
- Improved posture – no head bobbing; looking up down at keyboard to screen. Achy shoulders, stiff neck and sore wrists are some of the side effects of poor posture and bad computer habits. Natural, efficient finger movements and no need to look at the keyboard results in less stress in fingers, arms and neck.
- Boosts self-esteem and confidence (especially for those that find handwriting difficult).
· Reduces the physical pressure and concentration of handwriting– pressing a key can be much easier than manipulating a pen or pencil. Helping those children with dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyspraxia and hypermobility.
A reduced demand on visual perception skills. Some individuals with poor visual perception find it difficult to move their focus from screen to keyboard (and perhaps to a classroom whiteboard). By learning to touch type, the individual reduces the demand they make on their visual perception skills by not having to look at the keyboard.
- Boosts literacy, improving reading, spelling, grammar & punctuation. Learning to spell by using finger patterns, helps to build literacy skills.
· A transferable skill for education and work; great to put on a CV. In this day and age, touch typing is a basic skill that most employers expect their workforce to have.
How long does it take to learn how to touch type?
It will take approximately 10 hours to complete the course, plus another 10 hours of practice to be a competent touch typist, with an accuracy of over 95% and a speed of 30wpm. However, every student is different, so some students may take a lot longer to learn especially for those student with special educational needs.
How fast will I be typing by the end of the course?
Your speed will be dependent on a number of factors; age, natural aptitude and how much practice you do. Speed will develop naturally with practice once you have learnt how to touch type. So if you finish the course typing at 20wpm, within just a few months of using yours skill, you can easily double this speed or in some cases triple it!
How can touch typing help me at work?
Fast keyboarding skills are an essential digital skill for everyone these days. If you can’t touch type, then you can’t do the job! From a administrative assistant to a lawyer, you are going to be using a keyboard for several hours a day. If you can double your typing speed, you are going to save yourself hundreds of hours each year, so you can get through your work in super quick time, increasing your productivity and that of the company you work for.
Are all students allowed to use a laptop for exams?
If your child has been given Access Arrangements by their school following an assessment, they can use a laptop in their exams. Many schools won’t allow students to use a laptop unless they can demonstrate a good typing speed. This can only be obtained by learning to touch type. Learning this skill will not only put your child on a level playing field with their peers, it will give them a huge confidence boost. Imagine being able to get all of their wonderful thoughts and ideas down onto paper automatically, without thinking? No more struggling with a pen to write their answers.
What’s the best way to learn how to touch type?
The best way to learn is to join one of tutor supported courses. Unfortunately, 80% of our students have already tried learning to touch type on their own and have failed. Like learning anything new, it takes patience and perseverance. Learning with us, means having someone on side helping them through the programme, giving help and encouragement all the way. Not only that, we modify the course to suit the student, so we can adapt lessons if they are too hard or too easy, helping them to get the best result.
How fast do I need to be a touch typist?
There is so set standard as such, but we calculate that the definition of a ‘touch typist’ is one that can touch type without looking down at their hands, with an accuracy over 95% and a speed of 30 words per minute. Typing at this speed and accuracy means the typing is automatic, so unconscious thinking. This is just the beginning of the journey though, because once you are at this level, the speed will just keep on increasing, so before long, you will be reaching speeds of 40, 50, 60 and 70wpm!
I can already type fast, why do I need to learn touch typing?
Even if you are typing fast, say 40wpm, there’s a good chance that you are not ‘properly’ touch typing! You may be looking down at the keyboard to look at your fingers. Also, how accurate are you? Are you making mistakes? These two things together are a good enough reason to learn how to touch type properly. Accurate typing means less backspacing so that your focus isn’t broken having to correct errors all the time. Looking up and down at the keyboard means your focus isn’t 100% on what you are thinking. Wouldn’t it be good to just think and type straight onto the page without breaking your focus? This has a huge impact on content, creativity and productivity. Give it a go – you won’t regret it!
Will speech recognition will take over typing?
It’s true that we use speech recognition on our phones when we are out and about, but in an office or school environment, can you imagine everybody speaking out loud at the same time? Speech recognition software is also very difficult to master with thought to speech and thought to script being very different thought processes in the brain.