Read and Spell Blog

TTRS stands for Touch-type Read and Spell and is different from traditional typing programs in a few ways. For one, the words in TTRS lessons are whole words instead of nonsense key combinations. In this way, you can learn to spell as you learn to type.

More importantly, the words on the screen are accompanied by audio. This teaches you to connect letters to sounds and is important for learning to read, as well as to spell. TTRS follows a carefully structured curriculum of English phonics, so typing drills build automaticity in reading as you progress through the course.

Typing is one of those skills that takes practice to learn. There’s never been an individual, the world’s fastest typists included, who sat down at a keyboard and immediately began typing.

The reason for this is the muscles in your hands and fingers need time to adjust to new movement patterns. That’s why it’s important to introduce a handful of keys at a time, and move on only once you’ve mastered them.

Depending on the program you use, you might start with the home row keys or focus on vowels and then consonants following a curriculum of English phonics. Some courses may have drills made up of nonsense letter combinations, and others, like Touch-type Read and Spell, might take a whole word approach, making the course easier to follow for people with learning differences.

The benefit of typing real words from the beginning is that once the movement patterns have been acquired, they are stored in muscle memory and become procedural knowledge. Procedural knowledge is something you know how to do automatically and don’t have to think about, like driving or riding a bike. Turning spelling into procedural knowledge can help individuals who have dyslexia because the letters and letter sequences are saved in memory as a pattern of key-strokes that the fingers type out automatically.

For adults who lack familiarity with computers, life in the modern age can be a challenge. That’s because technology is involved in almost every aspect of our lives: we need it for work, school, keeping in touch, day-to-day task management, remote education and even online shopping.

You need an email address to sign up for new services, make online purchases, apply for jobs and education programs, and communicate with friends and family. Even something as simple as locating a suitable local tradesman is more efficient when done through an online search vs. looking in the yellow pages.

And while tablets and smartphones account for a large portion of our daily technology use, computers are still an important tool. Being able to use word processors is practically a requirement for students and working professionals because most formal assignments and written reports must be typed. 

This is one reason why some adults decide to take a typing course to improve their keyboarding skills and make it easier and faster to write on the computer.

You can learn more about the benefits of learning how to type and review our top 10 tips for beginner typists in these articles. 

There are a number of points to consider when you’re looking for a new keyboard and because every individual has different needs, there’s no one size fits all solution. The best keyboard will depend on the size of your hands, any motor-skills difficulties or visual impairments you struggle with, how frequently you plan to use it, and your approach to typing – specifically if you hunt-and-peck or touch-type.

Keyboards come in different shapes, sizes, and layouts and you can also purchase accessories such as overlay mats and metal key-guards to enhance the typing experience. These may be particularly useful for typists who struggle to type a key without pressing neighboring letters or who have difficulty seeing the letters printed on keys. Children who are learning how to touch-type and are under the age of ten may also benefit from a child-size keyboard that allows them to reach the keys more easily.