Read and Spell Blog

If you’re interested in improving your typing speed, you’re not alone. Many people would like to type faster so they can work more efficiently, whether it be for essay writing at school, typing up reports at the office or responding to personal emails.

If a keyboard is involved, touch-typing is the best solution.

For a significant number of children and adults, developing strong literacy skills requires overcoming the challenges posed by specific learning differences, such as dyslexia. Dyslexia affects reading, writing and spelling abilities but can also cause individuals to suffer from low self-esteem and lack confidence in the classroom.

While it is something people have for life, technology and strategy use can make language-based activities easier. For example, typing on a computer gives children and adults access to spell-checkers and helpful text-to-speech tools.

Mnemonic devices aid with learning the spelling of hard words. Memorizing high frequency vocabulary reduces the cognitive load involved in reading. Additionally, dyslexics who have had training in touch typing can reinforce phonics knowledge, use muscle memory to learn word spellings, and facilitate the translation of ideas into written language.

This renders the writing process less frustrating and makes composing written work more fluid and effective.

Touch typing is a crucial skill for students and working adults to master. It makes writing on a computer faster, helps improve spelling skills by bringing in muscle memory and reduces the distraction and inefficiency of hunting for one letter at a time. It also provides a direct route for the translation of ideas into written language, as thoughts flow freely through the fingertips and onto the screen.

But in order to find letters on the keyboard through touch alone, typists need to create a spatial map of the keyboard that their fingers can use to navigate accurately and without visual guidance. They also need a base position to start with and a resting place for their hands to come back to during pauses and breaks in typing.

The traditional resting place for the right and left hands is on the home row keys.

Do you remember learning keyboarding at school? Depending on when and where you grew up, you may have studied touch-typing as part of a computer science course. Before computers at home were common, a school’s computer lab was one of the only places where students had the opportunity to learn correct finger placement and practice typing.

Today this is no longer the case. Children are exposed to keyboards on a range of devices from an early age. Many families have computers at home, some kids have their own tablets with wireless keyboards, and it's common to find local libraries with public computers available for use. Yet despite children developing early familiarity with keyboards and being more "tech savvy," most students cannot type without looking at the keyboard.

Moreover, it's not as common for schools to offer typing programs. This is the case even given an increase in the amount of schoolwork students complete electronically and online.

If you are considering learning how to touch-type, then you’re probably aware there is a certain base position in which to rest your fingers so they can reach all of the keys on the keyboard. But becoming a pro at typing requires more than just knowing which finger sits on which key.

First you will need to learn how to reach the keys with the correct fingers and then you’ll have to practice, practice and practice some more. Typing quickly and accurately with correct finger placement involves building up some muscle memory in your hands, so they feel comfortable reaching for keys in sequence and the movements become automatic.