You’re welcome! I made sure to install this on my grandboy’s computer because he’s 11 and is starting a growth spurt–I figure his fingers are long enough to place on the home keys properly. Since he does a high percentage of his homework on the computer he really needs to learn touch typing ASAP. We installed Mavis Beacon as well, but the FF add on is neat because it’s so available and low overhead…
Put your index fingers on F and J. Notice that these keys usually have little bumps on them, to help you find them without looking. The row with F and J is called the Home Row. Put the rest of your fingers on the adjacent keys on the same row. Type keys immediately above and below a finger with that finger and then return it to the home row. Type the letters between F and J with whichever index finger is closer to them. Type the space bar with your thumb.
Now, start typing slowly, and it’s OK to look at the keys. Type things you are thinking, like correspondence. Gradually you will go faster and faster. Eventually you will find you tend to look at the screen instead of the keys. Then start trying to type things you are reading - this is good exercise. It is easier to be able to type what you want to say than it is to read what somebody else wrote and type that, so this part will tend to come last.
I’ve done it this way pretty painlessly, and never really made it that much of a job to learn how to type. But now I can type fast enough to be useful. I haven’t timed it in years, but I think it was around 50 wpm when I last did.
It was 65 wpm just now.
My father bought a copy of Mavis Beacon (an old DOS version) about 15 years ago. It worked well for me and made the mandatory typing classes I had later in middle school nothing but a big waste of time. (Well, a lot of middle school was a big waste of time, but typing class especially.)
Yeah, I did a different test with simpler words and I jumped from about 30 WPM to over 50.
Just did a test online, got 75wpm the first time with two mistakes, and then 80wpm with two mistakes again. Guess I should be more careful.
But anyway, my typing speed improved through using MSN messenger to talk to friends instead of doing work. You should try it.
I’d just say to pick a typing program and try it out. I took a typing class in high school that just used software to teach us. Roughly an hour a day, five days a week, for five months, and I could type at about the same rate as you can currently. Any decent program will have reasonably detailed instructions re what fingers to use, but for the most part it’s just practice practice practice.
Oh, and I’d suggest putting a sheet or something over your hands while typing. Even though I can touch type I usually don’t–I still look down out of habit, and part of the point of touch typing is that you don’t need to look down once you learn the skill.
I should look up a longer test, but I just got 94 on the one at that first link. I’m not sure a paragraph is really a good test, though, and I know with numbers I’m a lot slower. That should change now that a large part of my job is data entry including various numbers.
I don’t usually look, but if I’m putting in a long string of numbers I do. I need to work on that.
Ha! I took typing in Summer School–because Mom thought I needed to learn it. We used manual typewriters with blank keys. In a non-air-conditioned classroom, with the stenches of the nearby petrochemical plants wafting in. I did need to learn typing; the skill helped me support myself. (Still does, in a way.)
Look for a good program; I once tried Typing Tutor for fun. But it kept testing me on the &*()@($_'s, since I knew all the “easy” keys.
I don’t “home row” precisely, but I guess I do some variant of touch typing - I use all my fingers and I don’t look. I got 100 wpm on that test with no mistakes - had a passage from Little House on the Prairie, oddly enough.
At any rate, the only way to improve is through practice. And you have to see how using more fingers is clearly superior.