Touch Typing by TopTyper


About the e-learning material

This is a sample e-learning material with the basic touch typing info and some statistic info.

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Author: Miha Koncilja
Email: [email protected]



Please feel free to contact me for any questions, issues or commendation.

Automatically generated on: February 14, 2015, 4:21 pm
2014 �TopTyper.com



Basics


This part of the document is for the basics of touch typing. Here we introduce touch typing, its learning and some interesting touch typing related content.


Definition

What is touch typing?
Touch typing is a skill that uses muscle memory for identification of keys on the keyboard without the aid of vision.
Why do we learn touch typing?
Touch typing allows you to use all ten fingers in a rapid sequential order and thus enables very high-speed data communications.
Touch typing has many other advantages that we will look at next.

Advantages


A high degree of accuracy, readability and clarity of written texts.
The higher speed of data entry than other methods.
The possibility of learning new spelling of foreign or technical terms by using the natural patterns of pressing letters on the keyboard.
Reduces the physical effort in terms of physical strain and concentration that we use for typing.
Makes it easier to edit text.
We do not need such a high ability of visual perception, it is not necessary to constantly look at the keyboard.
Hand writing is more demanding than simply pressing a key on the keyboard.
We can edit texts later on compared to hand written and other content.
We can concentrate on the content quality visible on the screen instead of concentrating on the keyboard.
At the end of the day we are less exhausted and more productive.

Differences in typing skill

Time between two consecutive pressing of keys.
The duration of the keystroke.
Typing speed.
Frequency of errors, which represents the frequency of backspaces.
Frequency of the use of extra keys on the keyboard.
The sequence of letting keys go while in pressed state.
The applied force when pressing keys.

Characteristics of typing can also be used for verification or sometimes even to identify of persons.

What to know before learning

Learning of touch typing without prior knowledge can be quite challenging. At the beginning we are often faster typing on the keyboard by the use of the hunt-and-peck method. In the long run it is better to invest time in the learning of touch typing, it brings better results.
Touch typing is learned gradually with training, but first we need to know the basics, which you'll get to know next.


Home row

Touch typing starts with the positioning of fingers on the keyboard, which is called the "home row" and the keys that we place our fingers on are called "home keys". The home keys are found in the middle of the keyboard, most equally distanced from other keys. The "home keys" consist from the keys: "asdfjkl;" (from left to right). The letters F and J have little bumps on them, so they can be easely located!
The fingers always flow from those eight keys to the other keys on the keyboard.

Proper body posture

Proper body posture improves typing results and reduces overall body strain.

Straight head
Relaxed shoulders
Elbows close to the body
Fingers in natural curved position
Feet flat on the floor
Legs should not be crossed

Additional information on the learning process

For the learning of touch typing is important: manual dexterity, coordination, fine motoric ability, the ability to temporary concentration on a specific task and usually for children the size of their fingers.
At the beginning we often pay more attention to the spelling of words, by which we use appropriate fingers to press the corresponding key.
For learning touch typing, it is necessary to quit any different typing habits (which presumably takes 12 hours of learning).
Typing on a laptop?
It is more challenging to type on a laptop than on a separate keyboard. Fingers at laptop are more elevated. The position of the keys are more compact, surface of the keypad itself is flatter.

How to train

For touch typing we use special applications which enable us to train and get feedback on our typing skill in the form of evaluation and error display. We train by retyping text content or by using special textual lections.
The room should be properly lit. The windows should be behind the computer screen and there should not be any glare from the light or sun.
When training we should have regular breaks which should be at least 10 minutes once each hour.
Cant manage to keep your eyes off keyboard?
Learning to touch type is like learning to swim; we cant learn it without jumping in the water or stop looking at the keyboard.

Expectations

Office, administrative work and secretarial jobs often require the ability to type at 60 words per minute or more. Some jobs also require accuracy of typing, which is usually above 90%.
The reading ability also affects typing. You can only focus 100% at 4 to 5 letters of each word.

More information

The limitation of typing are not the motorical skills but the cognitive ability.
The speed record at touch typing is 150wpm for 50 minutes long typing, while sometimes also 170wpm and in some moments even up to 212wpm.
There are different keyboard layouts such as Dvorak, but far the most popular is QWERTY.
Different keyboards dont offer significant typing advantages, at least for majority.

Typing Analysis

Below is the chart for finger use that are used in TopTyper.com tests. The blue bar represents the fingers that should be pressed, and the orange line represents the fingers that were actually pressed.
Finger 1 on the chart represents left-most finger and figer 10 is right-most finger (eg. "home row" fingers).
The chart is for at least 1 minute long test results.
The chart depends on keyboard layout. Default keyboard layout was US.