Touch typing is a technique that creates a structure where you have to place different fingers on specific areas on your keyboard. You are using all your 10 fingers, and each one is in charge of a section or a column on the keyboard and it all starts with the home row.

Typing is something that is becoming more and more prominent nowadays and remains a foundational life skill so getting your child to learn this skill properly is extremely necessary and will be of benefit to them for the entirety of their life. It can not only help them with their school work but can also set them up with an advantage in later life when it comes to exploring job opportunities. Many jobs in the modern world of work now require quick typing skills, but with advances in technology that’s set to become even more important.

The things which make a successful typist are:

Repetition and routine, posture, home keys, covering keyboard with skin

The first key to learning to type is learning the correct hand position. Starting with your pinky on the A key, your left-hand fingers rest on the A, S, D, and F keys. The right-hand pinky goes on the; key, and fingers rest on the J, K, L, and; keys. These keys are the home row keys. Your thumbs should either be in the air or lightly touch the spacebar key. Once you have the hand positions down, you can practice touch typing – typing without looking at the keyboard. By doing so, your muscles will memorise the movements and even key patterns. 

For example, when you type frequently used combinations such as “the”, your motor system will pick up on this. With muscle memory, you can type at a much faster speed. In addition, when you type in looking at the screen, you are able to catch errors faster. This frees up cognitive attention and processing power for the content of the task, so writers can focus on the work they are producing vs. the mechanics of recording it in electronic format.

You probably know roughly where the keys are located on the keyboard, but the goal of improving your typing skills is to do it without looking at the keys. Set yourself up for success by putting your body in the proper position for comfort and avoiding injury.

 Follow these seven steps to improve your typing posture and positioning:

1. Sit up straight in a chair with the keyboard or laptop at a comfortable height on the table or desk.
2. Put your feet flat on the floor.
3. Place the screen so it’s 15 to 25 inches from your eyes, and in a position where you are looking down slightly.
4. Keep your elbows bent at a 90-degree angle and try to expose your shoulders, arms, wrists and elbows to as little strain as possible. You want to avoid developing any habits that would cause repetitive stress injury long-term.
5. Place your left and right pointer fingers on the F and the J keys. Many keyboards have a little raised tab on those letters so you can orient your fingers without looking. Let the rest of your fingers on each hand fall on the remaining keys in the home row (D, S, and A for the left hand; K, L, and the “;” symbol for the right hand). Both thumbs rest on the space bar.
6. With your fingers positioned on the home row, you’ll train your hands to reach all the other keys without having to look. This is called “touch typing.” Essentially, each finger is responsible for the keys just above and below the home row key it sits on. Try to imagine vertical dividers around each finger. The right pinky is responsible for the return, shift, and delete keys, and the left pinky is for the shift, caps lock, and tab keys. It may feel awkward at first since our pinky fingers aren’t always strong, but with practice, it will feel more natural.

It is recommended to use a cover to cover the keys to build up a repetitive routine and to boost your confidence when touch typing

Key ingredients needed to be a successful touch typist – Motivation and concentration

People often quote Malcolm Gladwell’s ideas on how to make something a habit. In his book ‘Outliers’, he says “It takes 10,000 hours to master anything.” 10,000 hours translates into 416 days, or over a year of your life—if you practice 24 hours a day!

While that amount of time applied to typing practice might seem much too daunting, neuroscience research suggests that our brains don’t develop based on an inherent set of preprogrammed patterns. In other words, our brains are always ready for new skills. Practice leads to learning in the developing and the mature brain, and the resulting structural changes to the brain encode that learning. Once you learn the basics of finger placement and where they move on the keyboard, practicing with intention gives you lifetime mastery that will make every instance of typing easier.

The Typewiz bot helps your child to remain engaged by providing help and tips to learn how to touch type. Our bot analyses your child’s performance and encourages them to type better.

Typewiz offers a report showing how your child is progressing on the course. The report shows the following information:

• Exercises Completed
• Highest Score
• 100% Scores
• Excellent Scores
• Average Accuracy
• Coins Earned
• Average WPM
• Top WPM

Information can be shown weekly, last six months, last year, or all time. Our report has both accuracy and wpm graphs. So it can easily be viewed. Reports can be printed off. Course certificates are available to print as well. These reports often motivate children as they want to beat their wpm or exercises completed from the previous day.

Touch typing program – need to be fun and gamified like Typewiz!

It is vital when learning how to touch type it is an engaging and interactive experience. Typewiz allows children to earn an avatar as they complete each lesson in Typewiz. Thus motivating your child to learn how to touch type. Typewiz has fun and interactive typing games for your child to enjoy. Your child can compete with other children and see who is on top of the leaderboard. A virtual coin is used for each game. This is earned by your child’s performance on the Typewiz course which prompts them to achieve high scores or improve their wpm. Thus motivating them to complete exercises fast and accurately. These incentives stimulate children to complete more exercises and improve their wpm which improves their accuracy.

Why is it better for your child to learn how to type than to write?

Before we go into detail as to why it is better for your child for them to type than to write, it must be first made clear that writing is not a bad thing for your child and we do encourage that if they can pick being able to write easy, then they should continue to write as well as learning the skill of typing. Typing is something which is becoming more and more prominent nowadays so getting your child to learn this skill is extremely necessary and will be of benefit to them for the entirety of their life.

Firstly, let’s look at touch typing. Touch-typing is something which is of benefit to everyone, not only people who may struggle to write properly. When being able to touch type not only will you be able to type faster, but you will be able to do this without the need of having to look at the screen on the computer. Things like transcribing are also made a whole lot easier, due to the fact that when you’re touch-typing your eyes can stay on the paper and you can ensure that your figures will be able to do the job when typing.

Now let’s look at reasons why touch typing is a skill worth in.

Let’s look at a few of the key reasons as to why touch typing is such an important skill:

Comfort will improve:  when a child starts to learn how to touch type, they will then become much more comfortable with how their hands are operating when they are typing. This is because when you can have your hands centered on the keyboard it will allow you to place your fingers more evenly across the keyboard.

Fewer mistakes made: with touch typing, this will be more effective than say a hunt and peck type method as it will lead to less errors by the individual being made. Now of course at first, mistakes will obviously be made when you are trying to get used to aligning your fingers in the correct position on the keyboard and keeping your eyes fixated to the screen, but once you are used to this method it will become much easier to adjust any errors as you will be already looking at the screen to notice the mistake made.

Typing speed increases: as touched upon on the previous point, keeping your eyes off the keyboard and fixated on the screen will give you a huge boost in your ability to type faster. Think about note-taking in the classroom or even at work. It often happens that notes are being taken at such a quick rate that you will struggle to be able to take down all the necessary information that is being said, and this can lead to crucial bits of information not being taken down by the individual. What touch typing does is not necessarily ensure that every single bit of note-taking will be taken down but it will vastly improve the speed in which a person can do this. Mistakes may be made along the way but at least you will have the bulk of what is being said down and you can adjust and fix this information later.

Now let’s look at an example of a touching typing course which is known as Typewiz. Typewiz touch typing lessons are designed in a way to be short and encourage the child to complete their next lesson by achieving rewards and moving up leaderboards. Below is a little deeper insight into why you should get your child started with Typewiz.

Typing games: Typewiz has fun and interactive games for your child to enjoy. Typewiz allows your child to compete with kids in their age range and they can try improving by moving up leaderboards. A virtual coin is used for each game and will measure your child’s performance of how they’re getting on in the course, which will then motivate them to complete exercises as fast and efficiently as possible.

–          Avatar rewards: Typewiz allows your child to earn an avatar as they complete each lesson, and these include many cool-looking avatars which will motivate the child to focus and do the best they can in order to achieve their desired avatar.

–          Modular design: the modular design which Typewiz provides is something that is easy on the eye for children and really creates an amazing environment for children to learn how to touch type.

–          Reporting: This is of huge benefit to parents of the children, as Typewiz offers a report showing how your child is getting on and progressing along throughout the duration of the course. The report will give you key information such as exercises your child has completed, average accuracy, highest score, and much, much more. This information can be shown weekly, over the last 6 months, the past year, or all the time. Typewiz will show you both accuracy and words per minute graphs in the report, so it can easily be available to view and print off either.

Now after looking at an example of a touch typing game and why it would be of benefit to your child, it is clear that typing is something which is essential to learn at an early age and would of be of great use to any young person. In school writing is of course still used for exams and note-taking by students, however with colleges now really putting emphasis on doing exams from home on computers due to the pandemic we find ourselves in, it would not be of any surprise if this was to be the way forward for learning in the near future.