Typing Practice Lessons
Start with the home row and build up to all the letters, capitals, numbers and sentences. After each lesson you see your speed, your accuracy and the keys to practise.
Worked examples
Speed
150 correct characters in 60 seconds
30 words per minute
150 divided by 5 is 30 words in one minute.
Accuracy
190 of 200 characters right
95%
The wrong keys are listed so you can practise them.
About Typing Practice Lessons
Touch typing is learned in stages. You begin with the home row, the keys your fingers rest on, then add the top row, the bottom row, capital letters and numbers. These ten lessons follow that order, and each one uses only the keys you have met so far, built into real words wherever there are enough of them. The text is coloured as you type, so you can see at once where you went wrong.
Speed is counted in words per minute, with a word taken as five characters, and only correct characters count. Accuracy is the share of what you typed that was right. After each lesson the keys you got wrong most often are listed so that you know what to practise. Aim for 95% accuracy before you try to go faster, because speed comes from accuracy and not the other way round. This is a set of lessons and is different from the typing speed test, which just measures how quickly you can type a passage.
How to use Typing Practice Lessons
- Choose a lesson and a length, starting with Lesson 1.
- Type the text shown, without looking at the keyboard.
- Read your words per minute, accuracy and the keys to practise.
- Repeat the lesson until accuracy is 95% or more, then move on.
Common uses
- Children learning to type at school or home
- Adults who want to stop looking at the keyboard
- Practising a particular row of keys
- Warming up before a typing test
Frequently asked questions
What is the home row?
It is the middle row of letters. Your left fingers rest on A, S, D and F, and your right fingers on J, K, L and the semicolon. Your thumbs rest on the space bar.
How is speed worked out?
Words per minute is the number of correct characters divided by five, divided by the time in minutes. The timer starts when you press your first key.
Why aim for accuracy first?
Mistakes slow you down because you have to stop and correct them, and they build bad habits. Going slowly and correctly trains your fingers to find the keys, and the speed follows.
How long should I practise?
Ten to fifteen minutes a day is better than an hour once a week. Most people can touch type after a few weeks of daily practice.
Can I paste text?
No. Pasting is switched off so that the lesson measures your typing.