Latest Touch Typing News


Touch typing will help your Dyslexic child – freedom from the pen!
Just watch 9yr old Theo, he’s Dyslexic and now typing at 30wpm! Theo learned to touch type using Englishtype at the Yorkshire Rose Dyslexia Typing Club on a Saturday morning plus practice at home. He’s only 9 years old and is typing at over 30 words a minute now. He learned to touchtype over two years of going to the club but his teacher says his great results are really about his second year when he worked really hard. It’s


Don’t be fooled by ‘fake’ – make sure it’s the BBC Bitesize original!
If you teach touch typing for kids, you’ve probably seen or used Dance Mat Typing from the BBC – it’s been around for 20 years and is one of the longest serving touch typing programs. It’s still a great free resource, giving an introduction to the idea of touch typing. The BBC team worked hard on the design, balancing educational value & literacy with entertainment & fun to make a great typing program for kids that won a BAFTA. Englishtype’s


The Importance of Touch Typing
Using a computer keyboard is a regular thing for almost everyone these days – school, homework, professional or personal use. Pressing keys on a keyboard while looking down to find the letters is about as efficient as writing with a feather and a pot of ink – painfully slow. Modern pens replaced quills a long time ago, but here in the UK we still lag behind the rest of the world in appreciating the importance of touch typing. Even though


Need more practice for your child after BBC Typing?
The typing course for children from the BBC is 20 years old this year! And it’s still one of the most popular free touch typing programs for children in the UK. Colourful cartoons with talking animals, it’s a fun way to introduce younger children to the idea of touch typing. But with just 240 lines of text over 12 stages, that’s nowhere near enough to teach your child the unconscious, physical skill of touch typing. It’s not just increasing words


touch typing software for children – why choose Englishtype?
There are a lot of touch typing programs for kids out there – some for free, some cost a lot. If you’re serious about touch typing for kids, have a look at Englishtype, its unique design gets great results at home or at school. Built for kids to improve their typing speed and accuracy. More About JuniorType Try The Free Demo Customer Reviews Teacher, Thomas’s Battersea (Primary): “I have worked with lots of different programmes over the last 10


Teach touch typing for kids – say no to being a digital caveman (cavewoman!)
“I wasn’t allowed to learn to type when I was at school, because I was told that as I was bright and heading to university I didn’t need to learn. It’s something I really regretted as I spent hours ‘hunting & pecking’ at the keyboard writing extended essays and dissertations when I was at university. Fast forward to when I worked for a very large international company at a middle management level. My peers from across the globe could all


Touch typing for kids with Dyslexia can be life changing
Mum, Martha, said… I wanted to write this review of Englishtype as it has been so life-changing for my son. This sounds like an exaggeration but it is not. My son Max was 14, dyslexic and left-handed – he struggled to feel good about himself in school, the school system that he was in was geared towards non-dyslexic brains and so he could not access the learning in the same way. Englishtype was recommended to us in 2017 by Max’s


Touch typing for Children is increasingly recognised as important in schools
Prince William had the internet giggling this week with his two finger typing video on YouTube. Hopefully, his children will learn proper touch typing! As reported in the Daily Express (Sept 9th 2021), Thomas’s Battersea includes touch typing in a list of activities offered to pupils. The school is known for its exclusivity, with star-studded alumni including model and actress Cara Delevingne, and singer Florence Welch as well as royalty from the UK and overseas. Prince William has royal fans


Touch typing for kids is far more useful than Latin
There are few skills that can increase your efficiency by about 300%; teaching kids to touch type is one of them. Give your child a huge head start in their educational and professional life and get them using a computer keyboard at maximum efficiency. There has been much criticism of the Latin proposal but the Government are still missing a simple, huge win by teaching touch typing to our kids. It’s quick and easy for kids to learn to touch


Yorkshire Rose Dyslexia Touch Typing Club
Pat Payne, YRD Chair, first realised the benefit of typing for a dyslexic when her son was able to use a laptop while sitting his GCSE exams in 1993. He was one of the first dyslexics in the county to do so; he learned to use the keyboard and was able to ‘hunt and peck’ quite quickly. However, even +25 years on, dyslexic children are still unlikely to learn to type in school, despite typing being taught in countries like


Touch Typing with the Power of the Unconscious
Research identifies new brain activity for unconscious skills and split second decision making. Many daily skills & activities are processed by the unconscious part of your brain – things that just happen on ‘autopilot’. Riding a bike, running, swimming and driving are common activities that become automatic. These unconscious skills use a different and very powerful part of the brain: the cerebellum (Latin for “little brain”). You may have heard the term “muscle memory”, but it isn’t only about your


Over 80,000 of the Young People Collecting GCSE Results will be dyslexic
Over 80,000 of the young people collecting GCSE results will be dyslexic. If the trend of recent years continues, their chance of getting a good pass in their English and maths will be just half of that of their peers. Despite being just as able as their classmates, they are twice as likely to fail to get those critical grades. Dyslexic young people are so much less likely to leap this important hurdle in accessing further education and a good


The Definition of Literacy is Changing
SEN Magazine’s article on literacy makes rather bleak reading: 25% of all children leave Primary school with below age-expected skill levels. And for SEN pupils, this is a staggering 62%. Teaching typing by touch is a simple option and will boost literacy levels – improving spelling and reading and changing written work completely. Typing by touch uses the powerful unconscious physical skill centre or muscle memory. Don’t let your child be one of these statistics, it’s easy to help, Englishtype


Transition to secondary school for children with Special Needs
HuffPost UK has suggestions about helping transition to secondary school for children with Special Needs. While it’s nice to see they think touch typing will have already been taught – it’s certainly not a reality! Help your child and get them typing properly. Remember, the real benefit of the skill comes from the fact that it gets the brain working differently from writing with a pen. Great for SEN / Neuro-diverse brains! (HuffPost UK) “Plan your approach” (to the Senior


NHS has identified touch typing for doctors
A project to save time in the NHS has identifed touch typing for doctors as one of a top ten priorities in increasing efficiency. Don’t waste more than half the time you or your child spends at the computer, invest just a few short weeks and learn a skill for life. And save hundreds of thousands of hours at a keyboard over a lifetime in education or at work. www.pulsetoday.co.uk/…/nhs-englands-flagsh…/20037519.article


Helping pupils with Dyspraxia
SEN magazine has an article about helping pupils with Dyspraxia with the transition to secondary school, highlighting the importance of typing and ideally learning in primary Teaching typing and handwriting to pupils in years 5 and 6 who continue to demonstrate poor handwriting (quality and quantity) and providing opportunities for pupils to type (rather than handwrite) some of their work will help maintain their self-esteem and confidence in learning whilst developing a useful life skill. Teaching typing at primary school


Englishtype Success Story
A great success story about learning to type from a girl with Dyspraxia and her Mum; Lucy achieved 20 wpm through her Easter holidays working very intensively, more practice in the summer hols got her to +30wpm and she now types at over 40wpm. Well done Lucy, Englishtype is proud of you! Mum says “I think the key to our success was a very concerted effort at the beginning (almost treating it like a holiday course you might attend at


Leading Schools Put Touch Typing Back on the Timetable
It’s great to see touch typing getting some recognition as a skill, there’s an article in today’s Daily Mail Online about how leading schools are putting it on the timetable due to parental demand. Brighton College Prep School is one of Englishtype’s client schools and Englishtype is now being rolled out into the Senior school. Lots of Brighton College pupils are using Englishtype at school and at home. If you are a parent and your child isn’t learning to type,


Englishtype Returns to Indonesia with Sue Heskett
A great success story about learning to type from a girl with Dyspraxia and her Mum; Lucy achieved 20 wpm through her Easter holidays working very intensively, more practice in the summer hols got her to +30wpm and she now types at over 40wpm. Well done Lucy, Englishtype is proud of you! Mum says “I think the key to our success was a very concerted effort at the beginning (almost treating it like a holiday course you might attend at


The Future of Work
Google showed me an article today that is about 3D and coding. It seems strange to me that coding is promoted as part of the UK curriculum, and yet touch typing which is an essential skill for efficient work is still being ignored. Most other countries teach touch typing, recognising it is a skill that can be easily taught. “Disassociation from one’s hands” is not something UK pupils understand! “The dissociation from one’s hands and input devices is easier for


Englishtype Home Made Customised Keyboard
A lovely note from a Mum and a great job by the kids colouring stickers for a home made customised keyboard… “I spoke to you earlier in the week and I’m delighted to report that both kids LOVE Qwerty and find his Outfits very motivating! I attach a picture of our keyboard customisation. The kids coloured in stickers from Rymans and helped to stick them on. We have used tiny dots of blu tac on the home keys. Just wish


Research Paper on the Benefits of Touch Typing
“What is known… Typing skills are important for the quality of the typewritten text output. In touch‐typing with automaticity of transcription, workting‐memory load is decreased. What this paper adds… This study investigated the effect of a touch‐typing course on spelling and narrative writing. We used a design with an experimental (with typing‐course) and a control group (no course) The experimental group showed more improvement in typing, spelling and narrative writing. Implications for parents & teachers… It is important for the