Learn to Touch Type
Why Should You Learn To Touch Type?
Touch typing is one of those skills that has been over looked or gone out of fashion. Most kids are familiar with computers almost as soon as they get to school, so it’s assumed they know how to use the keyboard by “hunting & pecking” at the keys. This means the slowest part of the computer is the human using the keyboard – learning to touch typing increases efficiency by 200-800% or more.
In many other countries, like Australia, Canada & America, learning to touch typing (or “keyboarding”) is recognised as a vital life skill. Be a forward-thinking school and add it to your curriculum, or at home learn to touch type to give your child a head start.
“Given the ubiquity of keyboards and the growing expectation that secondary school pupils and university students will type their essays and coursework, I think it (learning to touch type) is one the most useful skills a child can learn – at any age from seven upwards.”
John Clare, Daily Telegraph
Is there really a difference between “hunting & pecking” and touch typing?
The power of the typing by touch isn’t really about whether you can use your little finger to type Q and P. It’s about what goes on in the brain to make it all happen. Typing by touch uses a different part of the brain from writing with a pen. For more than a century, scientists have recognized the existence of “automaticity” (auto-mat-i-city): the human ability to perform actions without conscious thought. Automatic behaviours are surprisingly common, ranging from tying shoelaces to riding a bicycle and driving a car.
“With automaticity, experts outperform novices but think less about it when they do”
Professor Logan, Vanderbilt University
When you learn to touch type, your muscle memory (brain’s physical skill centre) is in control and the skill becomes unconscious. This frees your conscious brain from the process of writing, allowing your unconscious take it over. The skill increases accuracy, speed, improves spelling, reduces visual stress (focus only on the screen) and decreases load on working memory & processing as the unconscious powers the skill. Learning to Touch type will be one of the most valuable skills your child will ever learn.
Typing movement, MRI images
Higashiyama et al, 2015, Japan, Cognitive NeuroScience PLOS
For Special Needs children, freedom from the pen can be life changing
For Special Needs or Neuro-divergent children, touch typing provides a very different option for writing and usually has a very significant effect, completely changing how they feel about written work. Written work is usually a disliked and/or upsettingly difficult process. The quality of work is not comparable with cognitive ability, and self esteem is often also damaged.
Using this different part of the brain has many advantages – spelling becomes finger movements, colours and patterns not strings of letters. The physical skill centre is very powerful and unconscious, and for children with processing issues, freeing the conscious brain from the “process” of the skill, and particularly from using a pen, will have great results.
Learning to touch type with Englishtype is great for children with Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, Dysgraphia, ASD/Austism and Visual Impairment (partially sighted). Englishtype are experts in touch typing and skill acquisition, teaching typing for 25+ years.
How To Touch Type
What’s the aim?
Englishtype recommends you aim for muscle memory / automaticity – this happens when you can type at about 30 words per minute. You can’t type that quickly if your conscious brain is still thinking about what finger to move where. You just think the words and your fingers move, and the words appear on the screen. Keyboard familiarity will make you faster but all the other benefits are missed.
What’s the best age to learn?
Anyone can learn to type, all it needs is motivation & practice – and some good software. It’s easier to learn as a child, Primary age is ideal, before bad habits of hunting & pecking are too established. Children from Year 3 (or even 2) can learn to type, it’s a balance of motivation & concentration time; Years 4, 5 and 6 are a great age to learn to type.
In Secondary, Year 7 (11-12yrs) is a great time to learn – an intensive course at the beginning of the year pays huge dividends through the rest of the school years. Typing often becomes a focus when exams are looming, especially for SEN pupils; learning can be done intensively in 2-4 weeks but realistically it may take longer in school.
Englishtype has also successfully taught many adults to type, including Chair of Yorkshire Rose Dyslexia who just learned in her 70’s.
Learning at home
Englishtype contains all the information and exercises needed to learn to type at home. Most schools don’t teach typing or if they do, don’t have enough time available to get the pupils to automaticity / muscle memory – which is the biggest benefit.
Intensive practice is the most efficient way to learn and less time is needed overall. An average amount of time to program the muscle memory is 20-25 hours of active keyboard practice. Here are some suggestions…
- Summer holidays are a unique window in the school year to get your child typing. 30-45 mins, twice a day (so 1-1.5 hours of practice daily) will get most children typing proficiently in 4-6 weeks. It’s not that long out of the very long summer holiday days. Bribe them if necessary!
- In term time, 15 mins twice a day (morning and afternoon/early evening) over 12 weeks can show great results. Use whichever holiday/s appear during the selected time and do longer practice sessions (1-1.5 hours a day). This schedule gets results within a school term and a holiday or two.
- Practising an hour once a week will get results eventually but often takes 2 years to learn (and is much more than 20 hours in total). This is the old fashioned way to learn and can still deliver results, it’s just a long time to wait to see the benefits.
Special Needs children make take longer to learn, depending on their learning difficulties. Some children will need longer to achieve automaticity and will need more practice / over learning. Automaticity is recognised as important for SEN children in learning any skill – more time & practice is needed but results will still be great.
Learning at school
In school, Englishtype can be part of the timetable or an extra-curricular activity
- part of IT lessons
- a supplementary activity (e.g. with a T.A.)
- a club – breakfast, lunchtime or after school
- activity for any children when other groups are elsewhere, e.g. Booster classes, Special Needs activities
- an intensive course after SATS or Common Entrance exams
- covering PPA time is also a common usage
Using Englishtype as an intervention for SEN pupils can produce amazing results at Primary and Secondary levels. It may seem daunting to free up an hour a week or more – but few interventions can deliver results in a term with this much time. Many schools achieve it and have SEN pupils using laptops and typing by touch. 20 minutes, 3 times a week supplemented with home or lunchtime/before school practice can get results in just one term.
An ideal solution can be lessons in school combined with extra practice at home (like learning a sport or instrument). Englishtype sells discounted home copies via schools for parents.
Make a special keyboard to boost learning
To get the muscle memory to work, it’s essential you can’t see the letters while learning.
Englishtype recommends making a coloured keyboard to match our onscreen design, with some texture on F and J. Get an old or cheap USB keyboard and some coloured stickers, white stickers and felt pen or even paint (and possibly recruit some child labour?!). Then add some texture to F and J; fluffy Velcro is ideal, or some teachers use “bumpons” (little sticky plastic half bubbles)
Most children find the keyboard with no letters and just colour quite engaging and a bit of a challenge. For SEN pupils, it makes an enormous difference and is essential for anyone with Dyspraxia, Fine Motor or Co-ordination issues and tends to work well with ASD pupils and VI pupils too.
Learning can also be achieved by covering the hands and the keyboard with a custom made cover or a box cut to allow the hands underneath or light towel. Lots of children do learn like this – but it can be distracting and a bit artificial. Special Needs children particularly benefit from the coloured keyboard but it does give everyone a boost so why not invest just a little extra.
