My Experience with touch typing

The most important thing I have realized throughout touch typing for years is the important of practicing typing daily. You may think that after learning how to touch type, you are good to go but like most other things, practicing this skill daily is the key to mastering it.

Practicing touch typing can be done in a variety of online websites such as typing games like typeracer.

These games are a fun way to practice typing as you are racing other typists while tracking your WPM. In many of these types of games, you can race random people, invite people you know to a private typing race, or simply practice by yourself. At the end of the race, you will get a total speed and accuracy percentage and it will tell you how long it took you to complete the test. This is a great way to practice touch typing as it allows you to put your skills to the test and compete with other typists!

One of my favorite websites that I use to practice touch typing on a regular basis is 10FastFingers.

This website includes typing tests that use the top 200 words to test your typing for one minute. After completing a test, you are shown your WPM, the number of right and wrong keystrokes, how many correct words you typed, how many wrong words you typed, and the number of corrections that you made.

You are able to login or create an account for free and once you complete 10 tests that use the top 200 words, you can then take the advanced typing tests that use the top 1000 words. The advanced typing tests include more difficult words that you may not type that frequently. By completing the typing tests and analyzing your results, it can help you improve your speed and accuracy much faster!

10FastFingers also has sections where you can play against other users, join a typing competition, or create your own game which can be a private typing competition. A private typing competition only allows users to participate if they are given the url. This is a great feature on the website as it allows you to practice your typing skills with friends and family. Joining a competition is also a great way to see where you rank compared to others who have completed the typing test.

Another great feature on this website is the fact that you can create your own custom typing tests. In this feature, you can also pick a time duration from 30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, and 10 minutes. The custom typing tests are especially useful if you want to practice specific keys that you miss regularly or words you realize that you misspell often.

When you are logged in to the website, you can earn achievements by completing things such as a certain number of tests or reaching a certain WPM. These achievements allow you to set realistic goals for yourself which is a great way to further improve your typing.

On your profile page, there is also a graph included that plots all your test results and shows you what your average WPM is based on the tests you have taken.
Below is an image of my typing test results so far.

I find this graph useful as it gives me an understanding of the speed I can type at most consistently. By taking typing tests regularly, your average WPM will give a more accurate reading and with this simple graph, it becomes much easier to track progress over an extended period of time.

Overall, my experience with touch typing has been rewarding as I have seen the progress over the years through practicing regularly. Typing is a great asset even when it comes to school, with most classes being online these days, typing is something you can not skip anymore.
Although in the beginning the progress may seem slow, with continuous practice you will definitely see the results and you will appreciate taking the time to learn and practice touch typing when it gives you the extra edge in tasks like school/work assignments and even simple tasks such as writing emails!