www.rapidtyping.com Here, you'll find an informative section about best practices to improve typing speeds. The core feature is an online typing test that displays the words per minute, characters per minute as well as accuracy. There are multiple variations on the typing game that make it fun to practice typing. To keep you motivated, you can also view high scores in a global leaderboard (no registration is required).
www.goodtyping.com A free registration is required to keep track of your progress on this site. Once you start, it takes you through various lessons starting from the very basic. After each lesson, it displays your speed, error percentage and recommends if you should repeat the lesson or not. What we found really useful was that the site uses images to teach you about correct positioning of hands on the keyboard.
www.sense-lang.org Although the homepage is cluttered, the typing tutorial is impressive. The tutorials are divided into lessons with words per minute, time taken, success rate & mistakes displayed in a sidebar as you type. Advanced users can practice using BBC articles or with games. It even includes tutorials to increase speed & accuracy on a number pad.
www.typingweb.com Here, each lesson starts with images showing you which keys will be used and which fingers should be used. You'll get to see your gross and net typing speed, accuracy and problem keys as you type. Lessons are separate for beginners, intermediate and advanced users and although it is not mandatory, there is a free registration if you want to keep track of your progress.
KeyBlaze Typing Tutor (www.nchsoftware.com)Available for Windows and MAC, this free tutor offers basic training as well as advanced practice lessons that include typing paragraphs or poetry. A 'finger guide' teaches you which finger should be used for which key. It also gives immediate feedback for each session with alarms that sound on hitting the wrong key. Mistakes are highlighted in red as you type.
Tipp10 (www.tipp10.com) Available for Windows, Mac & Linux, Tipp10 is meant for beginners, but can be used by anyone to improve typing speed. The intelligent tracking system repeats characters that are mistyped frequently to improve your skills. The program shows a 'fingers' chart which displays your error rate per finger — helpful to identify issues and improve speed.
MOBILE DEVICES
Change Default Keyboard With Android, you can switch over to a third party keyboard. There are various free and paid keyboards that you can download from Google Play — Swype, TouchPal, Slideit, Swipeit, Swiftkey and so on. Each keyboard has its share of innovative features that will improve speed and accuracy. This is the first step if you find the default keyboard cumbersome on your phone/tablet.
Use Typing Apps Apple does not let you switch to a third party keyboard but a workaround (without jailbreaking) is to use apps like Smart Keyboard, Fast Keyboard, Keyboard+ & Easy Typing. All these apps have customised keyboards. The idea is that you can type what you want within the app & copypaste it to the mail or messaging app. Some apps even let you send mail or post to your social networks directly.
Typing Games Like on computers, you can download mobile games to improve typing speed on a touchscreen. For iOS, check out free games like ControlShifts, Burning Fingers & Fast Typer 2. Android users can try Typing Zombie, Tapwriter and Typeout. 'Typing Games' is recommended for Windows Phone users, while Symbian users can try out Type Like A Maniac.
0 Comments