Typing Practice

How to use the typing practice lessons

1. Pick your Keyboard layout: QWERTY (English, US) or AZERTY (French, France). It starts on the layout that matches the page language, and your choice is remembered.
2. Choose a Lesson: Home row, Top row, Bottom row, Numbers, then Symbols (on AZERTY, Accents and symbols). The line under the buttons lists the New keys of that lesson.
3. Click in the box under the drill and start typing. The timer starts with your first key, so take the time to place your fingers first.
4. Watch the on-screen keyboard: the next key lights up, together with the Shift or AltGr key when one is needed. The line above it names the finger to use, for example “Next key: f (left index)”.
5. When a character is wrong, the keyboard highlights Backspace. Fix the mistake before you go on, since every character is compared with the drill at the same position.
6. At the end of the drill, Drill finished shows your WPM, your Accuracy, your Best WPM for the lesson and the number of Drills done.
7. Press Restart drill to type the same text again, or New drill for a fresh one. Reset progress erases the saved results (click it twice to confirm).

How the lessons are built

Touch typing means typing without looking at the keys, with each finger in charge of its own column. Everything starts from the home row: on QWERTY, the left fingers rest on A S D F and the right fingers on J K L ;. The F and J keys have a small bump so you can find them without looking, and the on-screen keyboard underlines them for the same reason.

Each lesson adds one row, and its words only use the keys you have learned so far:

• Home row: A S D F G H J K L and the semicolon, with short words such as “glad”, “flask” or “salad”.
• Top row: Q W E R T Y U I O P. With the vowels E, I, O and U, real sentences become possible.
• Bottom row: Z X C V B N M plus the comma, period and slash.
• Numbers: the digit row, mixed with prices, years and random numbers.
• Symbols: the shifted characters (! @ # $ % & * and brackets) found in email addresses, code and prices.

Every drill has three parts: key patterns on the new keys (like “fff”, “fjf” or “fjdk”), about ten practice words, and a few more patterns. New drill mixes them differently each time, so you practice the keys and not a memorized text.

AZERTY and French keyboards

The French AZERTY layout is quite different. The home row is Q S D F G H J K L M, with no vowels at all, so its first lesson uses key groups only. The digits need Shift, while é, è, ç, à and ù are typed directly on the number row and next to M. The Accents and symbols lesson trains those letters with common French words such as “déjà”, “garçon” or “voilà”. Characters that need a dead key (â, ê, î, ô) are left out of the drills.

Scoring and passing a lesson

WPM uses the typing-test convention of five characters per word, minus one word per minute for each mistake left in the text. Accuracy counts every keystroke, including errors you corrected later. A lesson is passed, and gets a check mark, once you finish a drill with at least 95% accuracy. Speed comes later: aim for accuracy first, then increase the pace.