Back to the Basics: Typing Practice

Many of the sites I discover come from efforts to help my students. Since I teach in an intensive English program where students aspire to obtain a college degree, it makes sense for them to improve their typing skills. Very little of what they produce in writing will be done by hand and poor typing can really slow a person down. Now typing isn’t something we teach in our classes; however, students have approached me and asked how they can improve this skill on their own, so I found Typing Web.

Like many sites I find, Typing Web is easy to register for and has both free and premium accounts. Better yet, it was designed with teachers in mind! When you sign up, be sure to click “Teachers Start Here” as this account will give you more options. Even if you don’t plan on integrating typing into your classes, it will provide you with a way to easily create and monitor student accounts. In my beginning writing class this term, I won’t take students to the computer lab during class time or require them to achieve a specific typing speed, but I have asked students to complete the beginner typing course on Typing Web by the end of the term. This way, students can work at their own speed and I can check their individual progress at any time.

Typing Web is a great site, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Graphite has a review for Typing Web with the highest teacher rating, a list of pros and cons, and other comments. If you haven’t visited Graphite yet, take a minute to check out my previous post.