If you want something a little more structured than these games, there are all sorts of useful programs and lessons to serve as your typing tutor. These are some of the better ones we have found.
Typing Instructor Deluxe offers 64 different lessons, 80 practice sessions and over 300 practice articles. This typing program puts a fun twist on typing practice with ten typing games, making typing instruction fun for both kids and adults alike. Some games offer different challenge levels and keeps track of high scores.
Check out TopTenReviews review of Typing Instructor Deluxe. You can also download a 30-minute trial version.
Learn how to use your keyboard in a fun and entertaining way for absolutely free. Rapid Typing Tutor is designed to teach adults and kids to use their computer keyboard more efficiently than ever. Learning to type is fun with the typing game included with Rapid Typing Tutor, while its extensive training statistics and customized lessons are rarely seen in the much more expensive products.
Here is a nice web-store with a collection of the numerous different typing tutor programs and other software to help improve your typing skills. They have the familiar names like Mavis Beacon Typing and TurboTyping along with a bunch of game-based programs.
I just came across this thorough article on touch-typing, written by Sindy Coffard. It contains a little overview of the discipline and a list of various different typing tutors to improve your typing skills.
I had never seen this particular typing tutor before (which says a lot considering how much time I spend on google searching for typing-related topics and pouring over the results) so I think it may be new. It’s called Ten Thumbs Typing Tutor (I hope having ten thumbs isn’t like having two left feet) and it appears to be a pretty good bit of software, or worth checking out at least since you can download a trial version for free.
I especially like that the first thing they teach is proper posture at the computer - something that is often overlooked but very important for both efficiency and health. It’s also available for Windows, Mac and Linux so it might make a good option for the ever-growing legions of mac users out there that currently dont have as many options for typing tutor programs.
From the site, here are a list of features:
* Easy to use and fun to learn with
* Constant feedback and encouragement for students
* Fully networkable on Mac, Windows and Linux
* Choose where to save student files
* Full collated teacher reports you can export and print
* Individual student certificates
* Option to import your own text
* Create and customize student classes
* Students learn at their own pace
* Control access to typing games and student files
* Teaches good posture and good habits
this is a screenshot from one of their games
Typing Web seems to be one of the best options for adults looking to improve their typing skills or those looking to learn to type in the first place. It is professionally designed, feature rich, available online without download and completely free. It offers lessons, games, tests and graphs to chart your progress. You will have to sign up and create and account before beginning, but other than that there is not much negative to say about this program (of course the games aren’t as original as our typing games, but who can fault them for that - it’s only a reflection of our greatness, not a failure on their part.
free keyboarding lessons, games and tests
Typing web also has a program whereby schools and companies can license the software in bulk and host it on the their intranet.
This is a typing tutor program from Kiran Reddy that features various typing lessons, tests and games for keyboarding practice. It also provides statistical graphs to chart your progress and options like finger preview and key preview.
From their website, here are some of the other features:
-Basic typing lessons enable beginners to understand Touch typing.
-There are more than 500 typing practice lessons and more than 500 testing lessons.
- Finger preview feature shows what Finger to struck.
-It calculates and shows Accuracy, Word per minute and key per minute after every lesson.
-It measures your typing speed, errors for each letter and accuracy and analyses shows as understandable graphs in progress window.
-Kids Typing module includes five deferent types of lessons designed for age groups from 4 to 8 years.
-Numeric Typing module designed to teach numeric key board.
-Typing Games module includes four different type of games designed to learn typing while relaxing.
The program is designed for MS Windows and is available for download completely free of charge.
Here is a new typing tutor for you to consider if you are looking for a formal typing program. It’s called Typing Pal and they offer both downloadable, standalone typing software or an online program. From their site:
Whether you’re writing up a report, draughting a letter, putting together your CV, sending an e-mail message, or chatting on the Net, perfect mastery of the keyboard has gotten to be one skill you absolutely cannot do without. Thanks to Typing Pal, learning to type has never been so simple and pleasurable.
Check out Typing Pal
This is a professional software package available for both businesses and schools to help employees/students improve their touch-typing skills. From their site:
TypingMaster Pro is a professional typing tutor that helps you to double your typing speed. With TypingMaster Pro it takes only a couple of hours to learn the blazing fast touch typing system. As a result you will save hours and hours of time!
Curious about the different typing tutor programs available? Well fortunately, someone has taken the time to do a little product review for 5 of the more popular ones: