Dvorak touchtyping - week 4
Well, I broke the 55WPM mark on the home row this week, but things go downhill pretty rapidly from there. On other exercises I hover between 35 and 45WPM, and on a general typing test I fare much worse (around 33-35WPM on this typing test). So, I’m still pretty far off the mark from my ambitious ‘60WPW in a month’ aim, but I guess the idea was to aim loftily, and then reassess after a month…
I’ll definitely need a lot more practice to reach 60WPM. My overall speed is still slower than my quick hunt-and-peck QWERTY skills, which was probably to be expected but is still disappointing. I also still have to think about where letters are on the keyboard when I type most of the time, and in the real world (i.e. not typing tests) I still make a lot of mistakes even on the keys I’ve practiced the most on. On the positive side, I can actually type mostly without looking at the keyboard, and I’ve more or less assimilated using the basic copy-cut-paste keyboard shortcuts with the DVORAK layout.
The key to faster speeds will obviously be more practice (which I’d let up on a little in the past couple of weeks) - with regular practice, I’m hoping to make 60WPM overall in the next month or so.
Hi, just want to drop a comment to say that you are doing well as far as I can tell based on my own experience. One extra thing that I have learned while converting to dvorak was that you should practice key combinations instead of individual keys, for example “ing”, “tion”, “int”, etc. At your level right now, I would say look for a free typing lesson that focusing this kind of training probably would help.
Keep it up and welcome to the club!
Comment by Shane — October 2, 2007 @ 4:35 pm
Thanks for the encouragement - that’s a great idea, I just checked and DvorakNG (https://freshmeat.net/projects/dvorakng/) - which I use as my typing tutor - doesn’t actually do this. GTypist does have a list of the 135 most frequently used words, which is a start, but the combos do indeed sound like a good idea. Time to look for a new set of lessons!
Comment by Nick — October 3, 2007 @ 11:10 am