Bizarrely, I learnt somehow learnt to touch type on a French keyboard while living there for a year (and then spent several years using a French keyboard at home and an English keyboard at uni/work and managed to touchtype on both with just a few errors until my brain realised which keyboard layout I was using!) As it's largely, the punctuation and numbers that are different, the only keys I will still occassionally look at now are punctuation ones to double check I've got the right one.
I had tried a few touch typing things in the years leading up to that (Mavis Beacon!), but what really did it was simply just typing a lot. Outside of formal courses, the key/basic tips would be (and are more practical than just hitting the letters!):
- remember to use most of your fingers and keep them to their own half of the key board
- use real, diverse text - not the same sentence / source over and over again
- your eyes should be on the screen - or your source document. How you learn probably depends on why you want to learn to type - if it's for your own stuff - then just have text on the screen and duplicate it by typing. If you need to type quickly to transcribe, then you ought to build in practice from audio sources. (And similarly if you'll be mainly typing up notes)
- work out what to do about numbers. For years (and because on a French keyboard the accents are on the number keys along the top), I used the number pad on the right hand side for numbers (was doing math degree so numbers came up a lot!). I had to re-learn all of that when starting to use a laptop at home which didn't have numbers in a block on the right.
- think carefully about the type of keyboard - will you need to type on various (laptop, desktop); do you prefer a particular type - e.g. the ergonomic split ones, do you want responsive / clicking keys? (my preference is for relatively soft keys that you don't really need to press all the way down - the keyboard on a macbook is pretty much perfect for me)
- will you be typing text you're familiar with (if you know all the spellings etc. it is a lot quicker) or is it potentially relatively technical (e.g. medical typists tend to need to know how to spell lots of complicated words)
- how much do you care about errors e.g. do you care about getting typing right first time vs. do you have time to make a few mistakes - will you correct them along the way / will there be proof-reading at the end etc.
While this isn't the text book stuff, it does make a significant different to how comfortable typing is and how quickly you'll type.
(I would add that I'm far from textbook perfect, but I can type consistently (and think) at over 60 wpm without looking at the keys)
- can you do shorthand as well !!!
