Keyboard Mastery will teach beginners how to type, and teach experienced typists to type faster and more accurately. For rusty or experienced typists, the best way to increase speed and accuracy is to go over the basics again at a higher rate of speed.

This course is designed to teach keyboarding by touch (without looking at the keys or your fingers) to speeds of 30-35+ wpm and accuracy of no more than 1 error per minute. The alphabetic and punctuation keys, keyboard numbers and symbols are covered. Every lesson contains timed exercises and students are encouraged to meet the speed and accuracy goals (whatever speed is required for an "A" grade in the Setup) in each exercise before continuing on to the next one. Be sure to enter a grading scale whether or not you are taking the course for credit. The grading scale determines your goals. Goal-directed practice on each exercise will help you progress much further, and faster. You will master each exercise before continuing on to the next ones. (If you have trouble with one exercise, you can go on but be sure to come back the next day and try the challenging exercise again to raise the timing score.) There are almost 600 timed exercises, which does not include the Freeform option to create additional exercises of any duration.

Sections of the book

Lessons 1-11 cover all the letters on the keyboard, contain 15-second timings, 30-second, and 1-minute timings.

Lessons 12-24 reinforce all letters and include longer timings. These lessons include 15-second, 30-second, and 1-3 minute timings.

Lessons 25-33 cover numbers and symbols.

Optional Timings 1-10 additional timings ranging from 3-5 minutes that are short stories (e.g. "The discovery of Penicillin", "Who was Benedict Arnold?", etc).

The purpose of short timings in the beginning is to get the fingers and mind working together at a rapid rate. The Setup can be changed to accommodate a shorter period of time by omitting some lessons.

For experienced typists, take the Course Entry timing to establish your present speed and accuracy. If you are already typing 50 wpm, have 60 wpm as your goal for each exercise in each lesson. When you finish the course, take the Course Exit timing. Your Course Entry score, Course Exit score, and your improvement will show on the Grade Report. By raising the grading scale (goal) each time, many students have gone through the course twice and raised their skill to 70-90 wpm on a 5-minute timing. There is much to be gained by going over the basics at a higher rate (goal) each time.

There are NO PAPERS TO GRADE or handle. Reports are calculated automatically. Progress Reports are viewed on the screen and can be printed. The Brief Progress Report shows the best score for each exercise that meets the accuracy standards, and the lesson average for each completed lesson. If printed Grade Reports are desired for a classroom situation, the Current Grade Report option averages completed lessons to date and compares it to the grading scale entered in the Setup. It is available at any time throughout the course to help students evaluate their progress toward their goal. This may also be used as a mid-term grade, or as an objective evaluation for a student-parent-teacher conference. The Final Grade Report contains the final grade to be recorded for the course. If a student wishes to improve the final grade, he/she consults the Progress Report to see which exercises need improvement and more practice. A new Final Grade Report may be instantly seen that includes the improved scores.

How much time does the course take? Using all the exercises, this course is better utilized in a quarter or semester format of 50-60 hours. Generally speaking, the more time students have to practice, the higher the goal can be. Students need time to practice to achieve higher goals. If the time is shortened, the wpm goal should be lowered too. In most situations, the goal for a beginning student should be 32 – 35 wpm.

Is there any Formatting (letters, memos, tables, reports, etc)?  For those teachers who want to include formatting in their typing classes, Nuts ‘n’ Bolts of Formatting was created especially for them.  It is a FREE download to any of our current customers.  Teachers may use some or all of it, depending upon their preferences and needs. Between the Nuts ‘n’ Bolts of Formatting and any of our typing drill books, you have it all at less than 50% of the price of competing all-in-one typing textbooks offered by our competitors.

What is the difference between the Keyboard Mastery and Keyboard Short Course? The number of exercises in the full course is almost 600; the number of exercises in the short course is 126. While both will teach keyboarding correctly and with speed and accuracy, the longer book has more reinforcement exercises and the skill will last longer. The short course builds speed quickly and to be retained needs continued practice. In a word processing class, for example, the first 15 minutes could be used to go back over the exercises again in the Keyboard Short Course and raise the scores 5 – 10 wpm. Also, the full course has exercises on keyboard numbers and symbols; the short course does not. The short course covers alphabetic and punctuation keys.