Meera wants a government job, and the only thing standing in her way is a typing test on a computer she has never used. This story follows her from one-finger hunting to an examination hall, over eleven parts.
What this story trains
- Dialogue. Quotation marks open and close around speech, with commas and question marks inside them. Most typists slow down sharply at every quotation mark; this story gives you plenty of practice.
- Figures inside sentences. Speeds such as 12, 20, 28 and 38 words per minute appear mid-sentence. Read each number before you type it.
- A drill inside the story. Part 7 contains
asdf, jkl; exactly as a learner would type it. Reproduce it precisely, semicolon included.
The advice in the story is real
Mr. Iqbal tells Meera to cover the keyboard with a cloth and trust her fingers. It is an old teaching method, and it works for the same reason it frustrates: it removes the option of looking. Her speed drops at first and then climbs past where it started, which is exactly what happens to most learners who stop watching the keys.
You do not need a cloth. Simply keep your eyes on the screen for the whole lesson, even when you make a mistake.
How to approach it
Treat the eleven parts as one long passage rather than eleven short tests. The aim is the same steady rhythm from the first part to the last, with your accuracy at the end as high as it was at the start.
Practice notes
If you lose your place inside a quotation, stop, find the opening mark, and restart from the beginning of that sentence. Guessing your way through dialogue is how quotation-mark errors multiply.