Why is touch typing useful to a student with dyslexia? Here are five reasons to consider…
This blog article is sponsored by KAZ-TYPE.
When my daughter was diagnosed in year 8 with dyslexia, the needs assessor recommended that she use a laptop for work involving lots of writing , for example, essays and exams. Having effective keyboard skills, for her, was empowering enough for her to reach her academic goals ultimately resulting in a first class honours degree.
So I have always been fascinated as to why, in school, the use of a keyboard to produce work hasn’t become mainstream, especially when current workplace practises often demand keyboard skills over that of handwriting skills. Touch typing provides a useful alternative to handwriting especially if handwriting is a challenge for students with a neurodiverse profile that includes dyslexia or dyspraxia (developmental coordination disorder).
So read on for my five reasons as to why good keyboard skills, for example, touch typing, could help a dyslexic learner throughout their time in education.
1) Students with dyslexia are more productive with touch-typing.
In a study done by Marom and Weintraub, students with learning difficulties including dyslexia and students without learning difficulties were given touch typing lessons. For the participants in both groups, it was found that the speed of typing greatly improved resulting in an accuracy of 95%. The study proposed that in the case of the students with learning difficulties, the use of a keyboard helped to circumvent the challenges that affected productivity as a result of using pen and paper.
2) Touch-typing is a subconscious skill freeing up the mind to be more creative.
Are you a two finger typist? I would like you to consider how much time you spend looking at the keyboard versus the computer screen whilst typing lengthy pieces of text.
We have all been there, we start on a keyboard and bang out the words with our two fingers, minute by laborious minute, looking up and down from the computer screen that we are working on.
It is said that 40% of people with dyslexia are affected by visual stress (Meares-Irlens Syndrome) and so as such, there are a number of challenges that a dyslexic student may be experiencing that poor touch typing skills aggravate.
If a student’s eyes struggle to ‘track’ along text and if their typing skills are poor resulting in constantly looking to and from the keyboard to the PC screen, then it is likely that they may struggle to focus effectively on where they are in the document that they are working on. The movement of the eyes, up and down, will increase fatigue as well as constantly trying to find one’s place in the text.
With effective touch-typing skills, the student will have touch typing ingrained in their muscle memory and so their focus will be on the screen and not the keyboard. They will be less focused on what their fingers are doing leaving the mind free to focus on what is important, the written content.
3) Touch Typing reduces distractability.
Referring back to point 2, if a student’s train of thought whilst attempting to write an essay is constantly being interrupted by the need to look up and down from the keyboard, then it will increase the chances of being distracted. It just makes sense, doesn’t it. If one’s brain is struggling to focus on anything for whatever reason then naturally one’s brain is going to want find other stimuli. If a student has a lengthy essay to write and already they are expecting it to be difficult to produce, then the slightest of distractions might be a welcome diversion away from what they need to do.
4) Touch Typing improves written accuracy.
In Achieve Now’s excellent video on the benefits of touch typing, Caroline Bateman talks about how being able to touch type improves spelling and grammar and it makes sense, doesn’t it?
If a student is effectively able to type into a word processor program then they can use the spelling and grammar checking software to improve their written accuracy. Initially the reliance may be on the spelling and grammar checking, but these in themselves reinforce learning, the student still needs to go through their essay to check the flagged up mistakes and the more it happens the more the student learns not to make those mistakes.
5) Producing written content with touch typing could be less uncomfortable for a dyslexic student than writing with a pen.
The profile of a student with dyslexia will be a unique mix of strengths and weaknesses. One of those weaknesses may be related to aspects of developmental coordination disorder (dyspraxia) whereby in using a pen the student could feel really uncomfortable.
As a child I personally remember finding handwriting extremely tiring and would notice during the day how my writing would get less legible. When I was at school, PC’s were not readily available technologies so I didn’t get to use a keyboard until my family got a ‘personal computer’ circa 1988. It wasn’t until I got into the workplace that I regularly used a computer keyboard as I studied for my degree part time and I found that the effort in learning how to type offset the sheer pain and inconvenience of writing by hand. Once I had learned how to type I was simply quicker when it came to writing lengthy pieces of text. In fact, I was much more relaxed about studying and producing written content and that made the quality of my work improve.
Going back to my daughter’s experience, her dyslexia assessor made the recommendation to allow her to use a laptop in class and the quality of her work improved too. It was easier for her to produce good quality school and college work!
The sponsor of this article, KAZ-Type is offering five free tips to start you on your journey on learning how to touch-type. Click here to find out more.
I hope you found my five reasons as to why touch typing could be useful for a dyslexic learner. Touch typing isn’t a silver bullet and for some dyslexic learners it may be that typing just doesn’t work for them at all and that dictation (speech to text) is better. I am interested in your experiences and would welcome your comments below.
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