Typing lessons: 30 steps from F J to full sentences

These typing lessons take you through the whole keyboard in 30 short steps, numbered 0 to 29. The course is built from the keyboard layout itself: it starts with how to sit and where your fingers rest, adds two keys at a time from the home row outward, stops for a review lesson every few lessons, and only then moves to capitals, numbers and real sentences. A lesson takes a few minutes, so you can fit one into a tea break.

The full list of typing lessons (English QWERTY)

This is the exact order of the English QWERTY course, which works as a typing lessons chart if you want to print it. The last column is the small speed goal you need, together with 95% accuracy, for the third star. It never stops you from moving on.

The ⚑ lessons are review lessons. On the course map they appear as checkpoint flags between the lesson dots, with your stars under each one.

What happens inside each lesson

Every letter lesson has the same five steps, shown as dots at the top, so you always know what comes next.

1. Meet the keys

The two new keys appear on big keycaps in the colour of the finger that presses them. The card tells you which finger and which row, gives one tip and an example word, and animated hands tap the key with the right finger. Finger placement is part of all these typing lessons: you see the finger before you ever press the key. A 🔊 Listen button reads the card aloud. When you are ready, press Enter or click "I've found them".

2. Find the key

One huge key fills the screen. You press it about five times, then the second key, then the two alternate. The on-screen keyboard stays dim on purpose, so your fingers learn by feel. It lights up the key only if you wait for 2 seconds or press a different one.

3. Mix it up

Short letter groups mix the new keys with the ones you already know. The first typing lessons keep this tiny: lesson 1 uses only J, F and the space bar in groups such as fj jf fjf, the same drill typewriter classes used for decades. Typing lessons 2 and 3 add D K and S L in the same way, and by lesson 4 the groups use the classic asdf ;lkj set.

4. Real words

Next come words built only from keys you have learned, so these typing lessons give you whole words to type long before you know every letter. You type each word twice, then all of them mixed. When you know too few letters for real English, the lesson says so honestly: "Practice words — not real English." As soon as your letters allow it, the note changes to "You can already type real English words": easy home row words such as sad, ask, fall, flag first, then common English words like there, write, quite once the top row is done.

That is the real difference from old typing lessons with words picked at random: a word never contains a letter you have not met yet. In the top row typing lessons, for example, R and U make words such as rude, sure and fire possible straight away.

5. One sentence

From lesson 7 onward, each letter lesson ends with one line of real words while the on-screen keyboard is hidden: "Try it without peeking". This is the step that trains you to type without looking at the keyboard.

Review lessons use steps 3 to 5, weighted toward your 3 weakest keys from your saved key statistics. Capital-letter lessons use Meet, Find and Real words. The last two typing lessons are simply texts to type: real sentences, then a short paragraph in the speed builder.

How mistakes, stars and passing work

Stop on error, with finger-based hints

The cursor waits until you press the right key, so a mistake never turns into a habit. Instead of a red "wrong", the lesson explains the slip in terms of fingers: "That was K — your right hand. F belongs to your left index finger", or "Close! You pressed G… slide back to the bump". If you miss the same key three times, its information card appears again and the key lights up. The lesson also notices when Caps Lock is on, or when Windows is set to another keyboard language, and tells you how to fix it (Win + Space).

Stars are about accuracy

• 1 star (pass): finish with at least 85% accuracy in lessons 1–6, and 90% from lesson 7.
• 2 stars: 90% accuracy or more.
• 3 stars: 95% accuracy or more and the lesson's speed goal from the table above.

Speed never blocks you: in these typing lessons, WPM only matters for the third star. If you finish below the pass mark, "Practice again" is the main button; from your second try a "Continue anyway" button also appears, and the lesson is marked for review on the map. The results screen shows your accuracy in large type, your WPM in small type, the "keys that tripped you" with a count for each, and one tip. If a key slipped three or more times, "Practice tricky keys (1 min)" opens the typing practice page with a drill made from exactly those keys. The on-screen keyboard also shows a heat map of the keys you missed or typed slowly.

Typing lessons for beginners, intermediate typists and adults

Complete beginners should take the keyboard lessons in order, one to three a day, starting with lesson 0. Repeat any lesson with one star before you move on; a second round usually turns one star into two. Our learn typing page turns this into a four-week plan. The course map header keeps score for you: lessons done, total stars, and "you know X of 26 letters and can type N real words".

Intermediate typists, who already type 30–40 WPM but look at the keys, can use the review lessons to find gaps. Lessons unlock one after another, so move through the early ones quickly: strong typists often collect three stars on the home row in a few minutes each. When a review such as lesson 10 or 13 drops below 90% accuracy, go back to that row's key lessons.

Adults returning to typing often ask whether it is too late to learn touch typing. It is not. Adults usually move through the home row faster than children because they already know the letters. The slow part is unlearning the habit of looking down, which is why the Find step keeps the keyboard dim and the One sentence step hides it.

Typing lessons for kids

Children can follow the same lessons, because each one is short and the steps never change. The 🔊 Listen button helps younger kids who do not read fluently yet, and the stars reward careful typing rather than speed, which suits children well. For younger kids, pair one of the typing lessons with a round of a game from our typing games for kids, such as Balloon Pop, where each balloon's colour shows the finger that should type it. That way the finger colours from the lesson carry into play. The real-sentences lesson uses simple child-friendly sentences in English.

Typing lessons in Hindi and other layouts

Use the Course menu to switch to another keyboard. The site builds the same kind of course from each layout, starting with that layout's home row:

• English: QWERTY, Dvorak and Colemak.
• Hindi: Inscript (used with the Mangal font, for everyday typing) and Remington GAIL (the Kruti Dev key positions used in government typing exams). The Hindi courses add a "Joined letters" lesson for Inscript and explain each letter's sound on the Meet card. See our Hindi typing lessons guide for both lesson orders.
• Other languages: Inscript for Marathi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam, plus layouts such as Russian, Arabic, Greek, Turkish, French AZERTY and German QWERTZ.

So yes, typing lessons in Marathi work the same way: choose the Marathi course, and the lessons use Devanagari letters on the Inscript positions.

How to type: a lesson plan for teachers and self-learners

If you teach a class, or plan 5 minutes of typing lessons and practice a day for yourself, this rhythm works well:

1. Warm up (1 minute): repeat the last lesson you passed, or the latest review lesson.
2. New keys (3–4 minutes): the next lesson on the map, aiming for two stars.
3. Apply (1–2 minutes): a 1-minute test or one of the typing games to use the keys in a different setting.

What is the best practice for typing without looking at the keyboard? Let the lesson do the work: it keeps the keyboard dim until you hesitate and hides it for the last sentence. If a student still looks down, give them a piece of card to hold over their hands for one lesson. Progress is saved in each browser, so on shared class computers every student should use the same machine, or export their progress from the My progress page.

Numbers, the numeric keypad and a certificate

Lessons 25 and 26 teach the number row with the normal touch-typing fingers, and lesson 27 adds the shifted symbols. These typing lessons do not cover the numeric keypad. If your job uses it, for example in data entry or accounts, practise on the 10-key typing test in our typing tools, which measures keystrokes per hour. For more typing practice with numbers in running text, switch on numbers in the typing test settings.

There is no separate typing course with certificate to sign up for. When you finish the course, take a typing test and make a free certificate from your result. It shows your real WPM and accuracy, which means more to an employer than a completion badge.