I bet everybody has tried to learn touch typing at least once but as it is so hard to get rid of your old habits the idea of re-learning is soon dropped. I think I might have found a solution.
I had to type a document in Russian using the Cyrillic alphabet. In order to do that I had to use JCUKEN (ЙЦУКЕН) – a Cyrillic keyboard layout – but did not have Russian characters inscribed on my keyboard. As a solution I made a little note with the letter sequence of each row and stuck it to the bottom of my screen.
At first I red the text I had to type, then I looked at my little cheat sheet at the bottom of the screen, and then I tried to type my text. In this case staring at the keyboard did not do any good as there was nothing to see.
Soon I realized that I am trying to memorize which letters are those two with the little raised dots on them and how other letters are positioned in relation to them. Just in few hours I could feel my progress.
Conclusion – if you want to learn touch typing, get a blank keyboard. Many of us like to peek at the keys when we are typing, but with the blank keyboard it would not be a problem as there won’t be anything to look at 
November 18, 2010 at 11:46 am |
I learned to touch type in a similar way, by moving to the Dvorak keyboard layout. You pretty quickly learn that looking down is a hindrance rather than a help. It only took me a long weekend to get familiar enough to start using it daily.
And don’t spend money on typing tutor programs. Just find a good tutorial on the internet such as http://gigliwood.com/abcd/ and work through it in your own time.