Last updated: 2 years ago
How to learn touch-typing in Arabic
Typing without looking at the keyboard – touch typing – can be learned – also for Arabic. A few suggestions on how to become a fast typist.
The average person spends at least three hours a day using the keyboard while working, writing emails, writing messages, and also using social networks, etc.
If you increase your typing speed by 20%, you can save up to 35 minutes per day, which equates to 213 hours per year. Thus, if you increase your typing speed, you can save up to 21 days per year. One way to achieve that is touch typing.
Touch typing (German: Zehnfingersystem) is a complex process. The human body has the ability to develop what is called “muscle memory”. When we learn to touch type, we are essentially teaching our hands and brains to coordinate with one another so that we can press the right keys in the right sequence.
An average professional typist usually types around 65 to 75 words per minute (WPM). If you want to enter touch typing competitions, you should achieve at least 150 wpm.
If you spend about 30 minutes a day to train your touch typing skills, you will see your keyboard input speed improve within two weeks.
You can test your speed in English here. For Arabic, click here.
There are many ways to express the term touch-typing in Arabic. They are basically literal translations of the English terms:
- تعلم الكتابة السريعة
- تعليم الكتابة باللمس
- تعلم الكتابة بدون النظر إلى لوحة المفاتيح
tybaa.com – learn Arabic typing skills
The Arabic website tybaa.com (موقع أكاديمية الطباعة لتعلم الطباعة باللمس) offers free lessons that teach you how to write in Arabic without looking at the keyboard. Note that the website is only in Arabic.
In sixteen lessons, you will learn which finger you should use to press certain letters. By doing this, you will train your muscle memory.
I can only recommend this website. If you can motivate yourself and do a few workouts each day, you will improve quickly.
Ktouch – if you use Linux
I have been using Arch Linux (KDE) as my operating system for ages. If you use Linux, there is a great KDE app call KTouch which is also available on Flathub.
KTouch is a typewriter trainer for learning to touch type. It provides you with text to train on and adjusts to different levels depending on how good you are. It displays your keyboard and indicates which key to press next and which is the correct finger to use.
KTouch ships with dozens of different courses in many languages – including ARABIC! Arabic keyboard layouts are supported and new user-defined layouts can be created.
Touch typing in Arabic – other websites and operating systems
I couldn’t find many websites or apps (Windows, Mac) offering touch typing lessons for Arabic. Here are some links:
- https://staminaon.com/ar/#basic
- https://www.typingstudy.com/ar-arabic-3/lesson/1
- Microsoft Windows Users can try the freeware Rapidtyping
There is also a Udemy course for beginners. I haven’t tried it, but it got some good reviews:
For KTouch under Ubuntu Linux 20.04. Which Arabic keyboard should I be using? I have a US keyboard. I have tried Arabic QWERTY (with and without Eastern Numbers) and Buckwalter. KTouch only lists the Arabic keyboards in Arabic language. Not so handy for a non-native student. It is weird because I had this working under Debian before.
Hi Paul, I’m not sure if I’ve understood you correctly. I quickly tried something… Please look at the screenshot I have attached. Is this what you meant? Focus on the letter “k” on your keyboard, which I have changed. There used to be the ن.
If so, you would have to do the following:
Step 1: Download the following two files (Watch out, since they are xml-files, download them with “Right-click, save as…”!):
ara.xml
ara2-course.xml
Step 2: Open ara2.xml and change all Arabic characters by hand according to your keyboard – just like I did with “k”.
Step 3: Click on the “burger menu” with the three dashes in the top right-hand corner of Ktouch. Now select “Course and keyboard layout editor” (I don’t know exactly what it’s called in English, as I have the German version.)
Step 4: Import both files, the keyboard ara2.xml and the course ara2-course.xml.
After that you should be able to see your own designed keyboard. Please let me know if that worked.
Note that it doesn’t really matter which keyboard layout you have active in Linux. You can therefore ignore the warning message in Ktouch.
One more thing: If you only want to use the standard layout of your English keyboard, you only need to adjust the ara2-course.xml file and change the keyboard layout:
-> Change it to:
That should also work!
For Linux, there’s also Klavaro. No idea how it compares to Ktouch, but this is what I used to learn the Arabic keyboard, and it worked for me. Just sharing, so that people have more options they can try to see what works for them.
Also, I found that once you’ve learned touch-typing in one keyboard layout (qwerty in my case), then learning a new keyboard layout for a new alphabet (such as Arabic) is much easier than the first time, as you already built some of the required skills.