FluencyLesson 17 of 20 · Endurance and precision
Three minutes
The first sustained run. A three-minute timed passage, and what changes when typing has to last.
- New keys
- No new keys
- To pass
- Done when the check reaches 95% accuracy and 40 words a minute.
Lesson 17 is locked
It opens when you pass the check in lesson 16 (Prose: putting it together). Lessons open one at a time, in order.
Everything so far has been short. A check of sixty or a hundred words is over before fatigue or wandering attention can affect it, and that is why the numbers you have been getting are, if anything, a little flattering. Real typing lasts. An email is two hundred words; a report is two thousand; and the question that decides whether you are fluent is not how fast you can type for twenty seconds but how steady you are at the end of the third minute.
Sustained typing has its own failure modes. The hands tense gradually, and by the second minute the keystrokes are heavier and less accurate without your noticing. The eyes drift back from reading ahead to reading the current word, and the rhythm develops gaps. Attention slides off the text and onto the clock. Every one of these is fixable, and the fix begins with knowing they happen: check your hands, check your eyes, and ignore the clock.
The check below is timed at three minutes and ends when the clock does. Backspace is allowed, the cursor does not block, and the passage is longer than you will finish. The target is forty words a minute at ninety-five percent, sustained. If your first minute is fast and your third is slow, the average will tell you, and so will the consistency number.