The Canadian Achievers: Keyboarding Timed Writings

Dean Tudor is a journalism professor at the Ryerson Polytechnical
Institute and founding editor of the CBRA.

Take the principle of timed-writing texts for beginning typists. Take the words of a popular radio series of short biographies called The Canadian Achievers / Les succès canadiens (as heard on about 140 stations and reprinted in some newspapers). Merge. That’s this book — it provides students with passages to measure their speed and accuracy, and it also enables them to learn about contemporary Canadians who have excelled in the sports and entertainment industries. Texts are given in both French and English (whatever was appropriate for the biography). For each English text there is the syllabic intensity index, the number of high frequency words, the average word length, and the word count (this alone is provided for the French text). Of course the typing gets progressively more difficult as the book goes on. The format is spiral-bound, with an easel-type frame. It should be useful in its field — at least the subject content is enjoyable for young people.