Yagunov's family: Dmitri, Irina, Stanislav and Artyom
Moscow, Russia
Hello everybody!Our family lives in the town of Æåëåçíîäîðîæíûé of Moscow region. We are the father Dmitri (Spirit), the mother Irina (Arisha), the elder son Stanislav (Ramon), 12, and the younger son Artyom, 7. In the brackets you see our logins on Yuri Kordyk’s site urikor.net. The younger son hasn’t got a login and he hasn’t participated in any competitions yet, though he has attempted (not quite successfully) to learn touch-typing.
We started touch-typing quite by chance. A year and a half ago (November, 2006) we came across V.V.Shakhidzhanyan’s program “Solo on a keyboard” in the Internet. At first we couldn’t believe that it was possible to type without looking at the keyboard and at the same time to reach for the farthest-placed letters (see letters õ, ú).
Dmitri was the first to do the program. It took him a month (by the end of December), with 3-4- hours’ practice daily (Eh, Vladimir Vladimirovich! You promised anyone could do it in 3 days). The final result was two “threes”, a dozen of “fours”, the rest were “fives” and the average speed was 110 characters per minute. When Dmitri was halfway through the lessons, Irina got down to doing the program. She is more persistent and managed to get only excellent marks, but it also took her about a month (she finished in January, 2008), her average speed was 138 characters per minute. Seeing their mother’s numerous attempts to do the exercises perfectly, our sons got interested in the program as well. The younger one didn’t succeed, though; he only got to Exercise 18 still peeping at the keyboard. But Stanislav did exercise after exercise, evidently without reading what was written before each one, as VVSh insisted. He gave up several times. But by hook or by crook we managed to make him complete the work. He was especially enthusiastic after he had been promised a telephone as a gift, he finished it on February 20th (I remember the date so well as it coincided with the day of purchasing the telephone). His average speed was 108 characters per minute.
Once he had fulfilled the program, Dmitri started to look for opportunities to perfect his skill. In the end he found Yuri Kordyk’s site in the Internet (we’d like to thank Yuri for everything he does). We started working on increasing the speed of typing there. Irina did Yuri’s training program all in one breath (both Dmitri and Stanislav didn’t cope). We were invited into the Russian team to participate in the preliminary Intersteno competitions in which the Russian language was introduced for the first time. The preliminary competitions took place in January, 2007, and the major contest - in April – May. But as the speeds of typing of our family were much lower than the qualification barrier of 200 characters per minute, our participating was out of the question. Still we decided then that if such a contest was held the following year, our whole family would certainly take part in it.
After that the routine work on increasing the speed of typing started. It can’t be described, it must be seen with your own eyes. We practised with enthusiasm and passion daily, taking turns at the keyboard. At first the status-quo preserved: Irina was the first, Dmitri – the second, Stanislav – the third. Soon Stanislav overtook the father. The mother resisted for some time, her musical past (she used to play the bayan) and the yearning for leadership being very helpful, still she had to give in in some time as well. At present the speeds of typing short texts are respectively: Stanislav – about 450 ch/m, Irina – 370 ch/m, Dmitri – 300 ch/m. It’s evidently worse with longer texts.
When the Internet contest was announced this year (many thanks to GZOS), our family decided to participate. Only Stanislav had the competitive speed for his age group. But it was probably for the first time that a whole family took part in such a competition. That was why everyone who could touch-type, did it.
We wish everybody good luck in all their undertakings!