What I Wish I Knew Before Starting Business School

What I Wish I Knew Before Starting Business School The following is a guest post written by Mahlena Johnson, a tutor and contributing writer with Varsity Tutors. Whether your MBA program lasts one, two, or three years, the time will go by quickly. There is so much that you may want to accomplish during those short semesters, but you may be wondering how to go about doing so. How would past students who have successfully graduated with their MBA degree advise new students entering this arena for the first time? What did they wish they had known when they started their MBA programs? Things I wish I knew before starting business school include understanding everyone is there for a different reason, that you may need to ask for help, and that companies dont always choose students with the most experience. Feeling prepared when entering business school can go a long way. Here are three things I wish I knew before starting business school: I wish I knew that professors will assign more work than you can accomplish on your own During your undergraduate years, you may have occasionally worked on group projects, but many of your assignments could be completed independently. It is important to understand that this is different in business school. In addition to the academic demands of your coursework, you will also have company presentations to attend, cover letters to write, informational interviews to conduct, and classmates to socialize with. How can you possibly get all of these tasks done in the same semester? One tried-and-true method to perform well in your classes is to make a friend and start a study group. By working together, you can share the workload by each taking the lead on a particular section or chapter of the course textbook, and reporting back on your takeaways. Additionally, you can learn from your peers perspectives on the same material. Hearing different viewpoints will help you think about the subjects in new ways. Use the power of many hands and minds so that you can all move forward together. [RELATED: 3 Tips for Starting Graduate School] I wish I knew that companies dont necessarily select MBAs with the most experience Attending business school puts you in a different league with your career search. At this level, every person applying to an MBA-specific position often has a lot of great, relevant experience. Therefore, recruiters must incorporate additional dimensions to compare the many qualified candidates. How can they decide among multiple, excellent candidates with similar backgrounds? One of the dimensions can be the quantity and quality of interactions that a candidate has had with representatives at that company. For instance, lets say Cappie and Florian attend the same business school, have equivalent years of experience in their industries, share similar educational backgrounds, and are applying to the same position at a corporation. Florian attended the company presentation at their school, and has spoken with an alumnus currently working there. Cappie was unable to attend that presentation, but has already met with those representatives at two MBA conferences and has sent them thank you emails. Cappie has also conducted informational interviews with every second year student in the class above her who interned at the corporation the previous summer. Cappie has also scheduled coffee meetings with each person those students referred her to at the corporation. A recruiter would look favorably upon Cappies initiative and has more points of reference when asking who knows something about the people applying for the position. Therefore, make yourself knownin a professional mannerat the companies you want to be a part of. A little networking can go a long way in your job search. [RELATED: 5 Questions Grad Students Should Ask Their Advisors] I wish I knew that not everyone attends business school for the same reason All MBA students have their own motivations for going through this rigorous process, including: Starting a new business Accelerating your current career Changing careers Exploring new industries or functions Furthering your education through a masters degree program. The most important question you should ask yourself is, Why am I attending business school? Your answer is the only one that should matter to you. Let your reasons, and yours alone, guide you through your graduate education. Talk with current students as well as alumni from your preferred MBA programs to learn about what they wish they had known before starting business school. They can provide you with insights on how to navigate your graduate school experience. Also ask your fellow classmates about what they are going through now. They will probably share some of your thoughts and experiences. By communicating with the people you pass by in class, at lunch, and in the hallway, you will realize that youre all in this together. [RELATED: 4 Questions to Ask Your First MBA Professor] Any topics you want to know more about? Let us know! The Varsity Tutors Blog editors love hearing your feedback and opinions. Feel free to email us at blog@varsitytutors.com.

A Day in the Life at Duke University

A Day in the Life at Duke University The tutors behind Varsity Tutors are not just here to teach theyre sharing their college experiences as well. Anna is an Atlanta tutor specializing in GRE prep tutoring, AP English tutoring, Essay Editing tutoring, and several other subjects. She graduated from Duke University in 2006 with a Bachelors degree in Literature and Cultural Theory. See what she had to say about her experience at Duke University: VT: Describe the campus setting and transportation options.How urban or safe is the campus?Are there buses or do you need a car/bike? Anna: Duke University is divided into three sections: East Campus, West Campus, and Central Campus. A number of restaurants and shops are within walking distance of East Campus, and an easy-to-use bus line connects the three campuses. West Campus feels a bit more rural, and it is surrounded by Duke Forest. Many students have cars, but they are not necessary. VT: How available are the professors, academic advisers, and teaching assistants? Anna: Professors are always happy to meet with students during office hours, and by my junior year, I was meeting with my major adviser frequently. Teaching assistants are friendly and available to answer questions. As a freshman, you are set up with an academic adviser who helps you choose courses and plan for the kind of experience you want to get out of your four years. VT: How would you describe the dorm life rooms, dining options, location, socialization opportunities with other students? Anna: Students are required to live on campus for three years, and fraternities are housed in the dorms, as well, so the student body feels very concentrated on the campus. Juniors and seniors can live in small apartments on Central Campus. Dining options abound, with two large dining halls, a number of on-campus restaurants, and delivery options that accept payment through your DukeCard. In my experience, official social activities were rarely coordinated through dorm life, but many of my closest friends lived in my freshman hall. VT: Which majors/programs are best represented and supported?What did you study and why? Did the university do a good job supporting your particular area of study? Anna: Duke University has a number of very strong programs, including environmental science, biological anthropology, religion, and English. I majored in literature and cultural theory, which is distinct from the English major at Duke University, and focuses on popular culture, film, and theories of literature. The major was small when I was there, but it is very strong with a sizable faculty, so I felt well supported. VT: How easy or difficult was it for you to meet people and make friends as a freshman? Does Greek life play a significant role in the campus social life? Anna: I initially made friends through dorm life and classes. Duke University also has optional programs for freshmen right before classes begin, and I would recommend participating in one as a way to make friends early on. About 30% of the men are in fraternities, and about 40% of the women join sororities. Sororities at Duke University are non-residential, but fraternities are housed on campus. Greek life is a large part of the social scene, but it is not the only part. Rush does not begin until spring semester, so freshmen have a chance to make friends before rush kicks off. VT: How helpful is the Career Centerand other student support services?Do many reputable companies recruit on campus? Anna: Many large companies recruit at Duke University, particularly investment banks and consulting firms. I visited the career center a few times, but I found my adviser and other academic mentors to be my most useful resources. VT: How are the various study areas such aslibraries, the student union, and dorm lounges? Are they over-crowded, easily available, spacious? Anna: There are multiple large libraries on campus, and the Gothic Reading Room is a beautiful, silent place to study. You will get shushed for shuffling papers too loudly! There is also a large atrium with a caf on West Campus, and the student union is a good place to study if you need a bit of background noise. I always liked to go off-campus to a coffee shop to do my work. VT: Describe the surrounding town. What kinds of outside establishments / things to do are there that make it fun, boring, or somewhere in between?To what extent do students go to the downtown area of the city versus staying near campus? Anna: Durham is a mid-sized city that has seen a host of new restaurants and entertainment options in the past few years. The Durham Performing Arts Center and the American Tobacco Historic District, adjacent to the Durham Bulls stadium, are highlights. Although a lot of the social life takes place on or around campus, there are also a number of places to go out and dance or socialize near 9th Street. VT: How big or small is the student body? Were you generally pleased or displeased with the typical class sizes? Anna: The Duke University undergraduate population numbers about 6,500. Classes ranged in size; I took eight-person seminars and large lecture classes. Most classes in my major were about 40 people, which is quite large for a humanities class. My favorite classes had about 15 people in them. VT: Describe one memorable experience with a professor and/or class. Perhaps one you loved the most or one youregretthe most. Anna: My freshman year, I participated in a program called FOCUS, in which you take a set group of classes that concern a particular theme and live in the same dorm with your classmates. We took a field trip down to Wilson, North Carolina to learn about tobacco farming, then on to Wilmington to learn about North Carolinas growing film industry. It was wonderful to get to know a group of fellow students through that program and to learn about how the states industry has changed over the last century. Check out Annas tutoring profile. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent the views of Varsity Tutors.

Read To Know Top 13 iPad Educational Apps For Kids

Read To Know Top 13 iPad Educational Apps For Kids In today’s modern learning trends, using iPad apps for study methods is one of the most preferred methods of student learning. The App Store of Apple provides innumerable educational apps for enhancing students’ creativity and logical skills. The apps are designed in a way that they suit students of any learning style with their fun exercises and interactive techniques for more productivity in use and thus helps students learn educational topics with ease and interest. More than eighty thousand apps are provided for iPad users by Apple with a wide range of subjects and topics that cover the learning aspects of all graders. 8 #Videos That Prove #Math Is Awesome http://t.co/ctmhsmzZ7o pic.twitter.com/A3986sfavR â€" Tutor Pace (@TutorPace) August 17, 2015 Following are some of the top iPad educational apps for kids Bamboo Paper: This app is a popular and effective one for kids with its pen graphic tablets. By sketching and importing images, students can make their natural handwriting and enjoy sharing their work with others. Cell and Cell Structure: From the name you can understand that it is a Biology app providing lots of information about cell, its meaning, structure, life cycle and the individual organelles with their functions. It offers an extensive knowledge base for kids in the topic of cell. This app makes Science learning interesting and fun for students. Each topic has a set of 10 questions for students enabling them to learn new concepts. Paper by FiftyThree: This is the best app for writing and saving inspirations, opinions and creative ideas when students come across such things. Paper by FiftyThree, with its simple interface, helps kids save their ideas as diagrams, illustrations, notes and sketches and keep them in an organized manner for use. It is a visually interactive app which comes handy for expressing one’s ideas and views. Students can create check lists, sketch portraits and diagrams with the help of this app. They can also clarify details in an image with great speed and ease. Sharing ideas through power point presentations, keynote and PDF is also possible through this app. DragonBox Algebra 12+: This app helps students drive away their Math fear and learn Math concepts like Algebra, Positive and Negative Signs, Addition of Fractions, Factorization etc. with ease. In this app, there are 20 progressive chapters, 10 of which are for learning Math concepts and the other 10 are for the purpose of practicing. Poems by Heart: Poems by Heart is a good introduction to poetic literature. It helps students learn and understand classic poems at a deep level and cherish their value throughout their life. It enables students to learn, recite and memorize classic poems by making them fun, easy and addictive. It is very useful for remembering poems with its brain- training methods. 9 Best #Math #Apps For KIDS Of All Ages http://t.co/mo47WIauFc pic.twitter.com/SRA5MAVJ6O â€" Tutor Pace (@TutorPace) August 13, 2015 Brainzy: This app is excellent for kids of three to seven years (preschoolers to first graders) with its 300 educational games and 30 important skills. It is a helping tool for parents who wish to train their kids in reading and doing Math right from the start of their schooling. The variety of read-along stories, songs and videos found over here helps kids learn related Math concepts and improve their reading skills along with. WWF Together (World WildLife Fund): This app introduces stories of animals such as elephants, rhinos, whales and other such amazing species. It provides stories about endangered species like tigers, polar bears and pandas. This interactive app provides animated videos that can be shared on Facebook, Twitter and email with friends. This app instils the necessity for protecting animals, preserving species and their habitats etc. IBooks Author: This app gives an opportunity for teachers to teach different subjects in their own way. Kids can create their own stories with 3D objects, animated images, interactive videos and audio with the help of iBooks Author. Learn English Great Videos: It is one of the best apps for learning English grammar and language effectively and easily. Expert English teachers and language experts have designed this app that students get excellent grammar tips and enriched vocabulary lists for writing grammatically correct and perfect sentences. Regular use of this app improves one’s pronunciation and enhances his communication skills in language. Keynote: Keynote is useful for preparing marvelous presentation with transitions and live effects. iTunes: This iPad app is tremendously useful for bringing the entire class together for sharing videos, lessons, questions, answers and many such things. It is of great help for both teachers and students. It helps teachers create lessons and assignments using effective resources along with advanced learning materials like Multi- touch books, apps and videos. It is more useful for students to express creatively what they have learnt.Through this app, a student can submit his presentations, PDFs and videos attaching them directly to a class project. Numbers: This is a spreadsheet application, most innovative in use and created exclusively for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. It is supportive in Smart Zoom and Multi- Touch gestures that are helpful in creating interactive spreadsheets. Students can express their ideas through charts, tables and texts anywhere on the canvas provided by this app. Pages: Pages is one of the most creative Word processors letting students create attractive, precise and well-structured reports, resumes and documents. This is highly helpful for adding any text, image or shapes to a document and thus making it fantastic and impressive. It has advanced features like mark comments, change tracking and spot light changes made in the paper for easy review. 5 Vedic #Math Secrets for Every Student to be a Math Genius http://t.co/MMgHewbMkX pic.twitter.com/RcUK3vAsmf â€" Tutor Pace (@TutorPace) September 21, 2015 All these apps are of great value for kids in their learning process and some of them prove extremely productive for classroom purposes from the angle of teachers. Approaching online math tutoring centers for learning through more interactive apps in a personalized classroom is also good for students as online math tutors therein are subject experts who know the trendy methods to use more such apps and make way for a very feasible learning process for kids. Get the best of iPad apps and make your learning interactive, fun and productive.

Dont Do This Just Because Its The End of the Year! - Introvert Whisperer

Introvert Whisperer / Dont Do This Just Because Its The End of the Year! - Introvert Whisperer Dont Do This Just Because Its The End of the Year! Personal Branding starts with how well you speak about YOU.  I want to help you accelerate your career by connecting you with your Free Instant Access to my eBook â€" The Definitive Guide to Creating and Using an Elevator Speech.  In this guide, I give you simple to follow instructions for creating a “wardrobe” of ways to talk about you â€" to leave a lasting impression. Get your copy now! Brought to you by Dorothy Tannahill-Moran â€" dedicated to unleashing your professional potential. Introvert Whisperer

MBA Programs The Best-Kept Secret Revealed

MBA Programs The Best-Kept Secret Revealed GMAT MBA Admissions Blog You’ve done your research on MBA programs, and have resigned yourself to the fact that you’ll have to spend $50-$100k for your MBA. Right? Not so fast. Let me introduce you to the one top 20 business school, my alma mater, that pays you to attend through a working fellowship. Before I reveal this unicorn, let me share a bit of my story. The MBA Search I was shooting pretty high when I began my search for MBA programs. I spent the previous year running my own SAT prep business and becoming an expert test-prep tutor. This helped me score 20 points higher on the GMAT than the average Harvard Business School (HBS) student. So when I formed my short list of schools, HBS and Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business were on the top. I would have never found the unicorn that I’m writing about today if it didn’t happen to also be my undergrad alma mater. Their full-time MBA program is so far off the radar that in some years it’s literally not even ranked (because the number of students is under 40); yet, the online program was ranked #12 nationwide in 2016 by U.S. News and World Report. As soon as I discovered the secret, my short list was out the window and my single application was in the mail. The Post-MBA Job Search One more comment before I reveal the unicorn and describe its shiny tusk and glowing mane. By the time I graduated, I had landed a job that doubled my salary and had finally taken my tutoring marketplace national. My experiences in the program were instrumental in helping me reach these milestones. The point of my braggadocio is just to illustrate by example to you, a high achiever undoubtedly, that this program is worthy of your consideration. The MBA Unicorn Without further ado, the MBA unicorn is… Isenberg School of Management, UMass Amherst What Makes Isenberg Unique The Isenberg full-time MBA program is, to the best of my knowledge, the only program that awards every student a working fellowship that not only covers full tuition, but also provides a stipend and benefits. The savings relative to a typical top-tier, 2-year full-time program is over $100k. Yes, you heard me right. I just saved you $100k. You’re welcome. I invite you to read more about Isenberg’s Full-Time MBA Program. How to Boost your GMAT and Get In If you need a GMAT boost, MyGuru’s 1-on-1 GMAT Tutoring might be right for you. Jared Rand is founder of The Knowledge Roundtable, a free tutoring marketplace. His company helps students find a tutorand helps tutors find more clients. The site is 100% commission and subscription free for students and tutors. Jared has a B.S. in Astronomy and Physics from UMass Amherst and an MBA in Advanced Financial Analytics, also from UMass. He has experience writing interactive math problems and solutions and has worked as a full-time tutor. He now has a day job in Boston, MA as a Big Data Analyst while continuing to manage The Knowledge Roundtable.

Staying Organized on Summer Road Trips with ADHD

Staying Organized on Summer Road Trips with ADHD Family road trips are fun and exciting, but they can also be stressful when one or more family members have ADHD. Some of this stress comes simply from being in close quarters and having to stay seated in the car for long stretches of time. While you cant do much to cut down on the amount of driving thats required for your trip you can tackle another source of stress disorganization. When youre in the car with kids, especially kids with ADHD, things can get messy quickly. You may start off with a clean car, but buckle kids into the back seat with their games, drinks, and food and the car can go from clean to a disaster zone in 5 minutes or less! This chaos makes it hard for kids with ADHD to keep track of their things, and can be the source of arguments, whining, and even tears. Often this backseat chaos doesnt get left behind once you reach your destination. When things are disorganized at the beginning of a trip, it is very hard for kids to become organized once theyre on the road . As a result, the hotel room quickly mirrors the messy car. Fortunately, it doesnt have to be this way. Using a few simple organization strategies before and during your trip will empower your children to keep their things organized. Kids with ADHD will learn that even though they may struggle to stay organized, there is a lot that they can do to keep track of their own things. Plan and create an activity bag for each child. Before your trip, work with your kids to make a list of the games and activities that they will keep in the car. Provide each child with a reasonably sized bag and let him or her know that everything he or she brings needs to fit inside. Travel cosmetics caddies can be the best car activity bags. They can hang from a car headrest, they can easily fold up and be carried into restaurants and hotel rooms, and they have clear pockets for keeping things organized. Label each of the pockets with the items that should go inside, and your kids will easily know where their things should be stored. They can also check the pockets before they leave the car, restaurant, or hotel to make sure they havent left anything behind. Clean out the backseat every time you stop for gas. Avoid letting wrappers, food, and other trash build up in the backseat by cleaning out the car every time you stop to refuel. Keep a trash bag in the car to make the cleanup easier. You can put your kids in charge of the clean-outs either by rotating the person responsible for the entire car, or by making each kid responsible for his or her own area. Make the task more fun by playfully scoring his or her clean-out efforts. Your kids will be aiming for 10s in no time! Wet-wipes are your friend. Deal with spills and messes before they get sticky by keeping wet-wipes and paper towels in the back seat. Your kids can do most of the spill clean-up on their own, but double check when you stop to make sure there isnt too much sticky goo left behind. Pack only what you need. One of the best strategies for staying organized on the road is to bring fewer things with you on your trip. Its always tempting to over pack, but its especially tempting with road trips because youre not restricted by airline luggage limits. Resist the urge to bring everything but the kitchen sink, and pack only what your kids will really need. When it comes to packing kids clothes, try packing each days outfit in its own gallon-size ZipLock bag. Put one complete outfit, including the shirt, shorts, socks, and underwear in a bag labeled with the day of the week and your childs name. Do this for every day of the trip, and your child will easily be able to find what he or she needs. As an added bonus, youll have only packed the clothes that are necessary and nothing more. Use a pop-up hamper. Dirty clothes can pile up quickly, and before long they can take over a hotel room. Keep the laundry under control by bringing along a pop-up hamper. These collapsible hampers take up very little space in a suitcase, and make it easy for kids (and adults) to see where their dirty clothes should go at the end of each day. With a little planning and a few good strategies you can help your kids stay organized while theyre on the road, even when they have ADHD. Everyone will feel more relaxed, and your kids will feel proud of how well they were able to keep track of their belongings independently. ABOUT DR. MARY ROONEY Mary Rooney, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California San Francisco. Dr Rooney is a researcher and clinician specializing in the evaluation and treatment of ADHD and co-occurring behavioral, anxiety, and mood disorders. A strong advocate for those with attention and behavior problems, Dr. Rooney is committed to developing and providing comprehensive, cutting edge treatments tailored to meet the unique needs of each child and adolescent. Dr. Rooney's clinical interventions and research avenues emphasize working closely with parents and teachers to create supportive, structured home and school environments that enable children and adolescents to reach their full potential. In addition, Dr. Rooney serves as a consultant and ADHD expert to Huntington Learning Centers. ABOUT HUNTINGTON Huntington Learning Center is the tutoring and test prep leader. Its certified tutors provide individualized instruction in reading, phonics, writing, study skills, elementary and middle school math, Algebra through Calculus, Chemistry, and other sciences. It preps for the SAT and ACT, as well as state and standardized exams. Huntington programs develop the skills, confidence, and motivation to help students of all levels succeed and meet the needs of Common Core State Standards. Founded in 1977, Huntington's mission is to give every student the best education possible. Call us today at 1.800.CAN LEARN to discuss how Huntington can help your child. For franchise opportunities please visit www.huntingtonfranchise.com. This website does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The material on this site is provided for educational purposes only.

GABA Corporation

GABA Corporation GABA Corporation Teaching at Gaba is a unique experience that reflects our unique perspective on teaching English to our clients. We operate all of our lessons on a one-to-one basis, so teaching with us means getting to know your students as individuals, and understanding what they want to learn, at what pace in and in what manner. That means that as an English Instructor with Gaba, you can focus your attention and your efforts on one learner at a time and make the most of your time and theirs. That individual focus is in the DNA of the company, and individual freedom and choice are built into the Instructor position from the ground up. Since opening our first Learning Studio in the year 2000 we have been single-mindedly honing our craft. That means both improving the quality of the one-to-one lessons we offer our clients, as well as the support and options we offer to our Instructors. We pride ourselves on being different from the herd - whether it is the online lesson booking system through which our clients arrange their lessons, the in-house customized curriculum and certification programs for Instructors we have developed and continually strive to improve, or the stylish and comfortable Learning Studios where we teach our lessons. Our Instructors enjoy a large amount of freedom at Gaba. Each month, as an Instructor you can choose your schedule for the following month. Fancy a break to travel around Japan? No problem, just schedule it in no need to ask permission, or to wait for your proscribed holiday time to roll around. Want to teach a lot of lessons to save some money next month? Right on - just open a larger schedule! As an Instructor, Gaba is what you make it effort in results in rewards out. We operate a performance based tiered pay scale that rewards quality rather than tenure. We have options for Instructors to get involved with sales lessons, podcasts, corporate offsite lessons, and developing learning materials to name a few. We offer incentives to boost your income and job satisfaction. Of course, we expect a high level of effort and professionalism from our Instructors and we dont promise that teaching with us will always be easy, but we can promise a transparent, supportive and flexible teaching environment. We are proud to say that we dont discriminate based on age or nationality, and that we have well over 70 different nationalities represented among our Instructors we just care about your aptitude, experience and enthusiasm.

Flip the Script! How to Type Up a Storm in Another Language

Flip the Script! How to Type Up a Storm in Another Language Flip the Script! How to Type Up a Storm in Another Language Learning to type?Unless someone printed this article out and posted it to you by, I don’t know, carrier pigeon, you probably already know how to type.But what about in your target language?Well, if you plan to do any writing in that language other than longhand, youll want to be able to type.And I dont mean hunting and pecking for the lettersâ€"letters which might not even appear on your keyboard!Like with  practicing any skill, the more you do it, the better youll get. Its that simple.This guide is here to help you accelerate that practice period so you spend as little time as possible learning to type, and as much time as possible learning your target language. Flip the Script! How to Type Up a Storm in Another LanguageThe Technical Side: How to Install New KeyboardsIts dead simple to add new foreign keyboards to your computer.On Windows, you can change the language settings right from your taskbar. Lets say English (United States) is marked as your primary display language.Cli ck on that English button and head to Language preferences, where youll be presented with the very useful Add a language button. Couldnt be simpler than that!Once you add a new one, you can switch between installed keyboards by pressing the Windows and Shift keys.On a Mac, head up to System Preferences. Under Keyboard and Input Sources, theres a small + symbol for you to add new choices.After you have more than one, a small flag appears on the top menu bar of the screenâ€"click it and you can choose a new keyboard layout at any time.(The wording of the directions above may differ depending on what version youre using.)How to Learn Foreign KeyboardsIts hard to imagine typing at speed with a foreign keyboard. I remember watching a video about a linguist and seeing her switch between typing English, Japanese and Russian without missing a beat.It was an amazing sight! And its not out of reach for you and me.In fact, I personally type in Arabic, French and English at a good speed. And if you know or are learning these languages, you can do the same!Do You Have the Touch? Why Its Better to Be Able to Touch TypeYour first step is to learn how to touch type. You may already know how to do this in your native language, but its especially important when youre adding typing in a second language.If you rely on looking down at the keyboard for knowing where your hands are, youre going to be stuck pretty fast when you need letters that just arent there.It is actually possible to buy little stickers you can put on your keys, but that may not work for everyone. Its a bunch of work, and youre limited to the languages that can fit on the keys. The truth is, you dont need to use stickers if you dont want to.Instead, take it real slow.Getting the Lay of the Land: Initial Learning and PracticeOpen a new window on your computer with your foreign-language keyboard diagram as a reference, or print it out and stick it nearby.Then, just start typing. At first, just test yourself on the keyboard diagram to internalize the layout. Make it a little game with yourself to see how many letters you can type before making a mistake.Focus on accuracy from the beginning to avoid hitting a plateau. Its easy to build speed with some letter combinations but always have trouble with a fewâ€"and those mistakes can add up over time to a lot of frustration.There are a handful of websites out there that can give you customized typing lessons for whatever language youd like.My favorite is called 10fastfingers. It lets you know right away if you made a mistake, but doesnt necessarily stop you. That way you can accurately get an idea of your words per minute score after mistakes are subtracted.For English writing practice only, my favorite website is  Typing Speed Test.And of course, every online language course with a typing component has typing practice built into its core instruction. Duolingo users might default to the rearrange words exercise, but if you switch yourself to the t ext input mode, youre immediately learning much more efficiently.FluentU  tests your typing skills through fun quizzes when youre using the Plus plan. The multimedia questions include typing words and phrases to test how well you can produce them from memory. Spelling counts! FluentU takes real-world videosâ€"like movie trailers, news and moreâ€"and turns them into personalized language lessons.From my own experience, you dont even have to put a ton of time into the basics of learning to type in another language. Even a completely different keyboard layout can be memorized after a couple of days, and you should be able to touch type competently after just one month of short daily practices.If you just have to add a couple of accents or a handful of extra letters, thoseâ€"in my experience with Arabicâ€"can be memorized in less than an hour!Typing at Speed: The Importance of Regular PracticeNow, if you dont happen to be learning something like Greek, Arabic or Korean that uses a non-L atin script, you may be thinking that you dont need to practice your typing. If a language uses the same letters as English, whats the big deal?Well, first, there arent too many commonly learned languages without any accents or additional letters.Second, it turns out that if youre not used to typing a languages specific letter combinations, youll likely make a lot more mistakes a lot more often than you would otherwise.Fast typists in one language may look at their hands in wonder and dismay when they try to apply the same muscle memory to a foreign language.For example, the combinations th, ed  and tion are very common in English but less so in German. And the Spanish ll and rr very rarely show up when typing English.The best way to get better at typing is to simply type more. Choosing what to type is the question, of course. Dont just copy down the keyboard again and againâ€"youll bore yourself to tears.Double Your Efforts: Type Your Learning MaterialsIn the olden days of language learning, students would often copy out passages by hand as part of their homework. This teaching method was rightly phased out, but that doesnt mean it never helped anyone.If you take the time to re-type some textbook dialogues or short reading passages, youre actually doing yourself a huge favor.By focusing so hard on the letters, making sure you get each one right, youre indirectly giving yourself an intense reading workout.By combining these occasional typing exercises with the ordinary typing you would do in the languageâ€"for homework, courses, chatting, et ceteraâ€"you’ll avoid plateauing and instead consistently build speed and accuracy.Alternate Methods: Using Shortcut KeyboardsWhen youre presented with all the myriad types of keyboards out there, its good to know about a couple of small shortcuts.For one, languages like Polish and Romanian have a programmers layout. The name comes from programmers in those regions who find it irritating to type code when all the bracket s and underscores are reassigned to other letters.These programmers keyboards dont have separate keys for the new letters. Instead, to type something like ó you just press ALT-O and the alternate letter appears.Something called the US-International layout  works on an interesting and related principle. Its made for you to be able to type a wide range of alternate characters without having to switch keyboards or even take your hands off the home row.It treats characters like ö, ê and ñ as combinations like [ + o ], [ ^ + e ] and [ ~ + n ]. So with the US-International keyboard turned on, all you have to do is tap these keys in succession and theyll automatically combine into the new characters.These are ideal for peopleâ€"programmers or notâ€"who find themselves writing or editing text in multiple languages on the regular. I personally use the US-International layout any time I might be typing in mostly English but switching to French here and there.And if your other-language ty ping is really sporadic, there are a couple of simple keyboard shortcuts in the Microsoft Office suite that let you add the odd special character without even switching your keyboard back and forth.You can also use various Alt commands for the same purpose.There are even lookalike keyboards for languages such as Russian, where the QWERTY keys that are closest to the Russian shape are used instead of the actual Russian layout. So ? would be put on the N key because it kind of looks like an N.But like with stickers, you dont actually need these. The other keyboards were designed for fast typing speedâ€"and in Russian-speaking countries, everybody uses the authentic layout, so good luck using a computer in a hotel or library!Besides, it really doesnt take long to pick up new typing skills.Many people get by in typing a foreign language without ever consciously practicing it.It just so happens that theyre the ones hitting the Backspace key the most.For better or worse, virtually all the writing that happens nowadays happens on computers.And with just a little bit of conscious practice, you can shoot past being an eternally-average typist, and instead, aim for excellence.