Two certificates from one course: the COA 30 wpm rule

The wording, from the notes at the front of the Government Technical Examination syllabus issued by the Department of Technical Education:

For Paper II and III, Typing at the rate of 30 wpm will be certified as qualified in GTE - Typewriting Junior Grade in respective languages. Likewise, Typing at the rate of 45 wpm will be certified as qualified in GTE - Typewriting Senior Grade in respective languages. The above conditions apply only on passing this Certificate Course as prescribed.

Two things to note. "In respective languages" — the grade is per language, so Tamil and English are certified separately. And "only on passing this Certificate Course as prescribed" — the typing grade is contingent on passing COA itself. Miss the COA papers and the typing speed earns you nothing.

You can read the whole document on the COA syllabus 2026 page, or download the original PDF.

Most candidates treat typing as something they do to get through the COA practical, and aim for "fast enough". That is a mistake, because "fast enough" and "30 words per minute" are different targets and only one of them is worth a certificate.

Know your number. If you are typing at 26 wpm you are not close to anything. At 31 wpm, consistently, with errors counted, you have a Junior Grade certificate in that language. The gap is small and the difference in what you walk away with is not.

Then look at 45. Senior Grade is the higher qualification and the one that separates candidates in competitive clerical selection. Going from 30 to 45 is not more of the same practice — it is removing the pauses, which means the unfamiliar vocabulary, the numbers and the punctuation have to stop breaking your rhythm.

Pick your language deliberately. Because the grade is per language, a Tamil-medium candidate who practises only English typing is leaving a Tamil certificate on the table, and the reverse. The two are different keyboards, though — see below.

The syllabus fixes QWERTY for English and the Tamil99 layout for Tamil, with Arial at size 12 for English and Marutham at size 12 for Tamil.

That is not a cosmetic difference. Tamil99 builds most letters from a consonant key followed by a vowel key, so more keystrokes go into each word than in English. Thirty words per minute in Tamil is more physical work than 30 wpm in English, which is why the layout has to become automatic before speed work is worth doing at all.

If you are aiming at both, the practical advice is to get one to grade before starting the other seriously. Two half-learned layouts is the slowest route to either.

Details for each: Tamil typewriting and English typewriting. The Tamil99 layout chart is free to download, and so is our Tamil keyboard software so you can practise on the exam layout at home.

One more thing from the syllabus, because it is cheap to learn and easy to forget under time pressure. In the typing exercises:

Five spaces before the beginning of a paragraph. Two spaces after a full stop, a question mark and an exclamation mark. One space after every other punctuation mark.

Candidates who type quickly and lose marks are usually losing them here, not on speed. Apply the rules from your first paragraph exercise rather than correcting them later — the habit is what gets tested, not the knowledge.

If you are already enrolled on COA: find out your current words per minute this week, in the language you intend to be certified in, with errors counted. Then aim at 30, and at 45 if 30 is comfortable.

If you are choosing a course: the COA course is the one that carries this rule. Fees for it and every other course are on the fees page, and classes run at our Thirukkanur and Mundiyapakkam centres and online.