Its not hard, you just have to trust it. Make sure its set to T9, even though each button has two letters on it, you only need to press the button one time, and the phone will figure out the word for you. For instance, to type the word "think" you would press (TY),(GH),(UI),(BN),(JK). So long as you pressed each key only one time, the word will show in the list of possible words at the top, then you can either press space to choose the highlighted word or tap another word candidate directly on the screen to choose it.
For punctuation, you'll see the period, comma, etc greyed out on the keys as well, simply hold that key down to insert the symbol.
I agree though, the Touch keyboard is a good idea, but its not implemented nearly as well as TouchPal, which has the same design, but many more features and improvements, Get the trial here
www.cootek.com