Handwriting is better than typing when learning a new language, study finds

My experience mirrors this study for Japanese at least. Instead of typing sentences for vocabulary learning I have a journal where I write them instead. I'd say I learn words and kanji more quickly ever since I made that change.

So while the study was for Arabic, and from scratch, my experience is from Japanese and roughly 1 - 1.5 years into learning (so wasn't a novice/from scratch at that point).

In an adult, handwriting is going to be ingrained in their brain because they have been doing it their whole life. It is a part of the language processing their brain does, and it makes sense that tapping in to that helps their brain learn faster.

I want to see if the same is true for children who type way more than they handwrite. Is there something innately better about handwriting, or is it just that the brain learns better using ingrained methods?

This seems to be the input-level dual of the meme that reading from physical paper leads to greater retention than from a computer screen. I'm curious as to what the cause could be for this one, as it seems less intuitive than the writing case.

Back to writing: I've found that while writing things down, I'm often "bandwidth-limited" - not only can I not write nearly as fast as I can think, but I often run into this limit on a practical level, where I continually have a "buffer" of sentences that I want to write and I'm just waiting for my fingers to put them down on paper. Perhaps learning shorthand would allow me both bandwidth and retention?

One of the possible reasons would be that we consume text content on paper differently than on the screen.

Another reason would be that when you read text on paper you engage with a unique physical object. Engaging multiple senses and adding more cues/anchors helps with creating stronger connections in your brain and improves memory retention.

That's also probably why writing things down with a pen helps you remember more and for longer--more parts of your brain are involved in the process of note taking.