Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

sciencealert.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 128 posts

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

#81

Post by maxerickson »

axaxs wrote: post #40

I can believe it. I firmly believe the brain acts very differently between typing and handwriting. I make stupid mistakes all the time when I type. Not misspelling, but those easy there/their/theyre type mistakes. I think it's because I'm just mindlessly trying to express my opinion as fast as possible. I don't write nearly as much as I type, but I've never made such a mistake when writing. Somewhere between the slow…

Less fluency with handwriting is a possible explanation. If you did it a lot more, you might run into muscle memory mistakes.

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

#82

Post by zsmi »

csa wrote: post #78
viraptor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people just write in block letters instead?

Yes. Schools stopped teaching it (even many “good” schools). People largely don’t use it except for signatures. I personally switched to block letters a long time ago because I can’t read my own cursive when I am writing quickly. My penmanship sucks.

> Schools stopped teaching it

Wow. Do kids not have hand written assignments anymore? I can't even imagine having to write out, say a 5 page essay, in block letters by hand.

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

#83

Post by codesnik »

axaxs wrote: post #40

I can believe it. I firmly believe the brain acts very differently between typing and handwriting. I make stupid mistakes all the time when I type. Not misspelling, but those easy there/their/theyre type mistakes. I think it's because I'm just mindlessly trying to express my opinion as fast as possible. I don't write nearly as much as I type, but I've never made such a mistake when writing. Somewhere between the slow…

fun thing, it's other way around for me. I hate writing, because I skip letters all the time, have to cross a letter or two to correct that mistake, and make a mess as a result. Not much practice for more than a decade, of course. I have no such problem when typing.

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

#84

Post by jchw »

codesnik wrote: post #83
axaxs wrote: post #40

I can believe it. I firmly believe the brain acts very differently between typing and handwriting. I make stupid mistakes all the time when I type. Not misspelling, but those easy there/their/theyre type mistakes. I think it's because I'm just mindlessly trying to express my opinion as fast as possible. I don't write nearly as much as I type, but I've never made such a mistake when writing. Somewhere between the slow…

fun thing, it's other way around for me. I hate writing, because I skip letters all the time, have to cross a letter or two to correct that mistake, and make a mess as a result. Not much practice for more than a decade, of course. I have no such problem when typing.

Oddly enough.... I have both problems, making neither medium completely ideal.

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

#85

Post by mellosouls »

axaxs wrote: post #40

I can believe it. I firmly believe the brain acts very differently between typing and handwriting. I make stupid mistakes all the time when I type. Not misspelling, but those easy there/their/theyre type mistakes. I think it's because I'm just mindlessly trying to express my opinion as fast as possible. I don't write nearly as much as I type, but I've never made such a mistake when writing. Somewhere between the slow…

Additionally (and mainly?) a skill learnt as a young child - eg. handwriting - is presumably more likely to be fully absorbed and "foolproof" than one like typing which at least in former generations (so may not apply in your case) was learnt later (and often to a lesser competence) as a teenager or adult.

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

#86

Post by isatty »

kstrauser wrote: post #22

That's great. Alternatively, after a few decades of wishing otherwise, I've accepted that for me the decision is between take notes via typing and don't take notes . I fully get the value of handwriting things. I wish it weren't physically painful for me to write more than a paragraph, but it is, and has been since I was a kid. (And I've tried literally everything I could find to "fix" that. It's not from lack of try…

> shackled with vast tooling that lets me selectively encrypt sensitive parts, sync them across all my devices, instantly search through everything, turn notes into reminders with a tap of a button

I know that this is subjective, but I thought that this mattered, but ultimately it did not. I rarely (/never) refer back to my electronic notes but I do occasionally browse through my handwritten notes. The advanced features that you mentioned were cool to play with, but are a distraction from the main purpose of note taking.

For what it's worth, I can barely make reminder apps/TODO lists work for me, maybe I should try a hobonichi or something. (/me makes a note to buy one, which I will probably never get around to).

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

#87

Post by Multicomp »

cguess wrote: post #18
gowld wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OTOH, of you do need to keep up (with a lecture, for example), handwriting hurts because you don't have time to finish.

Learn some form of shorthand, and learn how to summarize on the go. Writing down word-for-word what a professor is saying is not going to work well. For that, bring a tape recorder (or an iPhone if you want to kill your battery) and retake your notes later when you can pause, rewind, etc.

I was and am always too lazy to go back after the recording. But I found that for me, my half-learned dialect of Teeline shorthand is enough for me to keep up with speakers...when they are not speaking especially fast. I'd speed up more if I got used to cutting out vowels and doing phonetic spellings and brief forms like the Teeline Fast book says to do, but like the sibling comment says, that can slow me down even more as I try to figure out what is being said -> how to make it phonetic -> oh crap he's moved on, lets jump back to the newest offset.

I'd do Gregg shorthand but with my handwriting being so poor as is and the apparent risk that the writing can be ambiguous later, I went with a phonetic shorthand. Works for my 'threat model', write it down now, review now or in 10 years and you can translate it back.

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

#88

Post by Multicomp »

csa wrote: post #78
viraptor wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people just write in block letters instead?

Yes. Schools stopped teaching it (even many “good” schools). People largely don’t use it except for signatures. I personally switched to block letters a long time ago because I can’t read my own cursive when I am writing quickly. My penmanship sucks.

This news distressed me. However, I'm glad to report that 14 states never stopped and/or restarted Cursive lessons according to [1].

Alabama

Arizona

Arkansas

Delaware

Florida

Georgia

Illinois

Indiana

Kentucky

Louisiana

Maryland

Massachussets

Mississippi

North Carolina

Ohio

Oklahoma

South Carolina

Tennessee

Texas

Virginia

West Virginia

https://mycursive.com/the-14-states-that-require-cursive-wri...

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

#90

Post by Zababa »

viraptor wrote: post #69
hundchenkatze wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the U.S. and I learned cursive about that age. I'm 30 now, and the only thing I write in cursive these days is my signature (which for the record looks awful). I'm fairly certain cursive is no longer taught in public schools in my area.

So people just write in block letters instead?

I personally do because my cursive is unreadable, even by myself.
Post reply on HN